Done!

I finished my painting.

Well... I finished painting my painting. Really what that means is that I finished putting paint on the board, and now I have to wait for it to dry before I can glaze it and really call it done. Even then, I have about another six months to wait before its second and final coat of glaze but that's a different story.

I finished my first painting!!!

How did I know it was done? There was nothing else I wanted to do to it. I sat back and just stared.

The first thing I did was text my dad. After congratulating me and digitally celebrating with me he said, "celebrate it with a nice French pastry. :)"

So I did :)

I seriously thought I was about to cry, how silly is that. I think I've put in 60-70 hours on this painting, maybe more I stopped counting a long time ago. I'm sure a year from now I'll be able to pick it apart, but right now, right this moment, I am happy beyond belief.

I finished my first painting.

Love \\ Christelle

Why Do We Care About Art

Albert Elsen, a now deceased professor of art at Stanford University, published an article in the Hastings Law Journal about the preservation of art and the governmental and cultural obligation society has to art. He says that preserving the art of the past is essential to knowledge and wisdom. That as in China and Israel, an artistic heritage is a country's identity card for the present and passport for the future.

Albert E. Elsen, professor of art at Stanford University for 27 years and an international authority on the history of modern sculpture

As to the lone artist that's not really what he's set out to do. He doesn't necessarily care that his artwork has become part of his nation's heritage. It is either his livelihood or his passion. That artist, however, is influenced by the culture that surrounds him, so simply by association, his art becomes part of that nations' heritage.

In tandem with an artists' intentions, the idea that art is a medium of self-expression is a relatively new one. Until the 19th century, art was generally valued for the skill of the artist or the miracle of his hand. Even Michelangelo, who was fiercely proud of his individuality, did not think of his art as self-expression.

Artists were generally commissioned to do paintings, in part because paints and canvases were far too expensive for an artist to purchase, and therefore established an academic system that would produce excellent work.

Recently, however, modernists have changed the experience of art, and acquired styles that interpret personal experience rather than the experience of others. The philosophy of art is one to be debated by scholars, but Picasso, who is just as famous if not more than Michelangelo saw his art as a diary.

Pablo Picasso

Both views lend themselves to that nation's cultural heritage simply because it captures the mentality present during that time period.

What do you think? How do you see art differently than Elsen does? 

Love // Christelle

P.S. The full article is "Why Do We Care About Art" by Albert Elsen published in 1975.

Sacred Gifts and Glazing

My "Cupid and Psyche" got its wings and hair glazed on Saturday. We added a little paint to a homemade medium and painted it on. I'm not sure why we didn't just paint the wings and hair with paint--it's how the masters did it, and it looks cooler. When I'm done painting with paint though, I'll glaze the entire painting with a combination of medium with a little bit of raw umber mixed in. This will tie the painting together and warm up it up. The same technique was employed on the Sistine Chapel, the Mona Lisa, and every other classical academic painting done by the masters. That medium will cure and mix with the paint beneath, and will bring a whole new level of vibrancy... in about 50 years.

This is what I have so far, and I'll be noodling around with it these next two weeks.

While we were talking about glazing, Darin mentioned an interaction he had with a curator at the "Sacred Gifts" exhibition going on FOR ANOTHER WEEK at BYU. For those of you who don't know, the Sacred Gifts exhibition is a collection of religious works by Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofmann, and Frans Schwartz, the majority of which have never before left the castle or vault where they are stored, and will never leave again. 

When BYU borrows a painting for exhibition, they promise to restore the painting. In the case of Heinrich Hoffman's, "Christ and the Rich Young Ruler" the painting was restored by an art restorer in California. Now remember that when a classical painting is finished, it'll be glazed over with medium and a little bit of paint--usually raw umber oil paint. In this case, the restorer used some kind of red to glaze over the entire painting. Doing so subdued the details of the creases in Christ's red top. So now if you compare prints with the newly restored painting, you can see a difference in the details of Christ's top! 

Moral of the story, glazing is important, must be done with care, but it's awesome, and will make my painting look way cooler after I'm completely done with it.

Love // Christelle

P.S. If you have any questions please leave a comment!

