Clara Lieu's Blog, page 13
September 26, 2016
Free Art Portfolio Review Event on Oct. 23 in Concord, MA
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.
Can’t make it this time?
To be notified of future events, subscribe to our email list.
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
These events are 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.
Registration for the Oct. 23 event is NOW OPEN!
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.
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 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 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.
September 24, 2016
Art Prof Pinterest: High School and College Level Student Studio Art Projects
by Clara Lieu
Since 2009, I have maintained a crazy gigantic archive of student art projects on my Flickr page. Once I got started documenting all of the student art projects, the perfectionist side of me had to keep going, so it’s incredible how many images I’ve amassed over the years. When you have taught at numerous schools and programs for over a decade, and have had over a thousand students, that makes for tons of student artwork images! Good thing too, because these student artworks have been a priceless resource building all of the content needed for Art Prof. (more soon, but our official site will be launching in a few months!)
My fabulous Teaching Assistants at RISD have spent countless hours photographing student artwork, tweaking all of the photos in Photoshop, and uploading/organizing all of these images student art projects for many years. Without their efforts and time, this archive could never exist!
Seeing that few artists and art teachers are on Flickr, I recently revamped our Pinterest page as a new place for to view my student art projects. (I’ve organized all of the boards on our Pinterest page so that you can browse by level (high school & college) and also by subject matter. Boards have subjects like Linear Perspective, Drawings in Color, Sculpture, Printmaking, Painting, Narrative Drawings, and much more.
I hope our Pinterest page is a valuable resource for both art teachers and art students! I know when I was a student, I learned tremendously from just seeing the artwork that my peers were creating, and seeing the incredible range of unique responses to every assignment. That’s what I find so fascinating about teaching studio art-you could teach the exact same project 35 times, and every single time each student will create their own unique take on the assignment.
Related Videos
Ask the Art Prof Live: Teaching High School Art, Teaching Color
Related Articles
“How do I become an undergraduate art professor?”
“What should I be working on now if I would like to be an art professor?”
“What makes a student artist stand out from their peers?”
“How did you become an art professor?”
“How do I become a teaching assistant?”
“How can I make the transition to teaching art at the college level?”
“Can a math teacher become an art teacher?”
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.
September 20, 2016
An Intersection of Drawing and Sculpture
One of the aspects of being an artist that I really enjoy is the surprises that occur within the creative process that you can never predict. When I started this series of drawings of elderly figures, I never anticipated that these drawings would eventually become so sculptural. I have a lot of experience in figure modeling and casting, but I still consider myself to be largely an artist who works in two-dimensional media. This project is an exception in that I’ve been able to combine sculptural qualities directly into the context of drawing.
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.
September 19, 2016
Fundamental Failing and the Artistic Process
by Annie Irwin
My days making art are made up of a series of problems, which over time, I learn to avoid by trial and error. Or sometimes, I just fall flat on my face.
I find the artistic process to be no different. We learn to avoid problems only by bumping right into them. The uniqueness of any individual artistic process is how we troubleshoot. When I started art school, I was quickly frustrated by my lack of ability to find subjects in life to draw that truly interested me. I lacked control over what I wanted to make. My drawings of shells and plants were the results of as much inspiration as comes from a souvenir bag-o-shells in a coastal town gas station or a plastic houseplant with no context. The hours I spent sitting in front of houses that did and continue to actually inspire me, might well have warranted my arrest for loitering.
Dilemmas happen every day in art making. They are never a bad thing. Creative thinking is a means to work around these dilemmas. Reframing your problem will allow you to approach it with new direction. By shifting perspectives you can flip your problem into a prompt. How can I draw what I have around me to create what I am inspired by conceptually?
While this question lingered, for an assignment in drawing class, I was set on including a sock monkey in my drawing. The catch was, I didn’t have a sock monkey. I had to make it. To be perfectly honest, it was a Frankenstein monster made from paint-dyed socks, yarn and lace from the thrift store, and terrible embroidery. Monster grotesqueness aside, it was my monster, and I could control how the lighting would work, the space, and the context in which my bizarre sock creature could be drawn.
That initial sock monkey was a turning point. The physicality that I could apply in my drawing started before the canvas, and opened all of the doors I had seen as locked. These objects were essential in my artistic growth and contributed to my choice to pursue a degree in the medium of Textiles instead of Painting. My new found practice fueled the concept for countless works, and inspired my entire undergraduate thesis. Today, the monkeys live on and are being sold as artist edition objects in Colorado. The artistic process calls for these moments, to encounter problems, while frustrating, is the most eye-opening thing that can happen. Fail faster, fail better, and troubleshoot!
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.
September 16, 2016
Crit Quickies #25 & #26
Check out Crit Quickie #25, featuring a figurative watercolor and gouache painting by @sxchii. Critique by Teaching Assistant Yves-Olivier Mandereau.
Here’s Crit Quickie #26, featuring a painting with a hand, key, and chain by @coop.y. Critique by Teaching Assistant Lauryn Welch.
