Author: Grant Thomas

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Picasso and Africa

I tried teaching Picasso from the African Mask angle this year.

After an extensive lesson on West African masks (which I sadly did not document with photographs), we looked at the powerpoint embedded above that I made.

Then we made a face using the three dimensional shapes we learned during the Wayne Theibaud lesson.

We finished them up with oil pastels.


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Scriptural Symmetry

It has been a while since I have gotten my paints out, but Art in America came in the mail today and that got my fingers itching to paint again.

I’ve been thinking about the symmetries of Old and New testament themes. These ideas are hardly ground breaking. Christians have been doing it for centuries, I’ve just now discovered it. As usual, I paint things like this to get a better grasp of the concepts for myself. In way, I feel like they might be more accessible to people that don’t have a knowledge of art history than my past altars.

This is the first sketch I made depicting Christ and Adam. I think I might revive the ol’ alterpiece theme from the summer and make some small altars that show the Old testament theme when closed and the New testament compliment on the inside. I’m also going to see if I can incorporate some visual rhyming in them. (Something I’ve been playing with in my comics, but not in my paintings.)

Some other pieces could include:

Babel/Pentecost

Eve/Mary

Elijah/John the Baptist

Ezekiel’s vision of the flooded temple/Jesus describing the springs of living water to the woman at the well