Linda Newman

Linda Newman is currently a working artist in Los Angeles, California. She attended Florida State University, studying theater and with an art minor. While in school, she found a passion for working in fashion illustration. She has worked in New York and Hollywood, as well. She works in photography, painting murals and scenic sets, and illustration, among other things. For years, she was been working to “capture the essence” of the person she is drawing.

I found Linda Newman’s work on portraitartist.com. I saw her contact info on her website, so I emailed her. Within a few hours, she responded back. I find her advice really helpful. On her blog she has photos of her work in steps, which is helpful to see the process behind her work.

Here’s what she said:

HI Meghan:

Thank you for writing and I would be happy to discuss my portraits with you. I hope that you had a chance to visit my web site www.lindanewmanart.com where there are several examples of my work and a link to my blog. On my blog - which is currently "stuck" ( I have to work with my web guy to make it functional again), there are early blogs where I document the process of my painting with step by step photographs. You might find this helpful. My portraits come from my loving to draw and capture the essence of whoever I am drawing or painting and that has always ben inside of me. Since I was a child, I loved capturing the person on paper. I stopped for a long time and got back to my love of portraits after I decided I could make portraits that were not corny, flat and horribly uninteresting! I do not shy from working from photographs, because when people sit, they really have the most difficult time sitting still, so I photograph them. I love shooting photographs, and I believe getting that perfect moment on a particular photo helps me create an interesting painting. I literally shoot over 100 photo's of my subject, playing with light source etc. and I find that in that large group of photo's there are usually a handful of images that show the depth of the sitter in their "truth" , so to speak. This usually excites very much, and then I start to make the painting using large to small prints of the image I like. I do not use a grid, because I love the challenge of getting it right by my eye. This often requires adjustments all the way through the painting and I find the bits that are off that I cannot see by eye, show up beautifully when I take a pic of my painting with my phone camera and view it small. It seems to really do the trick- even more than flipping the painting upside down ( another trick of the trade).  I think that grid painting will ultimately make an image stiff and give that flat look that often plagues portraits....you may not have that problem, however ;) I would suggest hat you just keep drawing friends and people anywhere and make fast sketches too. You can train your eye that way with out the grid process and it's probably a bit more fun. There are also dimensions that are kind of basic with adult features and just start to really look and really see the length of a person' nose in relation to the width of their eye....etc.

I hope this is helpful! I would love to see some of your ketches or paintings. Please e-mail me some images if you would like to share them and also feel free to ask more questions in the future.

I am glad my work spoke to you. 

All the best!

Linda

http://lindanewmanart.com/

http://lindanewmanart.blogspot.com/

Jessica Gath

Jessica Gath was born in 1975, and grew up in New England. Jessica’s undergrad program was at Tufts University, focusing in Chinese Language and Cultural Studies. She also studied Studio Art, Painting at Brandeis University and got her MFA at MassArt, in SIM. She teaches Visual Language II at MassArt.

Jessica works on a range of different projects. She paints portraits, especially of children. Her portraits are usually done on commission. She also has a range of conceptual projects that she works on, which can include 2D work, sculpture, film, video, installation, and performance pieces. Her work has been shown in the U.S, Canada, Europe, and Hong Kong. Her portraits have been featured in several magazines, including Cookie (2006), American Artist (2008), Tufts (2008), and Home (2009). She is still currently working in the South End.

I chose this artist, because this semester I am focusing on portraits. Usually when I paint or draw a portrait, the figure looks much younger than they are in reality. I am studying why my portraits look the way they do. I am realizing that my proportions are incorrect and I round parts of the face that makes the person look very childlike. When looking at my previous work, I realized when I go from the photo to my drawing, there are some aspects that are not correct and when I work on painting a portrait, it progresses even further from what the portrait actually look like. With each step, I somehow stray further from what looks realistic. Because of this I am really focusing on looking at the image to relay it to my portrait drawing. For now, I’m sketching out portraits and sections of the face. I am working on drawing portraits using a grid layout.  I would like to transfer what I am learning with the grid format and create large realistic portrait drawings. My goal is to be able to create realistic portrait paintings.

