Clara Lieu's Blog, page 12

Meet the Art Prof staff at our Free Portfolio Review event in Concord, MA

Art Prof staff: Clara Lieu, Casey Roonan, Lauryn Welch

FREE ART PORTFOLIO REVIEW EVENT!

Sunday, Oct. 23, 12-4pm

Concord Center for the Visual Arts

37 Lexington Rd., Concord, MA, 01742

(978) 369-2578

Bring your art portfolio and get 1 or more 15 minute one-on-one reviews from the ART PROF staff. Unique opportunity to receive diverse feedback from several trusted professionals all in one day! Great chance for high school students working on a portfolio for college admission and for professional artists working on a body of work. This event is free, but registration is required to be guaranteed a review. Scroll down for registration info.

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Portfolio Requirements

Please bring 5-8 artworks in any media. We prefer to see actual artwork, but we can also view artwork on laptops/tablets.

Registration

This event is free, but advance registration is required to be guaranteed a review. You can register for a maximum of 3 slots in advance of the event day. Please do not register for more than 1 slot with the same reviewer, all slots you sign up for must be with different reviewers. Every participant must register themselves with their own email address. Please do not register for more than 1 person using the same email address.

If there are still slots open the day of the event, you can sign up for as many reviews as you want, on a first-come, first-serve basis. (there is still a limit of 1 slot per reviewer the day of the event) You are welcome to show up the day of the event without registering in advance, however, we cannot guarantee that you will receive a review. If you are not present at your slot time, your slot will be given to someone else.

Contact

Hear what our past event participants had to say!

“I found our review very helpful in fine-tuning the direction with my work.”

“Your team was amazing! I feel blessed to have been part of this day.”

“Both portfolio reviewers I talked to were encouraging and helpful.”

Portfolio Reviewers

Clara Lieu is an Adjunct Professor at RISD, a Partner at Art Prof, and a fine artist who works in drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. She wrote Ask the Art Prof, an advice column for visual artists for the Huffington Post for 3 years, and now hosts a weekly live video broadcast of the column on her Facebook page. Watch her portfolio critiques here, her Crit Quickies here, and see her charcoal drawing tutorial here.

ART PROF Teaching Assistant Casey Roonan

Casey Roonan is freelance illustrator, a cartoonist, and a Teaching Assistant at Art Prof. Casey does editorial illustrations for the blog Narratively, and other clients. He writes and edit an anthology-format comic book called Ciambella with Mike Karpiel. Listen to some of Casey’s critiques here.

Lauryn Welch, Painter & Performance Artist

Lauryn Welch is a painter, a performance artist, and a Teaching Assistant at Art Prof. She currently teaches at the Peterborough Art Academy. Her artwork was featured on the cover of Art New England, and was recently shown in “Portraits, Expanded” at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. Listen to some of Lauryn’s critiques here.

Deepti Menon, Art Prof Teaching Assistant

Deepti Menon is an independent filmmaker, an animator, and a Teaching Assistant at Art Prof. She has worked with Nickelodeon’s international on-air promotional team as a motion graphic artist. Recently, her independent work has been shown in North America and is scheduled to be shown in India this fall. Listen to one of Deepti’s critiques here.

Leyla Faye is a Painting major at the Rhode Island School of Design. She works primarily in oil paint, but is also a printmaker with expertise in monotype, mezzotint and drypoint. Her cartooned and distorted figures are used as motifs which are composed into surreal patterns. Leyla has been a Teaching Assistant for RISD Project Open Door, the RISD Pre-College program, and RISD Freshman Drawing. Recently, Leyla studied abroad in Rome and was awarded the 2016 Gamblin Paint Award. Listen to one of Leyla’s critiques here.

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages to learn visual arts in a vibrant art community. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Stay tuned for our future launch.

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Published on October 16, 2016 20:39

October Art Dare: Choosing an Idea

by Clara Lieu

Watch the videos above for how to get started brainstorming and sketching our your idea for our October Art Dare: “Your Future Self.” A mind map and sketches count as submissions!

The third video demonstrates how to explore a second idea, and talks about how to choose the idea for your final drawing. Selecting your idea is sometimes glaringly obvious, and other times it feels impossible. In these videos, I discuss choosing between the idea of living alone in the future, and developing arthritis in the future. The image I sketched of living alone had to do with the idea of eating meals by myself at my dining room table at home. I was interested in the arthritis idea because many years ago when I had DeQuervain’s Tenosynovitis and had to see a hand surgeon, he told me that he was almost certain that I would eventually develop arthritis after looking at my hands.

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After thoroughly sketching out both ideas, I decided to go with the arthritis idea. This was interesting because I was sure as I sketched the living alone idea that that would be the idea I would use for my final drawing. Good proof that it’s always worth taking the time to develop more than one idea for a drawing.

