I like realistic paintings. My favorites are works by Spanish artists Diego Velázquez and Pablo Picasso. My favorite painting is Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez. Velázquez ’s paintings look so real that they force me to wonder if they are really paintings or if they are photographs. Another thing that I like about Velázquez is how he uses light, painting it so that he illuminates certain parts of the work to show that they are more important. In Las Meninas (1656) for example, Velázquez makes the Infanta Margarita look so special, and the viewer knows that she is the key figure in the painting. What I like about the Pablo Picasso’s paintings is the way in which he uses geometric shapes to create a figure or a scene.

