Greetings from Madrid
 

I too have read Allan Rahbek's post and his call to new members to speak up and I am no longer afraid of being eaten by portrait artists.

Before I go on, I would like to let all of you know of a forthcoming exhibit here in the Museo del Prado. The title of the exhibit is "Portraits in Spain from El Greco to Picasso" and will be inaugurated on the 20th of October and will run till February 2005 (I think). If any of you have the opportunity to be around Madrid these coming weeks and months, please DO go and see this show--needless to say a tremendous source of knowledge.

I am 41 years old, married and with 2 children. I have been working as an artist since 1980. I specialize mainly in sacred art having painted altarpieces for chapels and churches, although I have also done profane subjects as well, including portraits. I am also an accredited copyist in the Museo del Prado and have executed copies there since 2002, some for personal study and others as commissions. I am currently working on a copy there these days for a client.

I am having trouble attaching images here (keep getting a message that a pop-up window was blocked). In any case, you may see some samples of my original work as well as the copies in:
www.geocities.com/cmygoa

Please feel free to say what is on your mind

Great forum! Good to see that there are many dedicated to this difficult and lonely craft. (Are there any out there from around this area??). Good luck to all.

Carlos Ygoa

Welcome to the forum Carlos.

I am glad that you took the challenge and showed up.

I have seen your homepage and hope to see much more of your work on the forum, especially if you could show some details. As you must know by now, we love details, the closer the better.

Feel free to comment on everything you like.

Welcome again, Allan.

Carlos,

The blocking message you're getting is coming either from Windows XP if you have second edition - or more likely, from your security software - such as Norton Anti-virus. Or it could be settings in your browser. If you poke around these areas in the preferences or options, you may find the problem.

Welcome, Carlos! Your work is very impressive. We look forward to hearing from you often on the Forum... and we promise we don't bite.

Welcome, Carlos! It was wonderful to look through your website. I am looking forward to seeing your comments and your work here on the Forum.

Hi Carlos,
I have only read about a painter from Portugal, a German and a Swede and a couple of Dutch, So we are a minority. We have to cry loud.

Allan

Welcome Carlos,

I really enjoyed looking at your site, although not every picture seemed to come up this time. I especially liked your drawing of the little girl and your lovely and beautifully designed Annuciation.

I think you will find a really strong appreciation for Velaquez on this site. I have a particular fondness for him as well as Goya, Murillo and Zurbaran. One day I would love to visit the Prado and see Zurbaran's St. Casilda, one of my favorite paintings. He had been able to orchestrate yellow, violet, blue and red into a stunning color composition, something very difficult to do.

Jump right in, we all did at one time!

Thanks.
 

Thank you all for your comments...didn't expect any reply or reaction for a while. Mil gracias!

Cynthia: I will try your suggestion on the technical problem although I am quite illiterate in the techno field.

Allan: Will try to send close-ups next time. You being from Denmark should have the least trouble coming over to see the Prado show. Hope you can some time soon.

Sharon: What can i say about the Old Masters? I always say that the book on painting has been written and closed a long time ago, and we are merely the fortunate inheritors of a timeless legacy... I have been getting the same comment on the website photos from others. will try to solve that soon.

Thanks again to all!

Carlos

Closing the book on painting.
 

Carlos,

I don't think the book on painting has been closed, it has only not been taken out of the library much in the last 80 years. There were a lot of painters at the turn of the century working with new idea of color and picture content, especially in France. Unfortunately painters like Monet, Manet, Freiseke and Renoir, to name a very small sample were superceded by the excesses of modernism and post-modernism. It was easier for painters to "express themselves" without effort, knowledge and training. This would be akin to an untrained dancer leaping on to a stage in a performance of Swan Lake to "express herself".

I do not believe in ancestor worship in painting, deepest appreciation, yes.
To think that every great has been done and explored leaves us merely to continually to reuse old ideas and risk being static and irrevelant instead of courageously exploring new ways to express the divine and beautiful.

I too believe that we are into a new beginning, a new "Ism" .

What it is to be called, I don

The book has not been taken out here in Cleveland that I can see. I am currently taking an oil painting class. We are in the fifth week of a sixteen week semester and just last Wednesday the professor (who has been teaching for 14 years, graduated with a degree/masters in art about 20 years ago) lectured and showed slides of abstract art. Would love to quote her exact words, but what she did say was that the class is now done with realism, we needed to start with realism but will spend the rest of the semester (11 more weeks) on learning to express ourselves with oils and color. To quote the remark she makes over and over, "you don't need to know how to draw to be a successful artist. It might help you once in a while, but it is not necessary".