To figure out which idea to use, I went back and looked at the thumbnails I sketched out for the living alone idea. (see above) I decided that the images I had sketched out were far too obvious. I felt that the images didn’t leave much to the viewer to interpret, and the scene I sketched out seem too ordinary and literal. I chose the arthritis idea because I liked the specificity of the idea. The idea wasn’t just the development arthritis, it was also about my fear of not being able to draw some day because of some kind of physical ailment. I liked the idea of demonstrating the effects of arthritis on me by showing how my drawing style would change. The concept seemed a lot less obvious and was a more unusual depiction than the living alone idea.

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Create your own mind map/thumbnail sketches in response to “Your Future Self”, and it counts as a submission for this month’s Art Dare! More videos to guide you through every step of this Art Dare are coming. We hope you’ll follow along and complete this month’s Art Dare with us.

Submit your brainstorming/thumbnail sketches on Instagram using #artprofdare and tag us @art.prof! If you don’t have Instagram, you can post your image on our Facebook page. Get more info on the October Art Dare/prizes/tips here.

Mind map of “Your Future Self” by @humaneyefloater

Mind map of “Your Future Self” by @ellymeeks

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts which provides equal access to high quality art education for people of all ages and means. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Get info on our future launch by subscribing to our email list.

View more on Clara Lieu's website »

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Published on October 14, 2016 11:17

October Art Dare: From Brainstorming to Thumbnail Sketches

by Clara Lieu

Follow the videos above for how to get started brainstorming and sketching our your idea for our October Art Dare: “Your Future Self.”

Many of my students have told me in the past that they want to be able to develop artworks that have beefier subjects, express a specific opinion, or portray a narrative. Students are always asking me “How do I get my ideas?” While technique is a significant part of creating art,ultimately, it’s the ideas behind the artwork that really matter. Learning how to think about you artwork is a critical part of being an artist I find is frequently not addressed. This month’s Art Dare is a terrific opportunity to stretch your artistic thinking muscles and push your artwork beyond just your drawing technique.

Mind map of “Your Future Self” by @jademagpie

The prompt “Your Future Self” is very open to interpretation, and therefore challenges you to think about your subject matter and creating original imagery. In many ways, open ended prompts can be more difficult because there’s so much to choose from. In the above videos, I demonstrate how to pour your ideas on paper and then whittle them down to more focused sketches. I discuss how to transition from the brainstorming process to drawing thumbnail sketches to prepare the compositions for the final drawing.

Final Drawing of “Your Future Self” by @ashleighroserob

Create your own mind map/thumbnail sketches in response to “Your Future Self”, and it counts as a submission for this month’s Art Dare! More videos to guide you through every step of this Art Dare are coming. We hope you’ll follow along and complete this month’s Art Dare with us.

Submit your brainstorming/thumbnail sketches on Instagram using #artprofdare and tag us @art.prof! If you don’t have Instagram, you can post your image on our Facebook page. Get more info on the October Art Dare/prizes/tips here.

Final Drawing of “Your Future Self” by @michaelbuesking

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts which provides equal access to high quality art education for people of all ages and means. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Get info on our future launch by subscribing to our email list.

View more on Clara Lieu's website »

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Published on October 12, 2016 06:21

October Art Dare: Brainstorming Submissions

Follow the video above for how to get started brainstorming an idea for our October Art Dare: “Your Future Self.” Create your own mind map in response to “Your Future Self”, and it counts as a submission! This simple and quick brainstorming exercise is a terrific way to jump start any creative endeavor. More videos to guide you through this Art Dare are coming! We hope you’ll follow along and complete this month’s Art Dare with us.

Submit on Instagram using #artprofdare and tag us @art.prof. If you don’t have Instagram, you can post your image on our Facebook page. Get more info on the October Art Dare/prizes/tips here.

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts which provides equal access to high quality art education for people of all ages and means. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Get info on our future launch by subscribing to our email list.

View more on Clara Lieu's website »

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Published on October 10, 2016 19:45

Crit Quad #2: Watercolor Figure Painting

Crit Quad of a watercolor figure painting by Nitya. Art critiques by Prof Clara Lieu and Art Prof Teaching Assistants Alex Rowe, Deepti Menon, and Yves-Olivier Mandereau.

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts which provides equal access to high quality art education for people of all ages and means. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Get info on our future launch by subscribing to our email list.

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Published on October 09, 2016 05:59

Ask the Art Prof: When and How Should You use Photo References to Draw?

Newly updated version of this popular Ask the Art Prof column!

by Clara Lieu

“When and how you should use photo references to draw?”

