July 15 - Happy Birthday, Rembrandt

    Posted on July 15, 2022     

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!

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.

Here is a WikiHow article about self-portraits. 

Also on this date:

Mythicist Thomas Bulfinch's birthday 

Gummi Worm Day

St. Swithin's Day

Mathematician Fibonacci's birthday

Anniversary of Twitter's introduction

His Majesty the Sultan's Birthday in Brunei

Be a Dork Day

Birthday of first Cuban American elected to Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Birthday of astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• July holidays
• July birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in July
  
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• August holidays
• August birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in August
  

July 6 – Happy Birthday, Frida Kahlo

Posted on July 6, 2016

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

 Frida Kahlo is a famous Mexican painter. She is especially famous for her self-portraits, her eyebrows, and her marriage to artist Diego Rivera.

Her eyebrows?

Did you like how I snuck that in there?

Rather than minimizing her eyebrows through plucking and shaping them in a stereotyped version of what women's eyebrows should look like...

Rather than minimizing her eyebrows in her self-portraits by painting them a bit lighter, a bit smaller, a bit less uni-brow-y...

Rather than idealizing her own features and “femininity”...

Frida Kahlo (born on this date in 1907, as Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón) actually exaggerated her eyebrows, making them larger, blacker, and more uni-brow-y; she was known for uncompromising portrayals of herself and of other subjects.

Here are just a few of the interesting things about this very interesting woman:

Frida contracted polio when she was just six years old, and one of her legs was thinner than the other as a result. She needed to recover her strength, and she became very active and played several sports, going against the unwritten rules of her society in order to do things that only boys were supposed to do. Her activities included bicycling, roller skating, swimming, boxing, and wrestling.

When she was just 18 years old, she was in a bus accident, and she was seriously injured. She suffered from a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, eleven fractures of her polio-affected leg, a crushed and dislocated foot, and an abdomen pierced by a bit of iron. The effects of this accident lasted all her life; she had to deal with tons of pain, off-and-on all her life, she had months of recovery in a full body cast but sometimes had to be hospitalized or bedridden, years later; she had to have 35 operations on her back, leg, and foot; and she could never have a child.

Before the bus accident, Frida was studying medicine. During the recovery from the accident, she began to paint. It was something she could do in bed, thanks to the special easel her mom ordered. Kahlo said that she painted so many self-portraits because “I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.” By the end of her life and artistic career, Kahlo had created 55 self-portraits (out of about 140 paintings).

Here are two of her pieces that are NOT self-portraits:

Kahlo grew up in La Casa Azul (the Blue House), in Mexico City; this very blue house became a museum in 1958.

Also on this date:

Jan Hus Day in the Czech Republic 

Independence Day in Comoros

Republic Day in Malawi

Anniversary of Althea Gibson's win at Wimbledon

Eid al Fitr

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• July holidays
• July birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in July

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• August holidays
• August birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in August

July 15, 2011 - Happy Birthday, Rembrandt

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. I love these three self-portraits.

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.

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.

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.

Here is a WikiHow article about self-portraits. The Incredible Art Department has all kinds of self-portrait project ideas.