Old Masters Academy

Posts Tagged "self-portrait"

Palettes of Famous Artists.  The Anders Zorn Palette

Palettes of Famous Artists. The Anders Zorn Palette

Palettes of Famous Artists. Zorn Palette Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860-1920)  has long been associated with a limited palette of four colors. Rosemary Hoffman, in the book Northern Light: Nordic Art at the Turn of the Century wrote, “Zorn was noted for executing paintings using a sober color scale limited to white, ochre, vermilion, and ivory black.” Hans Henrik Brummer, writing in the 1986 catalog on Zorn, said “basically his register was limited to black, white, earth yellows and vermilion; other pigments could be used if local accents were needed.” Several art teachers, such as Jeff Watts, use the “Zorn palette” (sometimes substituting cadmium red light for vermilion) as a teaching tool because it provides students with a finite range of color choices with a…

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Video Lesson: how to draw a portrait. How to create your drawings fast, impressive and reminding the etching effect.

In this video lesson you will discover how to create very effective artworks with minimal means. Good quality paper is essential for this kind of artwork. Ideally, paper should be strong enough to take a sharp graphite pencil and it should also be eraser resistant. You can search your art supplies shop for paper that is suitable for drawing, in the required size. Don’t be tempted to replace drawing paper with watercolour or sketching paper, even if you like the surface texture. Watercolour paper is not as resistant to a rubber eraser as smooth drawing paper is. We have chosen a 42x 59 cm sheet of paper for a reason. A portrait of the character with a face measuring 9…

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«The Savior of Painting» by Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum´s self portrait is titled «The Savior of Painting». Almost life-size, it depicts the artist in a golden robe, armed with paintbrush and palette, against the soft Norwegian evening sky. On his palette is one single color: that of gold. «This is kitsch in its purest form,» remarks the artist in front of the nearly finished work, gracefully saving us the embarrassment. «Mind you, there´s absolutely no irony here.» The golden robe is for real. He had it made in New York a few years back, and it´s already a garment of international notoriety. His «Self Portrait in Golden Robe», first exhibited in Stockholm last winter and now showing in a retrospective at the Astrup-Fearnley Museum in Oslo, shows…

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Odd Nerdrum. An interview

The Importance of Being Odd: Nerdrum’s Challenge to Modernism By Paul A. Cantor The Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum is one of the greatest painters of the century. Unfortunately, according to his detractors, the century in question is the seventeenth. Thus Nerdrum has emerged as one of the most controversial artists of our day. His admirers praise him for his superb Old Master technique, while his critics condemn him as hopelessly reactionary. His work calls into question all our customary narratives about art history, and especially the modernist dogma that the artist can be creative only by turning his back on the past. Nerdrum has openly acknowledged his debt to the Old Masters. He uses heavy layers of paint to create chiaroscuro effects reminiscent of Caravaggioand Rembrandt,…

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