Understanding....

Sometimes we can understand our place among artists by choosing some point in the history of art and imitating techniques of past masters. Many art instructors require students to practice earlier styles and techniques....that's how an artist eventually arrives at his own launching pad. The painting on the left is oil on board. It's a self portrait by Matt Krease, and is certainly not one of his favorites. It's actually a sketch for more developed work. I'm not sure he even knows it's still around. Myself....I find it intriguing. To me it demonstrates where "My New Home", the birds in the nest in an earlier blog below, came from. Isn't it wonderful that as much as we would destroy some of our own practice pieces someone saved them? My own early stuff is long gone to the landfill. That isn't going to happen here. This is oil paint on particle board....the style reminds me of Rembrandt. It's about 12x14 inches in size, and the image you see does not do it justice. What you're looking at is a photograph of the original taken with a Nikon D50 digital SLR.