Pencil Portrait of Parents/Grandparents

I finished the commission for Nancy tonight! Just in time for Christmas! In fact a few days early.  It took me nine working days and about 17 hours to complete (I kept track for the first time).  This is the second piece Nancy has commissioned from me.  Last year for Christmas I drew her daughters.  This year she asked me to draw her parents. She sent me four different pictures in the mail, with requests that her mother's glasses be clear, and perhaps take off a few wrinkles. 

I did my best to compose a good picture from the ones she gave me, doing a little editing on the computer using Gimp. I, however, did not want her mother to be as washed out as she is in the picture I ended up using for the composition.  Flash is such a nasty thing and doesn't make for great portraits - drawn or not!  So, I used the other pictures to help me fill in the blanks some.  I hope her mom looks like her mother.  I think her dad turned out excellent though! 

But, what do you think?  Do you think I did a good job?

Victor Martinez - Peruvian Watercolor Artist

Victor Martinez

            What inspires an artist?  Why does he devote his work to a certain subject matter, depicted in a certain style?  Often these questions rise first and foremost to an art viewer’s mind.  For Peruvian watercolor artist Victor Martinez, his inspiration comes from the native Andean people of Peru, his home country.  He loves how they are still attached to nature and have resisted cultural influences.  As he says, they are “people who unintentionally resist being absorbed by the huge process of civilization and who fully exercise their humanity. That is what I try to convey in my work: their simplicity, their direct contact with nature, the peculiar clothes, attractive and full of color, of women whose faces still show candor and joy.”  He realistically and sensitively paints these Andean people and their landscapes and seascapes.

            Victor Martinez was born in 1932 and grew up in Arequipa, Peru and learned about art at a very young age from his artistic father, Victor Martínez Málaga, creator and founder of the Carlos Bacaflor School of Art of Arequipa, Peru.  His father was an oil painter and taught Victor in his realistic, traditional style, always teaching him what an artist’s work is.  He adopted his father’s dream of a loyal and academic road to truth and reality in art.

            Victor Martinez began his formal education at the Regional School of Fine Arts, and then moved to Lima, Peru, where he took advanced courses at the National School of Fine Arts.  Following his formal education however, he dedicated his time to graphic design and illustration until 1987, at the age of 55, when he returned to his first love, fine art.  Annual trips to California continued to advance his career.  He eventually permanently moved to the United States in 1998.  He currently lives and resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, traveling each year to different parts of North and South America with his wife Gladys, who he’s been married to for thirty-seven years.

Victor Martinez is a self-taught watercolor artist.  He paints solely with Winsor and Newton watercolors, which he believes has a wider range of higher concentrated pigments, and he does not paint with white.  He paints on unstretched Arches Cold Press paper in at least 300 pound weight with Princeton and Richeson brand brushes.  He paints standing up, with his easel at a 90-degree angle, and tries to complete his paintings in one session.  He paints in a very systematic way, always working in the same pattern of first doing a detailed drawing, then doing the background, painting the face, the costume, and finishes with the hands and feet.  He uses photographic reference materials that he takes on his yearly trips to Peru to make his paintings.  He also employs the use of mirrors, to see his work inverted, and a hair dryer to speed up the drying process.

He paints in a realistic manner because that is what he was taught since he was young.  Even with the different trends of modern art movements, he never tried to vary the way he expressed himself.  He paints that which attracts him: images showing man deprived from superfluous appearances, man in his daily work, living his life as he must live it, exercising his reason to be alive.  He also paints the place in which that man lives.  He finds that there is still yet something that he has not yet painted.  He believes he is generating a body of work that for many reasons he had postponed, but feels great satisfaction to what he does, and that it constitutes his reason for living.

His high artistic quality, subject matter, and medium have made him internationally renowned.  His paintings have been shown in numerous museums and are part of private collections in North and South America, as well as Europe.  His watercolors have earned him professional national awards in the United States, including the “Best of Show” at the 20^th anniversary international exhibition of the San Diego Watercolor Society in 2000, as well as the most prestigious award in his hometown, El Diploma de la Ciudad de Arequipa a la Labor Artística.  His works have also been featured in popular art magazines such as New Art International (Jan 1998), International Artist Magazine (June/July 1999), Watercolor Magazine (Fall 1999), Splash 6 (Jan 2000), Southwest Art Magazine (April 2000), Artist’s Magazine (December 2000, February 2006), American Artist Magazine (October 2004), and Watercolor Magic Magazine (June 2006).  He is also in major collections including the Banco del Sur in Peru, and is collected by several Mobil Oil executives and a United States ambassador to Peru.

As well as painting, he also teaches private watercolor lessons from his studio in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He has made some videos and often talks about and shares his watercolor techniques with others.  He feels a great satisfaction when others gain an appreciation for watercolors. 

While some artist’s inspiration and reasoning behind their works remain a mystery, Victor Martinez’s art is easy to see and appreciate.  He says that to him, “capturing people and their environment in watercolor paintings is an irresistible challenge. Each time I pick up the brush I'm faced with a new adventure, and that's what provides the satisfaction that inspires me to keep on painting.”  It is great that he keeps on painting these masterpieces for everyone to enjoy.

Bibliography

www.victormartinez.com

http://www.winsornewton.com/community/featured-artists/victor-martinez

http://www.allbusiness.com/services/museums-art-galleries-botanical-zoological/4354778-1.html

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/article/Victor-Martinez-Faces-From-Afar/

http://www.imcm.org/view.asp?ID=24&page=artistmain

Mary Henderson - Mirror, Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self.

