July 15 - Happy Birthday, Rembrandt

Posted on July 15, 2022

Key Points

This is an update of my post published on July 15, 2011:

Have you heard of the artist named Rembrandt? Did you know that his real name was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn?

One of the most important Dutch artists in history, Rembrandt lived during the 1600s, a period we now call the Dutch Golden Age.

Rembrandt is especially known for his portraits and self-portraits. Here are three self-portraits from different times of Rembrandt’s life:

Try creating your own self-portrait. Here are some ideas:

Choose a photo of yourself and carefully sketch with pencil what you see. Try to focus on the shapes formed by the “negative space” between your eye and eyebrow, for example, or between your lower lip and chin line. Notice how dark and light different areas of your photo are, and try to capture that in your drawing. It might help if you make a black-and-white copy of your photo before starting your sketch.

Or make an enlarged copy of a photo – and then cut it in half. Attach one half to a piece of paper – and try to draw the missing half!!

Sit in front of a mirror and sketch yourself. This is more difficult because you will be moving and may also change expression, but it is a fun experiment to try.

If you get permission to do so, you can use special
easily-removable markers to draw a self-portrait
RIGHT ON a mirror!

See also December 24 – Santuranticuy

Enlarge a photo, using a copier, and create grid of evenly-spaced lines on the enlargement. Use very light pencil lines to lay down a proportional grid on your drawing paper. (In other words, even if the squares in the drawing-paper grid are larger than those on the photo, make sure that both grids are the same number of squares high and wide.) Then copy the dark and light areas in each square of the photo onto the drawing paper.