COPYING A PAINTING  One of the most valuable exercises in art is learning from the old masters. Traditionally, art students spent several years of their apprenticeship drawing from plaster bust and sculptures, restoring old works, copying drawings from the best artists. In this way, the students not only learned about techniques and materials, they could experience the artist's attitude and approach to their subject. Today, copying old masters is not a common activity in art school. This is unfortunate. For your next assignment

TOOLS & PROCESSES  The first step was to open my paint program and insure that I could save the work as a .jpeg. I have Photoshop 6, which also allows me to save the image as a .jeg. I began with a white page and clicked the frami-making icon. This allowed me to decide the format of my final picture. The dimensions of the original are essential. I tried to capture the same composition which seemed verically stretched.

Second, I clicked the pencil icon. I drew my main lines, trying to capture the rhythm and line quality. I insured that all the lines touched. Often I used the eraser icon to redo mistakes. When I was happy with the drawing I began mixing a colour palatte.

I used a simple colour mixing program and created about 15 customized colours. Then I used the paint fill icon to fill in all the spaces. I had to remix colours to get the contrast right. I avoided pure colours. Once all the spaces were filled in, I used the spray icon to create a white glow around the figure.

The biggest problem was saving the image. I had to use the trim command to reduce the surrounding white.I then saved the image and reopened it in Photoshop 6. I was able to adjust brightness and size. I then saved the image with a resolution of 72. My thumbnail image (100 pixels) can be seen on the HOME PAGE and the other is seen above.

ACTIVITY  Using a simple computer paint program copy one of Sveva Caetani's paintings. Begin with a line drawing and then build up the colours. Save the image as a .jpg or .gif in different sizes with different resolutions. The assignment will not only increase your computer knowledge and drawing skills, but you will become more aware of the image-making strategies and concepts that the artist used.