Well I'm getting closer to finishing plate 1.2 of the course, here's some small progress on it, hopefully I'll have it done by this weekend and will post here.

Rembrandt van Rijn
(July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669)
Was a Dutch painter. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. He was the premier portrait painter of his time and a made a good fortune by doing so, but later in his life he ended up broke even as his art was still revered. He taught almost all the influential Dutch artists of his time. His time as an artist is usually referred to as the Dutch Golden Age. He had many misfortunes on the personal side of his life as 3 of his 4 children died after a few days or weeks of life, only his 4th son Titus lived into adulthood. His works are amazing and it was said that he created over 600 paintings during his life, but recently they have been counted down to about 300. What most impresses me about Van Rijn is how showed the realism and emotion with his thick strokes and dark colors, the mood of his paintings were so credible like you could feel the pain, happiness or seriousness of the subject. Rembrandt outlived his son Titus, who died in 1668, leaving a baby daughter. Rembrandt died within a year of his son, on October 4, 1669 in Amsterdam, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Westerkerk.

here's a quick post on progress on plate 1.2, again using pencils HB to 2B.

Raphael Sanzio
(1483–1520)
Considered 1 of the 3 great masters trinity of the high renaissance along with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He was very influential, well known during his time and died at a very early age (37) on good friday (after a crazy night of sex with his mistress, after which he fell sick and did not want to tell doctors why so they gave him the wrong medicine which caused his death), but he was also very productive and an incredible amount of work of his still remains. He was also a well known architect. During his life he was the most famous of the 3 and remained so until recently when both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci have received a lot of promotion.