Approaches: Year Long Project

Approach style 1

First Suggested Approach1. Select an existing painting from history and allow

it to be a major influence upon your piece. You are not to copy a painting in any shape, manner or form! The objective is to utilize the painting as a source from which you might develop your own piece. The idea is to inject your own sensibilities into the piece, find a way of building upon the work of another artist and arrive at a very personal statement, which still gives reference to the original work.

Claude Monet

Above: Soleil Levant, 1872

Right: Autumn effect at Argenteuil, 1873

The consciousness Aesthetic Realism brings to humanity is in this principle stated by Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." We can know at last that our selves are aesthetic: we are, every moment — in our domestic life, our work, our thoughts to ourselves, our bewilderment — trying to put reality’s opposites together, trying to be like art.

•Quick brush strokes•Painterly style•Reflections•Capturing a moment in time•Enamored with the different feel of different times in the day (i.e. twilight vs. midday

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Below: La Moulin de la Galette, 1876

Above: Dejeuner-canotiers, 1881

“The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion. It is the current which he puts forth, which sweeps you along in his passion.”

•Capture a moment in time•Painterly style•Quick brush stroke•Figure Drawing•Capture the unique way light moved through and around things (trees, tents, etc.)

Pablo PicassoBlue Period

The blue period is a marvelous expression of poetic subtlety and personal melancholy and contributes to the transition of Picasso's style from classicism to abstract art.

Below: Life, 1904

Left: Self-Portrait, 1901

•Literal translation of “feeling blue”•Promulgated by the death of his friend•Melancholy and Resignation