portraits – Page 3 – Art of Schmidt

Making art a Habit

Well, here I am a week after I said that I was going to start a daily sketchbook…It ended up being very difficult to make time for it, and unfortunately, I only got to work on it one day out of seven.

Emily Dickinson, “Hope”

Sarah, After Mary Cassatt

I also started thinking that perhaps my topic for last week’s blog about doing what you love and making it a habit, may not necessarily correspond to the prompts in the sketchbook I was thinking of using for this project. The sketch prompts in this book tends to focus more on still life and architecture, and less on portraits, which is something I really want to get better at doing. So I have decided to make a slight topic change. I am going to be posting photos of my oil and acrylic portraits in the process. Here’s a youtube video that inspired me to finish my work and to make this topic change: Finished Not Perfect, by Jake Parker, at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=finished+not+perfect+. I felt that the speaker hit the nail right on the head with his mantra of “Finished not Perfect.” I tend to struggle with perfectionism and find it hard to bring projects to a close because of my high expectations for the work.

I’d also like to alternate my own work with master copies to try and push my art making abilities forward and try to break some old habits in my painting practice, such as putting everything in the center of the page. This is an idea I got from the artist, Noah Bradley’s, article: 21 days to be a Better Artist at https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.bzzgdsrp6, mentioned in last week’s post. Bonus, Noah Bradley includes a link to a youtube video where he teaches you how to make master copies of artwork!

So once again, my change of topic will be posting weekly portrait paintings and sketches, alternated with master artwork copies. My goals will be improving the level of my artwork with regards to drawing accuracy, composition, and harmonious color choices. And another important goal will be making sure to complete each work and post the results before moving onto other projects. Time management will be a crucial part of reaching this goal. Here’s an article that I have read about time management, which I plan to re-read. It’s called: Five Ways to Make Time for Art by Julie-Fei Fan Balzer, http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/2012/12/five-ways-to-make-time-for-art.html. She lists five ways to make art more of a priority in your schedule, and I am going to try the first two to help me in this quest of making more time for art, and getting really good at portraits, being sure to complete each piece. The first two suggestions Balzer mentions are using a crockpot for cooking and limiting computer time. Let me know if you have any time management tips for making art that you’d like to share! Here are some portrait paintings that I have been working on this week…An acrylic painting of Emily Dickinson, which illustrates the poem, Hope is the Thing with Feathers and a master copy of a Mary Cassatt oil portrait, Sara in a Green Bonnet, c. 1901.

What’s Next? Do What You Love

Last week I was struggling to find my artistic momentum again after participating in two art shows and trying to force myself to paint, and it just wasn’t working out. No matter what color combination I used in the portrait, it seemed wrong. But, since I started a new portrait drawing this past weekend, things are coming together again. I’m learning that some days in the studio are better than others, and on the days when things don’t go according to plan, maybe I am learning something new and that is why I am struggling to make a piece “work.”

And finally, I am learning to take a step back and work on other projects when one painting isn’t working out. So back to my question from last week of, What’s next? For me, it’s returning to portrait drawing and painting. Drawing portraits is in fact, the thing that lighted a fire in me to create art. I started out drawing celebrity portraits from magazines such as People and Time in pencil on plain paper back when I was a teenager. So I am going back to the beginning and drawing portraits of people, and not just anyone, but people who have made a specific impact on my life, through their music, or poetry. So this week I worked on portraits of George Michael, whose music from Wham! and Faith albums furnished the soundtrack of my childhood. It reminds me of happier days when there was less to worry about and few responsibilities except getting myself out of bed and going to school. George Michael’s passing last December has made these portraits specifically significant to me because in a way it is a type of metaphorical loss for me, a loss of childhood and innocence, or perhaps a reminder that time is passing and life is not a guarantee. These are two portraits of George Michael in progress…

Stories We Tell

Stories are a universal element in the arts, such as music, film, opera, theater, poetry, literature, dance and fine arts. They help us to know that we are not alone, that someone else has traveled down a similar path as ours, whether it is loss, uncertainty, joy, expectation, happiness, etc. As an undergraduate art student, I spent a lot of hours making content based work, mostly self-portraits that told a story about some event I was experiencing or a feeling I was working through. I primarily used color to express my feelings. For my senior thesis, I did a series of self-portraits, which were inspired by Sting’s songs on his album, Mercury Falling. These songs dealt with subjects such as depression, in Lithium Sunset. Lately, I am feeling pulled back into more content based work, and this time I am taking my cue from songs and poetry of Sting, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou, among others. Here is a photo of my painting, Lithium Sunset, inspired by Sting’s song, Lithium Sunset:

Fill my eyes
O Lithium sunset
And take this lonesome burden
Of worry from my mind
Take this heartache
Of obsidian darkness
And fold my darkness
Into your yellow light. (Song excerpt from Sting’s official website: http://www.sting.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/178

I will post my sketches for this new series based on poetry and songs soon. For now, here is my painting, Lithium Sunset, Oil on Canvas, 2005. Enjoy!

Oil painting self-portrait inspired by the song Lithium Sunset by Sting.

The Artists’ Gallery Box Show

Jodie and I have each submitted our own pieces to The Artists’ Gallery 11th Annual Box Show and Silent Auction. Opening reception is March 3rd, 5 – 9 pm. They will be on display until March 31st, and bidding ends at 8 pm sharp on March 31st. We will be donating 50% of the sales to the gallery. They provided the 8″ x 8″ x 8″ wooden boxes, and we turned them into art.

The picture’s aren’t great, so I encourage you to see them in person if you can. Jodie did five copies of master artworks, self-portraits of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot and Edgar Degas.