“Experience the beauty and complexity of Blackness in Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo’s debut solo museum exhibition Soul of Black Folks.”
Love his portraits. Love how he does skin.
“When I’m making paintings,
I want the characters to be strong,
I want them to be free,
I want them to be independent,
I want them to be unapologetic.”
— Amoako Boafo
Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks
SEATTLE ART MUSEUM
Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries
Ok! It’s that time of year again. Noticed all the college Instagram posts and all the college football on TV. Twitter was full of clips of HBCU marching groups, with their fancy Drum Majors, big bands and cheerful Cheer leaders. All the best to them!
Watching reminds me of the image above. Can’t you just hear his whistle, the brass section, the drums? Strut on.
I Love it!
A former football player turned artist, Mr Barnes’s work, filled with sports figures and images of everyday people, is known for his use of bright color and elongated figures.
Ernie Barnes’, 1939 – 2009, “Drum Major”.
~~~***~~~
[ad#review-2a]
“This exhibition is the first major survey of Joan Brown (American, 1938–1990) in over 20 years, and offers a compelling look at the prolific career of a painter known for her large-scale, high-key portraits of family, animals, and herself.”
Joan Brown
Heinz Galleries until Sept. 24, 2023
Sketching in general entails 4 distinct steps: line, tone, texture, and shape. In the special case of pencil portrait drawing we can refine the list of steps to six: shape, proportion, anatomy, texture, tone, and planes.
Sketching in general entails 4 distinct steps: line, tone, texture, and shape. In the special case of pencil portrait drawing we can refine the list of steps to six: shape, proportion, anatomy, texture, tone, and planes.
In this article we will give a detailed description of each of those pencil portrait drawing steps.
(1) Form Shape or Shape – The illusion of three-dimensionality in sketching and art in general has been central to Western art for centuries. The carving out of shape using line, structure, and tone was vital to almost all Renaissance art.
On the other hand, oriental and much contemporary art stress flatness of shape although this era in contemporary art is drawing to a close.
All shape in sketching can be reduced to 4 basic 3-dimensional solids: bricks, cones, cylinders, and spheres. The correct use of these shapes together with perspective and tone leads to the illusion of 3-dimensionality even though the drawing is, in reality, located on a two-dimensional sheet of sketching paper.
In portrait sketching, the arabesque of the skull, the square structure of the skull, and all elements within the skull (nose, eyes, etc.) are all two- and 3-dimensional shapes that contribute to the overall illusion of 3-dimensionality
(2) Proportion – encompasses all sizing and placements of shape. Proportion refers to the concept of relative length and angle size.
Proportion gives answers to these two questions:
1. Given a defined unit of length, how many units is a particular length?
2. How large is this particular angle?
Answering these 2 questions consistently accurately will yield a drawing with the right proportions and placements of all shapes.
(3) Anatomy – refers essentially to the underlying structures of bone and muscle of the skull.
It is essential to study as much as you can about anatomy. There are a lot of studies available on anatomy for artists. For a portrait artist it is particularly significant to understand the anatomy of the skull, neck, and shoulders.
Anatomy studies unfortunately include many Latin terms which makes it somewhat complicated to grasp. The idea is to study slowly and a little bit at a time because it can be quite frustrating.
(4) Texture – in portrait sketching expresses the degree of roughness or smoothness of the shapes. The texture of a concrete walk way, for instance, is quite different from that of a cloud.
There are quite a few techniques and tricks to assist you with the creation of the correct textures. Creating textures gives you the chance to be very creative and to use each possible type of mark you can make with a pencil. In portrait sketching textures occur in spots such as hair, clothing, and skin.
(5) Tone – refers to the degrees in light or dark of the pencil marks and cross-hatchings. Powerful portrait sketches employ the full range of contrasting lights and darks. Beginning artists many times fail to achieve this full “stretch” of tone, resulting in retiring, washed-out drawings.
(6) Planes – create the sculptural sensibility of a portrait. The skull has many planes each with a unique direction and therefore with a different tone.
The idea is to think of the surface of the skull as a collection of distinct planes with a certain direction relative to the light source. You should try to identify each of the planes and draw its correct form and tone.
The correct handling of planes contributes a lot to the likeness of your model as well as the illusion of 3-dimensionality.
(Originally posted Jan 2, 2021)
Do you want to learn the secrets of pencil portrait drawing? Download my brand new free pencil portrait drawing course here: portrait drawing tutorial.
Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and expert drawing teacher. See his work at pencil portraits by Remi.
P.S. For the fancy art of the 21st century and video games – visit buy PlayStation 3 info blog.
[ad#reviewpost]
~ / ~
I’m asked “Why did you give a certain name to a painting” and I don’t know. Sometimes it just shows up in my head. Nothing deep or heavy, it just sounds right.
This painting was done this morning, mostly with a pallet knife and some glazes. The edges reminded me of glass. That is about as close as I can get to “why” this name.
Originally posted July 18, 2008
Chipped Glass (c) B. Martin ’08
********
Ms Streisand was all over PBS a few years ago with her show “Barbra Streisand: One Night Only At the Village Vanguard”. She can still touch people with her voice and it was fun to listen and watch her wrap her tiny audience (the NYC club only seats about 150) around her finger – or vocal chords in this case. She is still amazing.
I wanted to hear more, so dug I out an old Barbra Streisand record “The Broadway Album” (yes, “album” – like I said “old”, but now on CD) and again was in awe of her renditions of some great songs from past musicals. I have a weakness for Broadway show tunes, especially those songs from Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin – music from Porgy & Bess, Carousel, West Side Story, The King & I, etc. This music appeals to me because it usually has a story to tell, an emotion to crystallize, a longing to express.
Over the years, these little song poems, have become “standards” – they haven’t gone away, they are being sung someplace, somewhere every day. Whether in person or on CD, Ms Streisand’s versions are beautiful, soaring, romantic, funny & perfect.
Barbra Streisand – a treasure!
(Originally posted May 2020)
~~*~~