Wow, what a difference good composition makes! Sadly nowadays, you seldom see such "headroom" allowed in a painting.

I'm just curious...do you have any idea why your instructor felt that the headsize was so important to maintain at the expense of composition?

Chantal,

If you have time you may enjoy the debate located on this thread: http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...=&threadid=746 about "Rembrandt's Sparkle Effect".

Note:

You can begin your search for books on Rembrandt here: http://www.portraitartist.com/bookstore/rembrandt.htm

Karin,

The airy composition in the original definitely gives a great feeling of space!

I should have mentioned that The Met imposes a size restriction on canvases, so that was one part of the cropping issue. When I started doing copies at the Met, my instructor stressed maintaining the head size because his emphasis within the time constraints was on learning to paint a head in the manner of the old masters. Initially, he intended the experience to be a learning process and a study only. He also spoke about keeping to scale to help prevent losing the drawing. I have found that scaling down the painting can play a trick on the eye in an odd way, drawing-wise. Since then I've departed from that idea, doing copies of details from larger paintings and recently scaling down one composition that exceeded the museum size limit. (We can't go larger than 30" x 30".)

While I wanted to shoot for more finished pieces compositionally around the time I copied that Rembrandt, I was encouraged to let go of my ego and concentrate on the technical lessons at that stage.

Chantal,

Thank you for pointing out the educational dept. of museums. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art offers classes weekdays and on weekends with instructors.Information can be found through http://www.lacma.org/.

BTW, towards the end of his life, Rembrandt worked with such heavy impasto one art critic commented, "You can pick up a Rembrandt portrait by the nose!"

What fun to have copied a Rembrandt! Someday I shall make the time and do this myself. I have a lot to learn about impasto.

Sigh... Poor Rembrandt, he probably died of criticism.

Thank you! I never would have thought a public museum would allow me to trudge in and copy one of their works, until I read this thread. I mean, museums are for hushed contemplation, right? But after reading this I called the Toledo Museum of Art and asked if they had a copyist program. A What? After getting bounced around from person to person, I got the Registrar's Assistant who said, yes, long ago she had heard of such a thing, but nobody had ever asked. Then yesterday I got the application!

Oh my gosh I don't know where to start. They have a reknowned collection of El Greco, several Dutch, several Rossini, things like that. A new exhibition of Henrick Goltzius is coming up that looks pretty exciting! They also have Sargent's Princess Demidoff, but it's very tall, and I'm not. I don't think I could copy it without a step stool.

The rules seem quite liberal:

Work areas must be a minimum of 5 feet away from any work of art. Copyists must not approach any work of art with pencils or paint brush in hand.

Fabric or plastic floor covering not exceeding 1 yd sq must be used.

Copies must vary in size from the museum original in both dimensions by at least 3 inches. Copies must be checked in and out of the museum by the Chief Guard, and must enter and leave by the same door.

Upon finishing their work, visitors copying works of art are requested to make certain that the area in which they have been working is completely clean.

Not bad, I think? I have to say which work I want to copy, and intended days, but there is not restriction on hours apparently, and the application is renewable.

www.toledomuseum.com

Thank you for the tip!

Lisa, I'm very interested in following your follow-through on this; please keep us posted...

Here is a link to an excellent article on the Art Renewal Center site that addresses this topic:

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2...ork/miles1.asp