Crit Quickies are 1 min. audio critiques on the Art Prof Instagram. Submit! Post your art on Instagram w/ @art.prof, & #critquickie. Watch more Crit Quickies in this playlist on our Youtube channel.
We accept submissions from artists in 8th grade and up. Please know that due the volume of submissions, we are unable to provide a Crit Quickie for everyone who submits. If you’re an art teacher, you’re welcome to submit on behalf of your students!
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.
Protected: Fundamental Failing and the Artistic Process
This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.
September 12, 2016
Crit Quickie #24
Check out Crit Quickie #24, featuring an acrylic painting installed as a ceiling tile by @aliciainunderland. Critique by Teaching Assistant Casey Roonan.
Crit Quickies are 1 min. audio critiques on the Art Prof Instagram. Submit! Post your art on your Instagram w/ @art.prof, & #critquickie. Watch more Crit Quickies in this playlist on our Youtube channel.
We accept submissions from artists in 8th grade and up. If you’re an art teacher, you’re welcome to submit on behalf of your students!
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.
September 11, 2016
Drawing From a New Model
by Clara Lieu
Last week I did a reference photo session with a new model. Up until this point, I had only been working with Sheila, an artist model at RISD who has been a good friend for many years.
I really enjoy working with artist models, there’s an intimacy that occurs with your models that is unique. In general, when I work with models, I never tell them exactly how to pose. I’ll provide some basic ideas about what I want them to do, but I don’t give specifics about how to pose their figure. When I was in graduate school, I had this professor who was really obnoxious about demanding that the model pose precisely the way he wanted. He would tell the model exactly how to orient or position pretty much every part of her body, and the result was always a really stiff pose that looked fake and awkward.
With these drawings, I decided that I would give the models no direction at all. Instead, I ask the model to stand and I talk to them during the photo shoot. I want to capture the individual personalities of each model I work with, and it’s incredible how completely different the experience is with each person.
What was striking about this new model was her extraordinary range of facial expressions. As she talked, I was amazed that she would jump from a perky smile to a haggard, anguished look. She told me all kinds of stories about her life during the photo session, and it was fascinating to watch her face change as her stories covered a wide range of emotions
As I poured through the over 600 reference photos I shot, I was intrigued by the gigantic range of expressions. What was engaging as well, was watching how the skin in her face pulled and stretched according to her facial expression. The folds of skin were extremely dramatic, and I couldn’t wait to dig into some new drawings.
I shoot continuously during these photo sessions, so there is literally only half a second between most of the photos. I found 2 consecutive photos that couldn’t have been more different. The first photo was a very harrowing expression, which seemed tragic and pained. The next photo was a warm, joyful smile. The way she could swing from one extreme emotion to the opposite side of the spectrum so quickly was really engaging to watch.
I had this idea that I would work with these two photos, and layer them on top of the other to demonstrate the way she inhabited two such opposite emotions in such a short span of time. This drawing (below) is the first phase. I’ll create the second drawing, and then create a few thumbnail sketches so I can figure out how to get the two drawings to interact through the layering and tearing of the paper.
Related Articles
A Burst of Artistic Inspiration for the First Time in 2 Years
Anticipating a New Drawing Project
Drawing Again After a Two Year Drought
Drawing Experiments
Teaching Through My Artwork
Drawing Experiments: Layered Drawings
The Tug of Thumbnail Sketches
Related Videos
Drawing Process for these Elderly Drawings
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.
September 10, 2016
September Art Dare Submissions!
By Clara Lieu
We’ve gotten lots of submissions to our September Art Dare on our Instagram! We’ve been very excited to see all of the unique ways that everyone has approached our prompt of drawing a self-portrait from life using charcoal. In many ways, the Art Dare is a virtual version of what I do in my classes at RISD, where everyone is asked to respond to the same prompt. That’s one of my favorite aspects of being in a class-you get to see all of the diverse creative solutions created by several people. Many of my students have told me that they learn just as much from seeing each other’s work, as they do from me.
One part of the Art Dare that has been really fun to watch is everyone’s works in progress. Below you can see Lucy Springall’s progress on her self-portrait. Lucy has been following my charcoal drawing tutorial on the Art Prof Youtube channel. She did a terrific job making thumbnail sketches to plan out her composition, (below photo, upper left) and implementing cross-hatching marks in with an eraser stick and charcoal pencil.
Remember, you get brownie points for using the techniques in our charcoal drawing tutorial! If you tag your Art Dare with #artprofwip, Prof Clara Lieu just might stop by and provide some feedback! More info on Art Dare guidelines/prizes/tips are here.
For fun, I decided that I would do the Art Dare myself! I drew and painted a ridiculous number of self-portraits as an undergraduate student at RISD, largely because I only wanted to work from life and I was the most convenient subject. The last time I did an assignment, or drew a self-portrait was back in 1998. Of course, so much has happened since then, and I was curious to know how I would respond to this prompt.
I think for many people self-portraits are a tough subject. The process of creating a self-portrait demands that you look at yourself for an unusually long period of time. This deep observation of your own physical features also tends to prompt thinking about identity.
