Caravaggio: Creative Minds Art History Project

Hello all!

I took a break from teaching my Creative Minds class with my Express Yourself Artshop crew over the summer since we had a bunch of other specialized activities going on, but am excited to be back! We started our new semester with a classic artist from the past, Michelangelo Merisi da Carravagio. Entertaining the masses through stories of epic violence before there were action movies, many of Carravagio’s paintings centered around religious and mythic themes and involved a lot of beheadings … Allegedly he also had to move around a lot to avoid getting his door knocked down due to a habit of “excessive brawling” – Life imitates art.

220px-salome_with_the_head_of_john_the_baptist-caravaggio_28161029

1200px-caravaggio_-_david_with_the_head_of_goliath_-_vienna

Though he also did the traditional commissions and practice of portraits, still life, etc., these intense and poignant scenes are what he became most well known for. One particular commission completed around the year 1597 for Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, the Medici family’s agent in Rome, is what we drew inspiration from for our project. This ceremonial shield was painted with an image of Medusa just as she has been tricked into looking into a mirror, thus freezing and leaving herself open to guess what, another beheading! Students each picked a character from Greek Mythology to study images from, and drew from this to create their own image, blood and guts optional ;).

To achieve the atmosphere of strong shadows characteristic of Caravaggio’s work, we used black drawing paper as a base. Pastels show up bold and opaque on top of black, as do colored pencils if they are oil or wax based like Prismacolor colored pencils. This choice of black paper had a dual purpose; not only did it help us pay homage to Caravaggio’s high contrast style but it was a mental challenge in that students had to think about the process of shading in reverse. They had to think differently than with traditional drawing on white paper, adding shading with their colors to lighten an area and leaving spaces alone or coloring more lightly with their materials to “darken” them.

As always, feel free to share, steal, or try this at home for fun! Keep checking back as I will be posting more projects soon!

New Work

New Progress On My Current Series!

august-she-is-an-earthshaker-blgr

Hello all! I recently finished another addition to my 12 part series I’ve been working on since late 2015. For new readers, here’s my blurb briefly explaining the series (If you are already in the know, feel free to skip ahead 😉 ): I am creating 12 mixed media, surreal, conceptual portraits in which the meaning is influenced by the use of pattern and color. They will depict women of all ages, races, and time periods, and each will communicate a different theme. I aim for the pieces to speak to women’s collective experiences beyond their differences. Each of the 12 will represent a month of the year. We tend to think of time and events in terms of our own personal history or the history of the nation in which we reside. But of course, there are women everywhere living out their day to day life all over the world, with hopes, dreams, fears , relationships. Our situations and struggles are very different, but were we in some alternate reality all given a chance to meet, I suspect we would find some surprising similarities, maybe more than we ever expected. The title of each piece starts with the month it represents, followed by “She Is _______”.

This piece is titled July: She Is An Earthshaker. I love mermaids, and really got into aquatic art after following the required theme for the Tall Ships curated exhibition at Studio 23 last summer. This was a fun piece to create, and perhaps my favorite in the series thus far. As a child I don’t know how many times I watched The Little Mermaid, and was absolutely transfixed by King Tritan’s trident (Which of course I later learned came from the myth of Poseidon). I became inspired to make a powerful Lady Poseidon if you will. Earthshaker is another way Poseidon has been referenced, but the name can also apply to those of us in the real world, ordinary people who create waves to change what needs to be changed. She wears a pretty seashell and floral crown, and her facial expression is not one of anger or even one that would imply intense power. Her strength is a quiet strength. If in her head, she can see herself like this, the waves and lightening crashing behind her as she stands firm, perhaps she can believe that she can do anything even if others may doubt her.

img_20170226_161143_661

This design is available for print on a variety of cool items in my Redbubble Shop, and art prints on matte photo paper may also be purchased from me Ebay Store.