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Art students learn from the masters

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By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer 12:42 AM Saturday, November 28, 2009

HAMILTON — Hamilton High School art students are taking tips from the masters in preparing their senior portfolios.

Last week, the class made its second trip to the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati as part of the Artists Reaching Classrooms Program.

According to teacher Ellyn Whiteash, during the first trip earlier in the year, each student selected a piece of art from the museum’s collection to make a presentation to the docents and staff during this second trip.

“The students worked on the presentations for weeks and were asked to be especially creative,” Whiteash said. “Darren Still played a song on his recorder that reminded him of his piece. Andrea Gillis made a dragon mask that looked similar to the main subject on her piece.”

Ross Brockman made his own song on his computer complete with his own lyrics that included the research he had found on his art work.

Now, the class is taking it one step further by creating their own works of art based on the museum work of their choice. Some are closely copying the museum piece, while others are recreating the work in a different media or using themes or moods of the masterpieces as inspiration for their own creative ideas.

Tyler Fricke is turning a landscape painting by 17th century Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael into a layered paper cutout.

“I liked how he showed a lot of depth with so much detail in the back as well as the foreground,” Fricke said, noting that creating such detail in cut paper would be a time-consuming process.

Skyla Brumley is using the complicated mood of an 18th century oil portrait by Joshua Reynolds as inspiration for her stylistic, monochromatic watercolor.

“It was a portrait of a woman’s face,” Brumley said. “She’s very pretty and the tone was very happy, but I saw a sadness in it, too.”

She said she may title her painting “The True Essence of Mary.”

Whiteash said the best seven works from the group will be entered into the Artists Reaching Classrooms regional competitions with scholarships for prizes.

All of the students in the senior art portfolio class are planning to be art majors in college.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

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