Note from the author: I wrote this in college for an advanced art history course.  I have cited my references and hope you will always do the same.  Copyright infringement is NOT good.  If you click on the images it will take you to the website I took them from.  Also, please do not use this as your own paper.  Cheating is NOT good. Thank you.

November 19, 2009

Mary Henderson

by Katelyn Fagan

            Currently in Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art is the exhibit Mirror, Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self.  It deals with modern portraiture and self identity in the world today.  It features a broad range of mediums and artists, one of them being Mary Henderson.   Her works are small oil paintings of digital images she finds on photo sharing websites that she crops and edits.  She paints them in a manner of historical painting and portraiture, like those of Ingres and David, but the figures are more modest, casual, and contemporary.  They are ordinary people. 

            History is experienced today (in the digital age) through digital sources and images, increasingly blurring private and public experiences.  We see digital images on websites of foreign countries and their wars, while at the same time can find digital images and information from these same countries on public sharing websites, like blogs, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, and Twitter, though from its ordinary citizens.  Mary Henderson became especially intrigued in this paradigm when her brother was serving as a Commander in the U.S. Navy in Iraq from February to August 2007.  She would search these public websites for pictures and news about her brother.  She really liked how ordinary people, like her brother, find themselves caught up in our current historical moment (the Iraq War).   She became fascinated with pictures depicting soldiers in uniform but not in combat settings.  She loved the different emotions and expressions you could see on their faces, from boredom to bravado and fear.  She likes to focus on the inward and profound experiences of individuals.

          Henderson’s work is photorealistic and her paintings are not very large.  She merges photographic qualities and historical painting qualities together to make a commentary on how we are experiencing history today.  She often depicts soldiers and military personnel, though not in combat settings.  Other works are often young adults at sporting events or people doing common everyday things.  The merging of styles draws you into her paintings; because you feel like you’ve seen these images before, multiple times, yet here they are in a gallery, hung up on the wall.  You can almost replace the faces of the people portrayed with people you know, or at least can image others in their place.  Often the people are smiling or showing a definite emotion on their face.  It humanizes them, makes them ordinary and common, like the viewer in the gallery.  By painting these images, she makes them more public, permanent, and aesthetically pertinent. 

            Henderson has created a unique new form of portraiture in the art world.  With her realism harking back decades, she adds an added dimension by capturing ordinary individuals, found in images off the Internet.  It adds historical value to simple things people are doing every day, living their lives, and how they are using media to share it with others.  With everything becoming more and more digital, it makes you wonder what physical evidence will be left behind for future generations of individuals, communities, and nations. What would happen if a person’s computer crashed, the Internet would stop working, or a website was deleted?  Would there be enough evidence left behind to prove a person lived, what they did, and what they looked like?  Also, it puts into question identity and privacy.  With images and information readily available on the internet on almost any individual, where is the sense of privacy?  Are a person and their experiences really unique?    Henderson has created a dialogue about these questions with her pieces and has done so in a very aesthetically pleasing and artistic way.

Portrait Commission Drawing for Nancy

This last summer I had the fun opportunity of teaching bookbinding to my mother-in-law Susan and her friend Nancy (see this post). During the summer Nancy also asked me to draw a picture for her of daughters. I was excited to be given this opportunity and sell my first work of art! I did not get a chance to finish the drawing over the summer due to young twins and moving, but I did finish it right before the Holidays, right after I finished my classwork.

The day we headed down to my in-laws for Christmas, I finished the drawing, and it came out beautifully. Seriously, it looked good. I cleaned up the border, signed it, and laid it outside on the dry patch of our patio and sprayed it with fixative. I left it outside for five minutes to set and deodorize outside.

However, shortly after leaving it there, Josh, my husband, screamed "There's a dog in our backyard!!!" And sure enough, an ugly collar-less dog was in our backyard/patio, stepping on my completed (15+ hours) and beautiful drawing. We shewed him away as fast as we could, grabbed the drawing and I immediately began cleaning up what I could.... but, there is a permanent paw print/scratch on the right side of the drawing. We were angry, we were sad. What are the chances of this happening? I should have listened to Josh when he suggested that I spray the fixative while he held it outside. He was worried some snow would drop off the roof onto it or something, but I was sure it would be fine. It wasn't snow that happened upon it, but a dog, a dog we've never seen before and never will see again. Why he had to enter into our fenced-in patio area and came up to our glass sliding door and stepped on my drawing, we don't know, other than God has a sense of humor and wants to ensure that we are sufficiently humble...
But, in all honesty, it's pretty funny. Of course a dog came and stepped on my drawing in the five minutes it was outside the day it was "due." Of course there was like no chance of that happening but it did. But, Nancy was generous and willing to overlook the mark, thankfully. I told her I could redraw it for her, or another picture for the price she paid. Fortunately if she mats the drawing where I have the border, most of the mark will be unseen. Nancy loved the drawing of her daughters and was SO excited to see it and be able to give it to her husband for Christmas.

Nancy gave me a 4"x6" colored photograph, and then I scanned it, made it black and white, and began my drawing. I lightly made a grid on my paper and a grid over a printed version of the photo. The final piece is drawn on an 11"x15"sheet of Pescia white paper, with the image being approx. 10"x6 3/4."

Here's the scanned B&W version, and a scanned copy of the drawing:
What do you think? Is it any good? What could I have done better? Any questions/comments?