Too often I find that people use photo references out of laziness. Be careful that if you decide to work with photo references, that it’s for a very specific need, not because of convenience. Photographs should only be used when direct observation of a subject is absolutely impossible. If you’re an illustrator and you’re creating a illustration about dinosaurs, obviously that’s not an image you can draw from life. However, there are many subjects where it’s very possible, and in some cases very easy. For a still life drawing, get the actual objects and set them so you can directly observe them from life. I’ve literally seen students search for a photo of an apple online so that they can draw an apple. Is it really that hard to buy an apple to draw from life?!?

If you are drawing a self-portrait, it’s easy enough to get a mirror and draw from that. The 15 minutes it takes to figure out how to set up your mirror and drawing board to draw a self-portrait are seriously worth the time. Anything that you can possibly observe from life should be done in this way. Nothing can substitute experiencing a subject in real life: being able to touch it, smell it, walk around it, inspect it, experience it, etc. Staunchly set direct observation as your number one priority whenever possible.

Illustrator James Gurney

I’ve also seen many professional artists work with a variety of other references that are just as effective, if not more so, than photo references. Artist James Gurney fabricates sculptures of dinosaurs for his paintings. After sculpting the dinosaur in clay, he paints the sculpture and then draws from the sculpture as his reference. You can watch him go through this process in this terrific video below. It goes to show that photographs are not the only option, and that other methods can provide a level of depth and understanding of a subject that photographs are incapable of providing.

Artist James Gurney on how he paints dinosaurs by sculpting clay models.

My RISD colleague and former professor Andrew Raftery painstakingly creates complex 3D models of interior spaces and using wood and wax figures as references for his incredible engravings.

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You can visibly see in this side-by-side comparison of Raftery’s 3D model and finished engraving how critical the creation of the 3D model is in constructing the interior scene. The lighting and spatial relationships are literally re-created in the 3D model and are thus incredibly convincing in the completed engraving.

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If you’ve decided that photographs are indeed the only option for your drawing, the next stage is to do everything in your power to shoot the photographs yourself. If that means taking a trip to the zoo to take photographs of the gorillas, then do it. I know it’s very tempting and easy to go on Google Images and simply pull a photograph off the Internet. However, when you use someone else’s photograph, your drawing will be vastly limited. You won’t be able to control the point of view, you can’t zoom in to get more details, and most likely the resolution of the photograph will be poor. Take the initiative to go to your subject and photograph it from every point of view. Shoot close up shots of specific areas so that you have all of the information you need.

The only time I would advocate using someone else’s photograph as a reference is if there is absolutely, one hundred percent, no other way to get the visual information you need. For example, if you are doing an illustration of an elephant, and you need details of the wrinkles in the skin, that’s a circumstance where you’ll need to use someone else’s photograph. In general though, someone else’s photograph should be the last resort in terms of references.

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When you do get to the point where you are working from a photograph, think about it as a process of gathering raw information which you then edit and manipulate. There is nothing artistic or creative about copying a photograph verbatim. If that is your intent, you might as well xerox the photograph and be done with it. I

Instead, take the raw information from the photograph and process it and shift it. change that raw information into something new and engaging. Be highly selective about what visual information you choose to use. Just because something is in the photograph, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to use it in your drawing. Think about yourself as an editor, where you get to choose from a vast buffet of visual information. Comb through all of the visual information in the photograph and use only what is going to help facilitate your drawing in a positive manner. I also find that it’s very helpful to work from multiple photographs, so that you are not so reliant on a single photograph for all of your information. You can take visual portions from each reference photo and mix them together according to your needs.

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Drawings that use photo references successfully always look better than the photo reference. If the reference photo is more engaging than the drawing, then it means that the drawing hasn’t done anything to fully manipulate beyond just copying the reference photo.

In the above image, you can see that the drawing at the figure gripping it’s face has very aggressive charcoal marks that are not apparent in the reference photo. The reference photo looks static, flat, and posed. The drawing took major liberties with the charcoal marks and therefore is much more full of action and tension.

In the image below, you can see the student’s reference photos that he shot at the bottom. The reference photos provide raw information, but the two drawings are far more interesting than the reference photos. The reference photos have very flat, boring black backgrounds and the facial expressions are not very dynamic. In the final drawings, the student greatly manipulated and distorted the facial expressions to make them much more dramatic and exaggerated.

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It’s extremely difficult to use a photographic reference well, very few people do it successfully. In my drawing classes at RISD, I spend half the course giving assignments that must be done from direct observation the entire time. In the second half of the course, I open up references so that students can work from a variety of visual references: imagination, from photos they shot for the specific drawing, from photos online. When I switch over to open references in my courses, the reaction of pretty much all the students is: “Thank goodness, this is going to be so much easier now that I don’t have to draw from life and I can work from photos!”

