Art Making | Drawing from the Collections: Capturing the Everyday

The Art Museum is partnering with the Arts Council of Princeton to provide free online drawing classes. Weekly classes are taught by artist-instructor Barbara DiLorenzo over Zoom. With an emphasis on drawing with pen or pencil on paper, each week’s lesson will be inspired by works in the Museum’s collections. 

This live art-making class is inspired by Mary Cassat’s Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, Looking Down. One of America's leading expatriate artists, Cassatt fully exploited pastel’s painterly and spontaneous qualities, as exemplified by this image of a fashionably dressed woman caught in a moment of repose or reverie. The artist’s bold strokes on the bonnet and colorful upholstery enliven these inanimate surfaces and offset the higher degree of finish on the woman's face. Her concealed eyes convey a sense of psychological privacy. In this class, we will find our own everyday event to capture. Maybe it’s a pet snuggled up near us while we draw, or a family member reading a book nearby.