Leslie Lienau: Teaching Renaissance Art With a Drawing App

It’s not always logistically possible to paint from life. Photo references allow artists to work around constraints.
Leslie Lienau: Teaching Renaissance Art With a Drawing App
Artists can draw guides using the Miira app to judge the accuracy of a drawing. Courtesy of Leslie Lienau
Christine Lin
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This is part 9 of a 9-part series. To see the full series, see At the Confluence 

The increasing prevalence of photography has fundamentally changed the way representational art is created and perceived in the modern day. At the Confluence examines how some of today’s artists have responded to the shift.

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Leslie Lienau is the founder of The Conservatory for Classical Art in Edmond, Oklahoma. The school teaches methods used in the Italian Renaissance and the Beaux-Arts traditions of the 19th century.

In November 2013 Lienau launched Miira, an iOS app that allows users to take or import photos to work from. Its functions include a grid overlay, guidelines, shape blocking, and freehand sketching. With these tools, an artist (or hobbyist) is able to map out a photo reference for easier drawing.

Using guidelines, artists can create what’s known as an envelope around the object they are drawing so as to accurately define its overall shape. Guidelines also make spatial relationships between objects easier to understand. Using a grid, one can check the exact placement of details, or transfer the image 1:1 onto a similarly gridded canvas. With one tap, the image can be changed to grayscale so as to better assess the values of colors.

(Leslie Lienau)
Leslie Lienau
Christine Lin
Christine Lin
Author
Christine Lin is an arts reporter for the Epoch Times. She can be found lurking in museum galleries and poking around in artists' studios when not at her desk writing.
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