Women who Art - Student Spotlight

 Artist of the Week

Karan Alan

This weeks spotlight has been a long time in the making as we've all watched "Mother" develop over the course of many months.  Mother has been with us almost every week since last spring, slowly coming to life through the incredible talent of her daughter.

 Mother in her stylish glory - decked out from head to toe and looking quite stunning.

Planning a Composition:

Karan spends much time planning out the composition of her canvas.  Before drawing mother she utilized the idea of the golden proportion to aesthetically align the focal points in her painting.

The divine triangle or golden proportion is a guideline used by classical artists to ensure that the composition of their painting was pleasing to the eye.  The divine triangle is based on the idea that everything in nature, from the features of the human face to the spirals in a nautilus shell, can be broken down into a proportion of 1:1.618

Once she has graphed her canvas and image of mother, Karan transfers the image onto canvas.

Then uses a piece of string to double check her guidelines.

Mother would be very proud of how amazing she looks in her crisp blue suit.  The colors, textures and shadows are absolutely glorious.

Karan used at least two images of her mother in order to correctly portray on canvas her facial proportions and features.

Mother and daughter painting together.  Don't you love how they match their clothing to the colors in their paintings?!

Karan continues to focus on painting mothers features so they closely match the shapes and colors of her photograph.

Painting hands is a complex subject especially if they are an important component of the arrangement.  In this piece, Karan aptly captured the strength of her mother through the painting of her hands.
 

Painting in detail with thoughtful consideration to the time period in which the photo was taken.  

After months of carting mother to and from class, stressing over the correct color palette, worrying about the shapes, shadows and textures of mothers skin, hair and clothing all while making sure the highlights and focal points followed the guidelines of the golden triangle, Karan signs her name to momma's painting.  Champagne quickly followed to celebrate the patient love and devotion of a daughter to her mother.

And the finished piece:  A portrait of two beautiful and stylish women.