Today's Class- Today we took care of a bunch of things. We started the first graded project of the semester, a 2D project involving narrative. We looked at a few dozen slides of art that was created to tell stories, from the ancient world through contemporary. We also looked at slide examples of work that each student wrote about for their research papers, and discussed some of the things that were learned about in their research. The graded papers were returned. The last half hour of class we looked at some of the photos that students took as part of the photography assignment, seeing some of the interesting ways everyone met the challenges of each part. I also went over some of the schedule changes for the semester to make up for class lost to Hurricane Sandy.
How to make this up- The new project is a personal narrative in the format of a comic strip that uses symbolic characters to enhance the story. You will tell a true story from your past. It can be something of major or minor importance, happy or sad, something that took place over multiple years or in just a few minutes. The story will be told in 12 panels, spread over two pages of your 18" x 24" paper. The panels can be all the same size, or vary to suit the needs of the story. The pages can be vertical or horizontal, but it should be the same for both pages. The characters chosen to represent you and other people in the story should have a relationship to the theme of the story, or be personal symbols important to you and the people in the story. The symbols can be personified (faces, arms and legs) to whatever extent you like.
You can sketch out the story in pencil first, but it must be colored in using pastels. You may use a pen or marker for things like dialog or captions, but pastels for the color. (I'll demonstrate use of them early next class) The pages should have full color everywhere, though you may use white where it makes sense to represent objects (white clouds, etc) and you don't need to color in dialog balloons. Consider how to use a variety of color, and mixing in a variety of viewpoints, like close up, medium, and distant (as in the photos of buildings and people from different distances).
With everything else we had to take care of today, we didn't get much past discussion of the problem today, but we'll have almost all of the next class meeting to work on it, and you'll have another week after that before it will be due. I recommend that before our next meeting that you select a story, work out how you'll tell the story in 12 panels, and sketch some potential characters. That way, you can use more of the class time to work on the project. Above and below are examples of this project from previous semesters. More examples (including some pages from the Maus graphic novel that inspired this) and additional details about the project, including the use of symbolism in the characters, can be found here.
Homework- The completed comic book project will be due at the beginning of class on December 5, 2012. On that day we will look at them as group and have a brief critique.
The collograph project begun last week will be continued next class, so if you have not yet made a collagraph plate, you must make yours before our next class meeting on November 28, 2012.
The museum assignment is due by the last day of class, December 19, 2012. Don't wait too long to make your museum visit.
*****Thanksgiving Break November 22-25th*****
****No class meeting for us on Wed Nov 21st****
For next class 11/28/12- I will help students individually print their collagraph plates while everyone is continuing work on the comic strip project. Bring your 18" x 24" pad, pencil and eraser, pastels, and completed collagraph plate.
