I am not really into modern art yet, but when I visited Met Museum in NY I was shocked by Chuck Close’s huge painting ‘Lucas.’ He divided the face of ‘Lucas’ into hundreds (perhaps thousands) of cells and drew it cell by cell. It came up to be fabulous mixture of abstraction+realism.
So, after getting back to sizzling Cambridge (MA), I tried to practice Close’s technique today. I picked a photo from old Time magazine, put a transparent grid (that I made) and started to draw one cell at a time. I started to draw while watching the World Cup game (Croatia vs Sweden. Congrats, Croatians!) and was pretty sure I could finish the drawing by the end of the game. However, it took much longer than I expected… about four hours. I didn’t learn how to use colors yet, so obviously I got some colors wrong. Plus there are other problems I am still discovering with my drawing 😞 , but I am just happy that I didn’t give up this ‘harder-than-I-thought’ project.
Salute to Mr. Close!
Cells: Salute to Mr. Close
The original photo from the Time magazine
In the midst of drawing (in the brink of quitting!)… with colored pencils
This is the painting of Chuck Close. The size is 100 x 84 in. (254 x 213.4 cm)!
small talks about small things 