Yellow Roses

10/3/2012

I'm teaching art this year at the elementary school by mixing techniques from Mona Brooks' "Drawing with Children" book with lessons on particular artists. I'm looking at Lempicka, a jazz-age art deco portraitist, and trying to work out how to teach her approach to stylization. While I'm rather tickled by this portrait of a friend of mine (she was getting a facial), it can't be confused with a Lempicka. I'll talk to the kids about what I did to move from the photo to the stylized portrait. We can discuss why the foliage was changed, how the rose reflects the hair color, and what happened to the lines of the face. Did the mood change? Why? ... and so on.

1 Comment

Cheryl E. Fitzgerald link

10/20/2012 12:54:16 pm

The more I look at this piece, the more I really like it. The style going on there, whether intentional or not, is really interesting, and I'm finding it more appealing the more I look at it. Which I think has to do with looking at it as it is on its own apart from the photo, apart from knowing the source of the image, and not looking at it with that source in mind, not looking at it as trying to capture that image, but rather, as an image with a life all its own. Only then does the particular style evolving in there really become apparent. Perhaps, if it appeals to you, you could try to develop the style and come up with more portraits - real or fabricated, or some mixture of both. But I'd suggest first trying to develop it and pin it down in sketches, and maybe even starting with trying to recreate in a sketch what you did in this painting. What I'm imaging could have the potential to result is a style that's a sort of personalized caricature of people and faces, personalized to you, not them. If that makes sense.

Yellow Roses

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