Actually, the complete opposite happens: students realize after the first critique that creating excellent reference photos is an art in itself. I critique their photo references: we talk about their light source, choice of location, their choice of models, what their models are wearing, the posing of the models-the works. So many problems emerge in the reference photos: tons of factors distract in the reference photo, the set up looks fake, etc. Making the transition from the reference photo to the drawing presents its own unique set of challenges which is not nearly as straightforward as many people initially think. Personally, I find drawing from a reference photo much more difficult than drawing from life, because the temptation to simply copy the photo is always there. When you draw from observation, you have to visually interpret and innovate.

I firmly believe that the only way to truly learn how to draw from a photograph well is to establish a solid understanding of fundamentals in drawing with years and years of experience drawing from direct observation. Once you have solid skills drawing from direct observation, these skills will allow you to draw from a photograph successfully. This article talks about how direct observation will provide the basic foundation to be able to work from any visual references successfully.

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts which provides equal access to high quality art education for people of all ages and means. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Get info on our future launch by subscribing to our email list.

Ask the Art Prof Live was a weekly live video broadcast on my Facebook page where I provided professional advice for art students and professional artists. Ask the Art Prof began as a written column in 2013 and was featured in the Huffington Post from 2013-2015. See the full archive of columns here. I discussed being an artist today, art technique & materials, work strategies for artists, career advice, teaching art, and more.

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Published on October 07, 2016 05:56

New Equipment, Brainstorming, and Learning Together

by Clara Lieu

This past weekend, I got together with Art Prof Teaching Assistants Casey Roonan, Deepti Menon, and Lauryn Welch for an intensive weekend of shooting video, brainstorming, and preparation for the upcoming Art Prof site launch. Thanks to our Kickstarter campaign, we have been able to purchase essential lighting and sound equipment, and most importantly-a new laptop for me which operates at the speed of light compared to my old laptop which had the functionality of a brick. This equipment has probably quadrupled our productivity level in terms of shooting high quality video footage.

Although we have been working on Art Prof for two full years now, it’s incredible the way the project keeps growing and progressing. This past weekend, we learned so much about what we are capable of with this new equipment. While we’re far from a Hollywood movie production, we were really pleased with the quality and quantity of video footage we were able to produce in a short period of time. We shot intro videos for various sections of the new website, Crit Quads, and clips for our upcoming site launch preview video.

The first budget that Tom and I put together over a year ago was $35,000 a month. At that point we had a very, very different vision of what we needed to produce the content-this included staff like a professional cameraman and editor, etc. Now that my Premiere skills are half decent, and with my husband Alex Hart on hand for technical support on set, we’ve learned that on the contrary, we can be very self sufficient with producing the videos-priceless.

We don’t have exact numbers yet, but a super rough estimate is that we will likely be able to produce Art Prof for a fraction of that $35,000 per month that we initially projected, which is huge in terms of keeping Art Prof free. That’s still a bare bones budget that is far from cushy, and we will still have to cut corners in many places, but what that means is that it’s looking really likely that Art Prof will be able to be free much longer than we initially thought.

We brainstormed like crazy all weekend, it was a rare opportunity for a group of us to get together in person and discuss future events, our site launch, and ideas for future content. Most of the time, our communication between our staff is largely online, and it’s incredible how much faster and efficient things go when you can work together in person.

Shooting in a group is terrific, you can bounce ideas off each other in between takes, get feedback, and come up with spontaneous improvements that we could never have anticipated in advance. Most of the time, many of us shoot videos by ourselves, and we had so much fun this weekend working together. And boy, did we do our share of uncontrollable laughing on set. (keep an eye out for a Casey blooper reel in the near future!)

In other news, our September Art Dare was an incredible success! We had 56 submissions from artists, and 4 art teachers who assigned the Art Dare to one of their classes. Many artists followed my charcoal drawing tutorial and posted their works in progress as they developed their drawings. We are thrilled with this outcome, check out our October Art Dare! We would love to see you participate.

For those of you in the Boston area, we are hosting a free portfolio review event in Concord, MA on Sunday, Oct. 23 from 12-4pm. Artists who attend will receive several 15 minute, one-on-one portfolio reviews with our staff. Many artists tell me how difficult it is to find trusted, professional feedback on their artwork, so consider joining us! This event is free, but advance registration is required to be guaranteed a spot. More info here.

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ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages to learn visual arts in a vibrant art community. Imagine all of the resources here on our blog, except exponentially bigger, in greater quantity, and in more detail. Our Kickstarter campaign hit its $30k goal on July 19! Get info on our future launch by subscribing to our email list.

View more on Clara Lieu's website »

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Published on October 03, 2016 20:48

New Equipment, Brainstorming, and Learning