High School Art: Drawing from Art History

While it is often thought that artists are only interested in being NEW, throughout history, artists have just as often looked back in time for inspiration.  In this project, High School Art students learned about the major art movements of European Painting from 1600 to 1900, and then chose an artwork they connected with to make an interpretive copy.  That is, they closely copied the original work, but changed one aspect to alter the meaning of the work, reopening the work for new interpretations.

They used a process called squaring for transfer, enabling them to enlarge the work while keeping the same proportions.  This is done by first gridding off the source image with even squares, then, on the drawing paper, creating a grid with the same number of boxes in horizontally and vertically, but with each box twice the original dimension. 

High School Art 1 students concentrated on value (lightness or darkness) of each square, students, using a variety of different pencil types, or charcoal to draw each box, square by square, a painstaking and immersive process.  High School II students,  had the additional challenge of doing the copy in color.  As the results show, ­with time and concentration, great results may follow!

Text By Mr. Hawke