Sunday in the Art Room

 Hi Everyone!

Ohhh my poor art room is now partly storage for my yearly yard sale that I didn't have this year. BOO HOO HOO. It is truly a mess in there.

  So, I have been drawing in the TV room where my PC is. I have a 3 ft folding table that fits an easel and my pencils are on a TV tray table next to me. It sounds nuts but it actually is working quite well.

 

Which goes to show, you can create art anywhere.

I watch a lot of art shows, youtube, videos on blogs and websites. I do this to glean what I can from professional artists. One thing I have found is just how many professional artist trace their subject. I know that there are several types of tracings from the 1500s. However, Art historians such as David Hockney and Charles Falco, have theorized that certain artists, maybe as early as the 1420s, used optical devices like concave mirrors and lenses to project images onto a surface to trace their outlines, enabling high levels of realism and accuracy. Leonardo Da Vinci used a grid method, Johannes Vermeer is said to have used camera obscura to  traced the outline onto a transparent sheet, and then transferred the tracing to the canvas. 

 

 Artist such as Lance Richlin, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Edgar Degas, Norman Rockwell, and Kandisky who traced before he started creating abstract. Picasso traced in his earlier career. The list goes on and on. Today, there are several projector type devices that artists use to trace their art. Is this cheating to get a realistic portrait, landscape, or still life? The answer is NO. Artist use all kinds of tools to create with. I do however believe that one should know the basics and how to draw free hand.

My point to all of this is.... if you are finding it difficult to create your self portrait tracing first is perfectly acceptable. 

Nicole