Artwork by Ricardo González
My name is Ricardo González and I’m 47 years old. I’m an architect with a Master’s Degree in Architectural Design. I draw, paint, play Classical Music in the piano, compose music, and design architectural projects. I have been working in the area of Architectural Design for almost 24 years and practice the other fine arts in my free time.
Art has always been a very important part of my life. All my free time I practice some form of art. I started drawing since I was about three years old, but stopped at 12 when I started playing music in the keyboard. I started composing music when I was 14. Later on I started studýing Architecture, when I was 18. When I graduated, at age 23, I started working in the area of architectural design in different firms. That is where I got interested in geometry and composition. I studied my Master’s Degree in my early 30’s and found out that I really like research, too. At this point I started drawing again, as a way to gain a deeper understanding of the visual aspects of nature and apply them to art. I started practicing different techniques: pencils, charcoal, colored pencils, pastels, drawing ink, markers, and oil painting. When I was 35, I became a teacher in college for five years, while continuing my work as an architect. The classes I taught are related to Descriptive Geometry, Drawing, and Creativity. When I turned 40 I quit teaching and started playing the piano and learning (informally) composition methods of Classical Music. In my mid 40’s I started getting interested in sculpture and literature, too. However, I haven’t had time to practice them as much as I would like.
My greatest artistic challenge is that the only formal art teachers that I had were from College and the Master’s Degree. In Architecture I received a formal education from teachers and bosses. In the rest of the fine arts that I practice, I learn most of the material by myself. For example, I learned how to read music because my 2nd grade music teacher taught us music notation in school and a friend who studied drums with a formal teacher told me that all those symbols we were learning are used to read music. So I found a score of the Moonlight Sonata (I knew what it sounded like) and “followed the instructions”. If it sounded like what I usually hear, I was reading it correctly. It worked. A friend’s father played the trumpet and I usually asked him about different symbols that I found in the scores when I read music. I learned how to compose music by analizing the different parts of the pieces I was playing. I learned some procedures from classical music composition from videos and books.
I do not remember how I learned to draw, I always knew how to do that. However, during my Master’s Degree I analized in greater detail how light impacts on the surfaces of objects and when I applied that on my drawings, I could draw realistically. In painting things got more complicated because I had to do some research to learn how to use paint and brushes, but I have had no teachers to learn from. I haven’t been able to develop the oil painting technique to the degree that I want. I can draw and paint realistically, but I take much longer than I wish I did. I believe that all arts are very much related to one another and like comparing what I learn in any one of them with the rest (but remembering that each has an individual identity).
What I want to learn in art is: better control of the techniques, better knowledge of the styles that the old masters had, and enough theory to be able to explore ideas that interest me more freely.
I’m very impressed with Old Masters Academy. The teachers have a great depth of understanding of the topics they teach and also dominate the techniques in a masterful way. It’s definitely an academy that can change your life.
I want to win the Old Masters Academy course because the material that I’ve seen in the demonstration videos is so much better than any book that I’ve ever read and any other video that I’ve ever seen. That information would enable me to do so many things. Also, by studying with these great teachers, I can get an excellent feedback that can allow me to see my mistakes faster and improve my work faster than ever before. I believe that the methods that the old masters used (in all arts) must have been very effective. In music, for example, I studied counterpoint (from a book by Fux that I bought on Amazon) I found out that those rules make you compose better music with less effort and much faster. I still cannot undesrtand why, but it works. Also, I have studied in many courses online about the structures in Classical Music composition and it’s amazing until what point the rules are based on the most practical approaches. Those methods that are taught from generation to generation are very valuable because they possess the best lessons of many generations of great artists. I think it is impossible for a single person to come up with anything better. I would really like to learn the methods of the old masters in painting. I really believe that they can change my life, as an artist.
Why should people vote for me? The artwork I do is both a form of research of artistic topics I’m interesting in exploring and also a series of ideas that I want to share with the public. With a better artistic education, my artwork will improve and I will be able to share better ideas with the public.
The artwork that I’m uploading is an oil painting of a white horse running in the snow. It is based on a photograph that I found on the Internet.
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