Portraits: http://www.jessicagath.com/

Conceptual work: http://www.jessicagath.org/ 

Information from the websites and personal conversation. 

Gabe, 2008

Francesca, 2007

Matt, 2009

Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton was born in 1965 in Danbury, CT. Peyton got a degree from the School of Visual Arts, in New York in 1987. She is an American painter, most of her work is portraits. 

"I felt that you could see a person's time in their face—especially the particular moment when they're about to become what they'll become…They just shine, and everybody around them can feel it" Peyton told Vogue about what drew her to portraiture. (Notable Biographies)

Interesting fact: “She was born with only two fingers on her right hand, and so she learned to draw with her left hand” (Notable Biographies).

Her first solo show was at Althea Viafora Gallery, 1987. Peyton was invited to show work at the 2004 Whitney Biennial in New York City. Peyton has showed work in London, New York, Paris, Florence, and more. “Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton” is a show at the New Museum, and will also travel to Minneapolis, London, and the Netherlands. The exhibition is a collection of Peyton’s work. Some of Peyton’s portraits include Kurt Cobain, Liam Gallagher, Jarvis Cocker, Eminem, Matthew Barney, Georgia O’Keefe, Marc Jacobs, and many more family, friends, celebrities, and other people.  

 “A painter of modern life, Peyton's small, jewel-like portraits are also intensely empathetic, intimate, and even personal. Together, her works capture an artistic zeitgeist that reflects the cultural climate of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries” (New Museum).  

Peyton “is among a small group of artists to develop a peculiar hybrid of realism and conceptualism… Like Warhol, Peyton's art is at the service of the culture it captures. A brilliant colorist with a razor-sharp graphic sense, her paintings are enormously seductive in form and content, celebrating the aesthetics of youth, fame, and creative genius” (New Museum)  

Peyton’s portraits are painted in a way that look accurately like the person, but not too specifically mapped out. With the grid layout, my drawings look more realistic, but almost flat, like they don’t have any life. It might be her use of color that makes her portraits look more active. 

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/400 (images)

http://www.gavinbrown.biz/files/file_upload/Peyton_new.pdf  (images)

http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-Li-Pr/Peyton-Elizabeth.html

Prince William

Jarvis

Democrats are more beautiful (after Jonathan)

Julian

Prometheus Bound

Prometheus Bound
American Repertory Theater
Oberon, Two Arrow Street, Cambridge MA
Monday-Thursday, 7:30; Friday, 7:30 & 10:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB6KNku5q8I
http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/prometheus-bound

Prometheus Bound was adapted from Aeschylus' 2500 year old Greek play. Writer and Lyricist, Steven Sater (Spring Awakening) translated the play and transformed it into a new rock musical, with music written by Serj Tankian (System of a Down), and directed by Diane Paulus. The cast is so talented, and the story is so powerful. This is an amazing collaboration between arts and activism. The A.R.T. and Amnesty International have partnered up for this show, and each night the show is dedicated to an Amnesty case.

The eight cases are:
Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker. AI Concern: Prisoner of Conscience, Unfair Trial
Survivors of Sexual Violence, Democratic Republic of Congo AI Concern: Rape as a Weapon
Dhondup Wangchen, Tibetan filmmaker AI Concern: Prisoner of Conscience, Torture and Other Ill-Treatment, Human Rights Defenders
David Kato (deceased), Ugandan LGBT Human Rights Activist AI Concern: Human Rights Violations Against LGBT persons/Investigation into his murder
Tran Quoc Hien, Vietnamese Legal Adviser, and Doan Van Dien, and Doan Huy Chuong, Vietnamese Trade Unionists AI Concern: Prisoners of Conscience, Unfair Trial
Norma Cruz, Guatemalan Woman's Rights Activist, Leader of Fundacion Sobrevivientes AI Concern: Prisoner of Conscience, Freedom of Association, Unfair Trial, repressive legislation
Reggie Clemons, U.S.A AI Concern: Abolish Death Penalty
Nasrin Sotoudeh, Iranian Human Rights Defender and Lawyer AI Concern: Prisoner of Conscience, unfair Trial

http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/
http://www.amnestyusa.org/