Actually Painting At The MET!!!
The next day was my fourth class at the MET copying, Sir Thomas Lawrence. I love this class! It’s just as much fun as I thought It would be.
Unfortunately, getting here is such a struggle: the train is late! the Uber is late! the taxi is late! Then, there’s something special going on in NYC! It’s always something! I tried to leave more and more extra time to make it to my class. Sometimes I’m an hour early, sometimes 15 minutes late. It’s frustrating. It would be so much easier if I just lived here.
At first, I didn’t think Joâo Henrique Brandâo, my teacher, from New York Academy of Art was too crazy about my idea of cropping the painting. Lucky me, I love the way it’s turning out, and I think he likes it now, too. During the orientation, they told us we could paint any part of the painting rather than the entire picture.
Joâo suggested that we print out copies of the pictures from the MET website to help us render them accurately. The MET has a fabulous website that anyone can access. My painting is so large, (9′ x 5′) and the subject’s face is so far away from me that I started relying on the photographs. (But my astute professor, Joâo, on one of his visits to check on me noticed my color temperature was off. I was too cool with my colors, apparently more like the photo than the original. An easy fix and one I was happy to do since I like the original painting so much more than the reproduction.
Lots of people stop, watch me paint, and take my picture, but very few talk to me. At first, it made me a little self-conscious, but now I don’t even notice it.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I am learning without even realizing it. It’s sort of like I’m a computer and am getting a direct download when I’m copying. It’s much more organic than I had imagined, so I now want to do this again and again!!
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
1504
Albrecht Dürer
German, Nuremberg 1471–1528 Nuremberg
By the way, I forgot to mention the best day of our non-painting days. It was visiting the MET’s Drawing and Prints Department. This is where we met brilliant Laurie Murphey, the MET’s education person in charge of the copyists. (Copyists are the students, like us, who copy a master painting.) Our class, of only 4, was shown 4 or 5 drawings at a time, from Durer and Leonardo da Vinci to Seurat. (Other schools had the same opportunity on different days of the week.) Delicately handled with white gloves, these original master sketches were pulled out of boxes and put on desk easels right in front of us. We each picked one and started sketching. What an off-the-charts fabulous exercise to actually be able to view and copy these treasures close up! The feeling was of being face to face with the living, breathing master!
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