Studio Life

It's windy and cold outside which calls for blogging with hot chocolate in hand. Summer plans have officially become my summer schedule, and that means starting two new paintings even though I haven't finished my first one. My "Cupid and Psyche" are still at Darin's studio. We need to mix me up a new flesh palette since my old one dried out :( and we need to finish glazing the piece. I'll tell you more about glazing as soon as I learn more about it.

My two new paintings are again reproductions. One is Bouguereau and is called "Little Girl" originally painted in 1878. I've been working and noodling through the pencil sketch. Kelly said something profound as I was getting frustrated that she wasn't turning out. He said that you get can away with a little more when you're painting men. Women on the other hand are so often criticized and picked apart that unless they're an image of perfection (assuming that that is the intent) on canvas, they too will be criticized and picked apart. Which is too bad.

My second painting is "The Dream of St. Joseph" by Anton Raphael Mengs. It was painted around 1773, and depicts an angel appearing to Joseph telling him to flee to Egypt because King Herod was killing all the children. I'll be painting it in its original size (about 34x45 inches), so it'll be my most ambitious painting yet.

I feel incredibly blessed to be surrounded by such talented people. Though I love having my own studio, there's something about being surrounded by genuinely good, uplifting artists, united in purpose under one roof. Here are a few scenes from this last Saturday:

Here Darin's shooting Allison for a new painting. She's doing a series of self portraits where she portrays life and death.

Kathy (in red) is a painter in her own right, but Kelly introduced her to Darin, and she's now working on her first painting using this technique. Rosemary (in blue) is doing a Mary and Child painting for her chapel. She's deeply rooted in the Catholic faith, and last year, after appealing to Mary to cure her husband, promised to do a portrait of her for her church. Her husband miraculously recovered, and she's been working on this piece ever since.

And this is me. Taking it all in.

Love // Christelle

Prep Work

Finals are over, and it's finally warm out here in Provo. I made it out to Darin's studio for the first time in about a month. No stress about homework, no stress about tests, I was able to just spend the day up in South Jordan. 

The studio has a sweet woody paint-y smell, and combined with seeing everyone: Kelly, Darin, Kathy, Allison and Nick, I was on cloud nine. It was a fun day. Kelly had invited his friend Johnny B., and his son to come and model. We had some fun posing his son, we learned how to apply the golden mean (one part to 1.618) to light and shadows cast on a person, we learned why a three quarter turned figure looks better captured on camera--the golden mean shows through. The human figure is naturally constructed to be one part to 1.618, but we can accentuate that through various poses. Johnny B. came dressed as a cowboy. His dark skin and thick black scraggly beard combined with his costume gave him that dark mystique western look.

These last two weeks have just been about prepping for the summer, so I've been buying supplies and furniture to set up MY OWN STUDIO. My sweet roommates have given me the okay to use the basement, so I've been to Ikea and Utrecht (an art store) doing a lot of shopping.

Notice Megan's (my roommate and the ultimate BYU fan) BYU poster, left up for inspiration

Ikea is your one stop shop for your ideal room. I found a drafting table, a cheap carpet to protect the floor, an office chair, and I owe David brownies or something for all his furniture building expertise! My studio is all set up.

I bought a TON of supplies at Utrecht in SLC. Paintbrushes, paint, liquin, turpernoid, brush cleaning jars, etc, cost me a pretty penny, but everything was on sale, including the 90 dollar Cadmium Red Light Pure. Brushes are always the most fun to buy. The black brushes are mixed synthetic, and are the Toyota Corollas of brushes. The golden brushes are a little more expensive--they're weighted near the bristles and are made of mongoose hair. I would consider those the Lexuses and Acuras of paintbrushes. Darin told me about painters that paint with $100+ brushes and those are the Ferraris of paintbrushes. I didn't get any of those.

So much paint... Back in the day, they would make paint out of flower petals, cockroaches, dirt, and any paints without the word "hue" next to it is still made the same way. 

On Monday I prepped my canvas board with gesso.

Six coats later...

I've got two new paintings in the works. Stay tuned.

Love // Christelle