Hello 

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you wonderful artists....love you and all your art!

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of critiquing the works by artists from the Color Pencil Society of America, Chicago Chapter 103. It was amazing what these artists could draw with pencil and the art they created. makes me really want to start sketching more with watercolor pencil.

This morning I head to Grant Community High School to teach teens in an AP Art class how to work in watercolor. I love teaching young adults to paint with watercolor, they catch on so fast to this medium.

Come March 4th and 5th many of my students and myself included will be showing our work at The Show-IN being held in McHenry IL. More INFORMATION HERE

Happy Valentine's Day

David

Yes to Class at the Civic Center in Libertyville on February 16th
Yes to Class  at The Studio in McHenry on February 18th

Yes to Class February 20th at the Rivellino School of Art in Long Grove. If you are interested let the Rivellino School of Art or myself know you would like to attend.

Last Sunday while critiquing many drawings from the Colored Pencil Society of America, I came to realize that I needed to talk to my students about how to use photographs to paint from.

Many beginners and many that are self-taught tend to think that the way to becoming good at painting is to be able to copy what they see in a photograph. Some even try to make it look exactly like the photograph. Now if the photograph looks good and has a nice feeling to it and you paint it to look exactly like that photo you will probably have a nice painting that looks just like a photograph, however, if you use a bad photograph and you copy it you will probably end up with a bad painting, which is what many beginners do. Try thinking of your photo as a starting point and that you are going to make it look better than the photo and in your medium.

I tend to like paintings that have a different kind of style to them and don't look exactly like a photograph.
I never like it when someone comes up to me that isn't an artist and tells me how much my paintings look like a photo. I feel I missed it if my painting looks like a photo....I want my paintings to look like a well-painted painting.

I teach my students to use the photo for reference and not just to copy it inch by inch along with trying to match the colors on the photo. I try to teach students to use a photo as reference material that they can use to paint from but I try to get them to paint it using and thinking in their particular medium.

The images below are of a painting Joseph Zbukvic did from a photo and I believe it shows exactly what I mean when I talk about use the photo for reference but then make it in your own styles and create a work of art from that photo instead of copying it. 

Here is a photo that Joseph used to paint from to create the painting below. See how the photo is just used for reference and how the painting looks so much like a beautiful work of art.