Portland Art Museum

Today's assignment was to go to the gallery of photographs of African-Americans and work on people whose features were not like ours.  I wasn't thrilled about drawing from photographs, but then, drawing people who aren't white is a problem for me.  But the photos were small and the gallery dark, which was also a problem.



I stuck with the 19th century, starting with a cabinet card that was slightly larger than the rest of the photographs.  The hair was the bit I was focused on - the facial features were mainly by shading.







Then I leafed through the books in the reading alcove.  I read bits of one on the history of African-Americans in Portland.  But it had no portraits, and the people's faces were tiny.  Eventually I picked out a photo of Frederick Douglas that had extremely high contrast.









Afterwards we met in the museum coffee shop.  (And I learned that I can get a discount there, because of my membership.)