I figure out a lot of my ideas when I’m running on the treadmill, and this drawing was no exception. My thoughts meandered for a while, and for the first few concepts tended to revert back to themes I had worked with in my last studio project, Falling. Most of my projects take 2-4 years to create, so it felt strange to brainstorm what I knew would be a stand alone piece that wouldn’t be seen in the context of a large body of work. I needed an idea that was simple enough to be contained in a single artwork, but that also had enough depth that there would be plenty to explore.
My thumbnail sketches
I settled on the idea that in recent years, my life has felt very fragmented. Before I became a parent, I always had the luxury of long periods of time to myself, and to work on my artwork. Nowadays, I’m lucky if I get even 2 hours at a time to create artwork, much less think focus. I see my life today as a series of constant interruptions, it’s rare that I will sit down to do a task, and be able to comfortably complete what I set out to do. I fell that I live in a constant state of distraction, making it incredibly difficult to think clearly most of the time.
In my initial thumbnail sketches, I explored compositions which emphasized faces that tilted away from the center of the page, and eyes with pupils that wandered to the side. decided that I would have one face that would make eye contact with the viewer, to represent those rare moments of clarity that I experience. The rest of the faces would be distracted and looking away.
I set up a mirror and sketched myself from life, to make sure that I was using views that would be possible for me to pose for as I few. As I sketched though, I realized that features like the neck and the shoulders weren’t necessary, so I reduced the composition to just facial features so that the eyes would be more prominent. I didn’t want to just sit down and draw myself, because even though our physical appearance is a big part of who we are, it’s certainly not everything. I’m still staying within the prompt, which was to simply draw a self-portrait from life in charcoal. I’ve heard many people complain that drawing from life is to limited, and that there’s “nothing to draw.” I’d like to show in my self-portrait that if you really think about what you want to do and work thoroughly on your thumbnail sketches, the visual possibilities when working from life are endless.
My reference thumbnail for the final drawing
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.
September 3, 2016
Enter the Art Prof September Art Dare!
ENTER the Art Prof September Art Dare!
For artists of all ages
Draw a self-portrait from life using charcoal, then post your drawing on your Instagram w/ #artprofdare & @art.prof. Or, post your image on our Facebook page.
Get major brownie points by using the techniques shown in Prof Clara Lieu’s charcoal drawing tutorial on the Art Prof Youtube. In your text caption, mention what you learned from the tutorial that was helpful.
Post your drawing in progress w/ #artprofwip, and Prof Lieu just might drop by and give you some quick feedback. You’ll also get a chance to be featured on our Instagram!
Submissions close Fri., Sept. 30
Questions? Comment below or Email us.
Winner will receive: an Art Prof T-shirt, Prof Lieu’s book Learn, Create and Teach, Art Prof postcards, and a 30 min. video critique on 8-20 artworks from Prof Lieu. (total value $90)
3 honorable mentions will win an Art Prof T-shirt, and
10 artists will be selected to have their drawings featured here on our blog!
See drawing examples and get tips below!
Click to view slideshow.
Tips
Read this article which contains a materials list for charcoal drawing, and watch Prof Clara Lieu’s charcoal drawing tutorial on the Art Prof Youtube, which is packed with smart strategies for drawing with charcoal. Check out all the related articles, videos, and artist recommendations below, all of these resources will enrich your experience!
Don’t cheat and draw from a photo. (Prof Lieu can tell in a heartbeat) Take the time to draw yourself from a mirror, the results will be worth it. We are not looking for drawings that look like xeroxes of photographs. We want to see how you can create a unique idea through drawing, whether it’s through a narrative, the mood, atmosphere, emotion, etc. through drawing. Consider what kind of visual effects you can create with charcoal that are not possible in a photograph.
Keep in mind that drawing yourself from a mirror is a starting point. Your drawing does not need to be perfectly realistic or have accurate proportions. Get creative and play around with distorting your portrait, try out unusual compositions, experiment with a dramatic drawing style. You could even add surrealistic elements to the portrait to create a dream like atmosphere. Anything is possible!
Special Offer for Art Teachers
Assign this drawing challenge to one of your classes! If a student in your class wins, you’ll receive a class video critique from Prof Lieu. Each student in 1 of your classes will receive a 1 minute critique on an artwork of their choice in this video critique.
Grades 8 and up are eligible to enter.
Class video critique prize is limited to a class of 20 students.
Related Videos & Articles
Charcoal Materials List & Supply Tips
Video: How to Draw a Portrait with Charcoal
Video: Drawing a Portrait in Pencil
Why Drawing from Life is Important
How do You Draw the Human Face?
How Do You Draw Noses?
How Do You Draw Hair?
What Mindset Do You Need to Draw Successfully?
How Do Artists Get Their Soul Into Their Images?
Artists to look at for inspiration
Frank Auerbach, Kathe Kollwitz, Edgar Degas, John Singer Sargent, William Kentridge
Click to view slideshow.
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.
