veryone has a favorite painting. Maybe it was around the house when you were a kid or maybe you saw it in a book or perhaps a museum? Something about it stuck in your soul. It may even be the reason you are taking art classes. Whatever the painting, it is more than mere visual pleasure that captivates you. The work also evokes feeling. Why?

ring the source to class. If it is quite famous, most likely you could find it on the internet. One of my all-time favorite paintings is, " The Birth of Venus", by Sandro Botticelli. Found here. This painting has long captured my imagination. Analysis reveals many layers of meaning and compositional technique. For example, all figures point to Venus. Her body is framed by elements in the composition.

ere is a quote from the above web page:
"Botticelli's Venus is so beautiful that we do not notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the queer way her left arm is hinged to the body. Or, rather, we should say that these liberties which Botticelli took with nature in order to achieve a graceful outline add to the beauty and harmony of the design because they enhance the impression of an infinitely tender and delicate being, wafted to our shores as a gift from Heaven."

iguring out what MAKES a composition work is not always obvious, but with careful duplication, you can discover the subtleties. This is the concept behind art students sitting in museums copying master paintings.

THE PROJECT

The assignment is to analyze your favorite composition and create a new version made from your own source images. These source images can be photographs, real scanned objects, digital camera pictures (you can pose a person, or set-up objects if needed), or other art images. In other words, don’t use any part of the original. The use of web images is prohibited, unless approved by the instructor (I will only allow them under special circumstances).

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