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Does Op Art Need Shading?
So far this month we’ve explored the work of Op Art painter Bridget Riley. She spent decades exploring perception and the viewer’s gaze. Is that something I could even begin to touch in this quick project? I decided to keep it simple and do a project I remember from middle school. Only this time I…
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Bridget Riley: It’s Not Art Without the Viewer
Bridget Riley is our artist this month. She made major contributions to the Op Art movement in the 1960s. It’s a style that we all recognize, but what is it really? What is Op Art? Op Art is short for optical art. Considered an abstract style of art, it became popular in the 1960s. There’s…
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Op Art April
Have you been wondering when we’ll talk about an artist that’s still alive? Then April is your month! We’ll be taking a look at the life and art of Bridget Riley. She was a prominent artist in the Op Art movement of the 1960s, first exploring geometric patterns in black and white and then moving…
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Does Your Model’s Gender Matter?
This month we explored the hows and the whys of Michelangelo’s masculine women. We know that he used male models as many Renaissance artists did. It’s likely that his masculine representations of women was intentional. But when you alter the represented gender of your model, how much does it unintentionally affect your art? When we…
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Androgyny for the Gods
Instead of doing a biography, we’re talking androgyny today. Documentation on Michelangelo Buonarroti’s life and work is plentiful (seriously good reading), so we’re going to look at one of my favorite topics: Why do his women look so masculine? Three Examples of Michelangelo’s Women Night Michelangelo was commissioned to create sculptures for the Medici Chapel,…
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March Artist of the Month – Changed!
Originally I was going to write about Francisco Goya for the March Artist of the Month, but there was one problem (at least to me). We’ve spent the last two months in the late 19th and early 20th century and Goya’s work is only slightly earlier than that. We need to break at least a…
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My February Expressionism Project!
My Expressionism project for this month was a cute little (digital) painting of two birds. I did the birds, sky, and mountains on separate layers so I could export all of the combinations of primary colors and see how it changed the feeling of the painting. Let’s take a look! The piece was initially done…
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February Artist of the Month: Franz Marc
What is Expressionism? Expressionism began around 1905 in Germany and Austria. Recognizable by its bright, artificial color palettes and simplified forms, it introduced distortions of reality designed to elicit an emotional reaction from the viewer while simultaneously taking inspiration from and rejecting art movements of the past. German Expressionism was a response to two things. …
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Expressionist February
Our artist this month is Franz Marc! I chose him because despite his short life and career, he was a major influence in the German Expressionist movement. His work is instantly recognizable – if you’ve seen the painting of blue horses, you’ve seen a Franz Marc painting. Marc’s work was so avant-garde for the time…
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Impressionist Art – Did I Do It?
When I started my little digital Impressionist painting, I made sure to go in with no expectations. If it came out great – great! If it came out bad – also great! The whole point was to try it out and hopefully learn something along the way. It was definitely a rough start at first,…