This is the very reason I have no interest in getting a degree. I take classes to further my skills...I'm getting more discouraged by the week with this art instructor. It is a slumping, disappointing experience to run into this time and time again when what I want is to learn realism. She brought in two of her paintings she will be exhibiting. Very disappointing, and not suprised to see that this working artists does not know how to draw and it is pathetically represented in her landscape paintings.

Students like myself depend heavily on this forum for our education. I am very grateful for this community and don't know where I'd be without it.

Patricia,

This is a very revealing quote and the hope for many "artists", including David Hockney.

If you know how to look like an artist, you will get the success.

This could be a topic in the "Cafe Guerbois"

Allan

Importance of solid drawing fundamentals
 

Oh my, what did I start?...

Patricia, thanks for reacting. I have seen your posts and attachments (like the Vermeer study, the Rubens study, etc) and can see you are sincere in your efforts. The Rubens study I really liked, and the Vermeer copy seemed to me to be quite good (that was, if I am not mistaken, your first attempt in colour?)

I taught drawing and painting from my private studio for about fifteen years, and I think it is safe to say that if my pupils still remember me, they would remember me for my obsession with basic drawing. Can't run if you don't know how to walk. I think everyone in the forum would agree with this. There is nothing more fundamental than drawing and nothing more wrong than starting the building with the roof. I would also emphasize the importance of tonal values and make my students spend some time, once in oils, with grisaille or monochrome exercises. I'm not saying anything really new here, but yet, it would never cease to amaze me when I used to have students come to me who were in their third year in Fine Atrs who had great difficulty with some very basic drawing...my point being that I think this "express thyself" trend is something like a universal plague. Non-representational art has its place, doubtless, but the foundation still has to be there, otherwise the work invariably looks hollow and with little substance.

But maybe Allan is right and we should take this to the Cafe.

The sala right next to where I am doing my copy in the Prado has portraits by Antonio Moro (16th century) and he is a new discovery for me. Amazing work.

Carlos,

I don

Carlos,

I am very flattered that you took the time out of your day to look at my posts here on the forum. Thank you very much for your encouraging words and I am quite flattered by your positive remarks.

I have started a new topic in the Cafe, as was suggested here. How I wish I could find someone in Cleveland, Ohio who is as talented as you are and willing to teach representational art. Cleveland woefully suffers from the "express thyself universal plague"!!

Hi Carlos,

If you were going to copy a work of Moro, would you use the same technique as him? He reminds me of Holbein, with the same sharp eye for individualism. Did he use tempera for his under painting?

Allan

Patricia,

Thank you for your kind words. I meant it about your works...I like going through the attachments of the other members (thank God for DSL lines and flat rates!) and I remember yours well. I also read your topic in the Cafe. I also wanted to say to you "quit your class" but Michele Rushworth did it for me. Good luck on your upcoming workshop in Atlanta and yes, bring your oil box. When do we see the finished Vermeer copy?

Allan,

Here

Thank you Carlos, I will order the book.

Looking forward to see your Antonio Moro post. I have never seen any of his pictures before you pointed them out, but I think that he is a very strong painter.

Allan

Allan,

Whenever I make a copy I try as much as possible to use the same technique as the original author, even have, at times chosen canvases that had similar weaves to the original canvas (and of course wood panel if the original was on wood). Sometimes, however, the cloth was not available, so I've had to settle. I do not choose the same pigments as the original artist, though. That would be excessive for me (and unavailable in some cases).

Antonio Moro (Anthonis Mors, or something like that, if I'm not mistaken, his original Flemish name), just like any flemish painter of his time employed the traditional technique of the grisaille/verdaccio underpainting, subsequently glazing with transparent colour layers. I think, however, that he used oils also for his underpainting and not tempera. More of an educated guess mainly because of the time in which he lived. I think had he been around in the 1300's instead of the 1500's, then he would have used tempera. I have to verify this with the museum archives (their records usually state"mixed media" if there is a tempera underpainting and just simply "oil" if that was used exclusively. He is also a new discovery to me and I personally can't tell just by looking at the painting in front of me whether or not there is a tempera layer underneath (don't know if anyone can).

Yes, he is a very solid painter and the portraits I have seen are great psychological studies aside from being elegant and courtly. He was a great influence in the work of another court painter Sanchez Coello. (Forgive my rambling on, I will leave you now to read other things...)

I just saw a wonderful portrait today by Antonio Moro. There is a travelling exhibit from Spain at the Seattle Art Museum with several Velazquez portraits, Rubens, Goya, etc, etc. I wasn't familiar with Moro's work but it was one of my favorite pieces in the show.

Carlos,

I thought that Moro was Spanish. Him being Flemish makes it even more believable that he used the old technique of tempera with oil glazings, but we will see what the experts have to say.

The reason that I suggested it was that the pictures looked so bright in the skin tones, and thought that the glazes could have bleached over time.

Allan