Mary Stanford standing beside a painting

Life Model: There’s Something About Mary Stanford

Mary Stanford got the birthday surprise of her life in 2012 when she opened the door to what she thought was a sale. She loves to go junking and so, that’s the ruse her friends Emily Barker and Lynn Hart had cooked up to get her there. They were at her friend Debe Loughlin’s house, but Mary just thought she was trying to get rid of some of her things. “I opened the door and there were all these people,” she says. “Fifty or more people yelling, ‘Surprise!’ I totally lost it. They were snapping pictures. There were artists that I hadn’t seen in a long time and groups of friends and two rooms full of art — just of me. It was really, really quite something.” (more…)

Composite drawing

Drawing Portraits and Figures

We had a really fun assignment in drawing class recently. We had to take pictures of each other and make a composite drawing of four people. The drawing could have two different eyes and eyebrows, a nose from more than one person — same with the mouth, the ears, even the hair. Mix and match. You get the picture? Let me show you mine! (more…)