🥇Use a weird medium to make art.

🏅Share with us.

I was racking my brain for this week's challenge while washing my hair, and this is what I came up with. The weirder medium you can think of the better.

My piece is made from my own hair. It only took about 60 seconds from start to finish.  I call her, We Will Survive.

🥇 Use any ink - ballpoint pen, felt tip, dip pen, etc. - to make a drawing. 

🏅 Share.

Optional: First make an under-drawing in pencil. Adding an ink wash with a brush is fine, too. My strategy as a self isolating figurative artist without models has been to learn from the Old Masters.

For this week's challenge I copied Peter Paul Rubens' pen and ink and wash of Venus Lamenting Adonis. I fell in love with Rubens' masterful diversity of line weights combined with shades of ink washes from very faint grey to nearly black. To me this puts Rubens in a unique class of his own and underscores his genius. Rubens also appears to have worked very quickly, which is ironic since copying his work has been even slower and more meticulous for me than copying other Masters.

Both Shakespeare or Ovid wrote narrative poems about Venus's unrequited love for Adonis, when he was tragically killed by a wild boar. To me, even more heartbreaking than the poems is the sight of Ruben's little putto kissing Adonis's leg as he lies dying.

Has anyone noticed how similar Ruben's Venus Lamenting Adonis is to Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica? 

Week #4 Challenge

April 6, 2020            Recreate a work of art with objects (and people) in your home.

🥇Choose your favorite artwork.  

🥈Find three things lying around your house. 

🥉Recreate the artwork with those items.

🏅Share with us.

And share with us. I wish I could take credit for this challenge, but it comes from our fabulous Getty Museum. This is our museum, fellow Angelenos, so we can’t let people from around the globe kick our ass on this challenge!

🥇Make an illustration suitable for a child’s greeting card, book or packaging label.

🥈Use any medium.

🎖 Share with a loved one of your choice. (Send them a photo, or the actual artwork.)

Before I lose you! - I, too, had no idea that I was capable of making children's illustrations. Then a friend asked me to illustrate his children’s book, and what a surprisingly fun project it was. As a figurative artist, I enjoyed the newfound freedom of exaggerating physical characteristics to create endearing human and animal characters. I worked until my drawings made me smile; then I knew I had gotten it right.

This week’s challenge was actually inspired by a label on a carton of eggs. I smile just thinking of the illustration of adorable chickens wearing little cowboy boots and hats. During this time of stress and uncertainty, let’s use our creativity to share a little joy and lightness.

There have been a few articles lately saying that people have been experiencing unusually vivid dreams during quarantine. This seems an opportune week to draw or paint our dreams. If you’re feeling particularly lockdown weary, this week’s challenge will hopefully help make sense of these new feelings, take ownership and control during these trying times.

Week #10 Art Challenge

🥇Write down your dream.*

🥈Draw or paint your dream.*

🎖 Share.

*If you don’t remember your dreams, substitute a favorite song or poem.

For centuries dreams have fascinated artists. If we tried to come up with metaphors to describe our emotions, we’d be hard pressed to find metaphors as amazingly creative and interesting as our subconscious comes up with in our dreams. We might as well take advantage of this richness, and unleash our creativity on this challenge.

How can we visually capture the mood of our dream? Things to consider: color, value contrast, scale comparison, crispness vs. blurriness. Dreams are fantasy, so distort and exaggerate. You don’t have to document your dream precisely. This is your dream, so steer it in whatever direction you want. 

🥇Pick an object, person, animal or place that has a sentimental value to you.

🥈Use any medium(s) - drawing, painting, photo, collage, etc.

🥉Create as many pieces as you like. 

🎖Share.

Last week’s challenge talked about selecting materials you genuinely like. This challenge focuses on the importance of your personal or emotional associations with your subject. 

When we look at the entire body of work of great artists, often the work that stands out as being the strongest are the people, places or things that the artist connected strongest with. Emotional connection cannot be faked, and can be that final magical ingredient you add to your work. Have you ever painted something you’ve had a hard time parting with? - Shoes you never wear but remind you of a special event, a pet, a piece of furniture that reminds you of a loved one, a favorite vacation spot?

Conch Shell      by M Susan Broussard      oil on canvas

🥇Make a painting, drawing or take a photograph of a person, place or thing which is beautifully lit.

🏅Share.

Beautiful light is in the eye of the beholder, so choose lighting that is attractive to you. There is no right or wrong.

Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio are known for their use of chiaroscuro: the strong contrasts between light and dark. In what has come to be known as Rembrandt lighting, figures and objects may appear to dramatically emerge from complete darkness. The first two photos I made for Week #4’s challenge (recreating a famous work of art) both used chiaroscuro.

The opposite extreme of lighting, high-key, can also be beautiful. Objects in this lighting are so flooded with light, that there are almost no shadows and very little modeling on the objects, so objects appear flatter, less three dimensional. But the payoff is having created a light and airy mood.

Don’t feel you have to go to extremes. Medium light can be beautiful too. 

Back lighting - putting a strong light, or even the sun, behind your subject - can create dramatic statement. With back light the silhouette of your subject becomes the emphasis, rather than the surface details (such as facial features).

You don’ t have to take photos, and can draw or paint your subjects. If drawing or painting from natural light, it’s well worth it, but account for the sun moving and changing your light over hours. If you take a photo, be aware of keeping the camera very still as you snap the photo. Moving the camera creates blur, so the focus will not be sharp.