ANNUAL STUDENT COMPETITION
First Place
Ella Rose
Avery
ALBANY, CALIFORNIAI’ve been taking art classes
since elementary school, and
I’m beginning my freshman
year at the Pratt Institute this
fall. For this piece, I drew a
rough thumbnail sketch based
on my photo references to fi t
the composition into a square
format. I sketched the under-
drawing with burnt sienna.
I always fi nish one section
before moving on to another,
leaving the background for
last. Sometimes I leave colors
unmixed on my palette so that
unexpected streaks can come
out of the brush. I wasn’t
concerned about making the
fl esh look realistic; some-
where in the translation of the
reference—between my eye,
my brain and my hand—the
image had changed. I Am
the Mango was completed in
about 15 days. MW
ABOVE: I Am the Mango (acrylic
on canvas, 30x30)Second Place
Ekta Suri
SUGAR LAND, TEXAS
EKTASURIART.COMI used Prismacolor soft core
pencils for Sterile and worked
PORTRAIT/FIGURE
Third Place
Chris SooHoo
LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE,
CALIFORNIA
INSTAGRAM.COM/SOOOHOOOOFor an art project, I bought
a frozen octopus, then did a
photo shoot with my friend
as we played around with
it—holding it, making it
into a sandwich, whatever
we could think to do. I was
about to start painting from
that photo reference when
my instructor suggested
fi rst making a rough plaster-
of-Paris fi gurine of a squid
man, and then lighting it and
shooting reference photos
that we could use instead of
the original photos. I found
that this process of painting
from a craggy sculpture gave
the fi nal painting a level of
abstraction and strangeness,
while still being rooted in
some physical reality. The
actual time spent painting
was around four hours. MW
ABOVE: By the Side of the Road
(oil on panel, 14x11)DECEMBER 2016 67
64_tam1216Students.indd 67 9/22/16 8:34 AM