Learning to Draw

I’ve never been good at art – at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Back in the United States, the only art classes I took were more “modern” mediums, such as photography and metalwork. Even then, I would not say that I was necessarily good at it. All I knew how to do was come up with a creative idea, like taking a black-and-white picture of a plate sitting on a doormat or making a miniature metal playground.

My workspace: I actually don't need the blade nor the triangle, but they make me feel professional. 

But now, in Italy, the home of over half of the world’s art and arguably the best place to learn it, I had to do an assignment. Usually this would not be a problem, but this was my first time ever reproducing a piece of art. It was not like in the United States where you can go off and explore your own realms of imagination and draw or paint that. Instead, here the only flexibility we had was choosing which piece we were going to reproduce.

Most of my classmates chose the masterpieces that I expected – Sandro Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus, a profile of Michelangelo’s David, and other works from artists like Leonardo Da Vinci, Rafael, Titian, and the like. I, on the other hand, did not want to do something by an artist who shares a name with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Instead, I chose the odd, yet beautiful The Adoration of the Shepherds by the Spanish Renaissance artist El Greco.

The teacher did have to approve it before I could begin, though. That way, people would not choose a piece that was too easy. Apparently I chose one of the hardest pieces in the book - so hard that she made me do it only in black and white.

A few weeks and a couple of work hours later, this is what my final product looks like compared with the original black and white copy:

El Greco on the left. Alex Cuadrado on the right. 

The teacher was very impressed with me reproducing it so well, and said that “I really captured the luminosity of the baby Jesus.” Let’s see what grade she gives me on this nativity scene, though.

By the way, my favorite part was drawing the ox’s horn and the shepherd's arm (on the right).