Elise Dodeles

The start of something new and my mother’s portrait

Portraits

For the past 6 weeks I have been painting portraits in a course offered by the New York Academy of Art, called Demystifying Portrait Painting, taught by Aidan Barker-Hill.

In early January of 2016 I saw a wonderful exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Frick Collection in New York. The exhibit was Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance workshop in action and the beautiful book with the same title is where I found some tragically prescient drawings by the master, one of which I have included in this post. I have been working on the painting based off of these drawings for a few weeks, on and off, and with much stumbling. But it seems to be coming together.

Sketch by Andrea del Sarto from the book Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action by Julian Brooks

Recent figure compositions

These compositions were made during and after classes I have taken with instructor Mary Mathews at Delaware Valley University’s Center for Learning in Retirement.