Jess draws

‘It’s Time to Remember The Tragic’ t-shirt – $14

Meet the Mona Lisa of the Prado, the earliest known copy of Da Vinci’s best portrait. Similarity in the undersketch of the painting indicates that this was very likely painted concurrently with the original Mona Lisa, by a student of Da Vinci.

There is much controversy in the art world over the question of whether or not to clean the fragile Mona Lisa, but her sister has been restored and some fairly odd later alterations removed to show the original vibrant colors and lighting. Some details, such as the sheerness of her shawl and the pattern on the neckline of her dress, have become utterly obscured in the original, but in the restored copy they’re perfectly clear.

7/21/16 This is an excerpt from a presentation I gave to a group of young art students recently. I had a blast, and I hope they had fun too! I felt a little out of my comfort zone though, because…

I still have no idea what I’m doing!!

So some of these are how I personally view my job right now, and some of these are ideas from other artists. I figured it couldn’t hurt to pass on these little nuggets to the next generation of artists, if they want them. Soon they’ll be giving talks to young artists, too, and they’ll have even more informative things to say. And then they’ll take my job. 

But that’s fine. I’ll happily switch to full-time cat-petting and gardening. Win-win.