Free Summer Saturdays at the Corcoran Gallery of Art

On my birthday, Raisin Bread took me to the Corcoran Gallery of Art to see the exhibit Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration. This was my second visit to this museum, and I finally understood why I liked it so much the first time I went. There aren't any tourists! Well, they also have wonderful exhibits.

The exhibit focused on Chuck Close's process of artmaking, rather than the pieces themselves.

On Saturday, we went again for their Free Summer Saturdays. We signed up to participate in a community art project to make a portrait inspired by Chuck Close's methods. We were given a square of John Singer Sargent's portrait of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherford White, a white square of paper, and charcoal pencils.

Raisin Bread and I chose sections next to one other, and here are the finished pieces.

We added our squares to the board with this result.

Afterwards, we made our way through the galleries, but before we left for the day, we decided to see how far along the rest of the piece was. Not bad if you ask me. It's interesting to see different people's styles and interpretations. Most obviously, the shading is very different and the direction of pencil strokes. Then there are areas that are just wrong, like the nose.

Still, I had a wonderful time participating in this project and seeing how it all came together/