Today's Class- Today was our second day of basic design principles, a quick review of art fundamentals that will be helpful once we start the more complex graded projects. I showed about two dozen slides of historical art, discussing how different compositional strategies were used by the various artists. Then we did two exercises relating to considering color, shape, value, and intensity in two dimensional composition.
How to make this up- We spent a little time as a group playing a few rounds of the composition game (above photo) with paper and pushpins on the wall. Then I had student take out their sketchbooks with the homework from last week, sketches from the show of quilts at the Human Rights Institute gallery. Each student selected one of their quilt sketches and reproduced the line composition on a larger scale on a sheet of their 18" x 24" paper. I selected some of the resulting shapes within the composition, the students outlined them with a black marker, and filled in the shapes with the colors of their choice, using crayons or colored pencils I provided. The last step was to use the same marker and create one or more new shapes on the page- not using the original pencil lines, but shapes of a similar nature to the chose quilt shapes- and complete the composition. Below is an example:
Then the student chose to create a single shape (the yellow crescent moon) and place it in the lower right corner.
Go through your sketches from the quilt show and choose one that has a fairly complex group of shapes, and draw it in your 18" x 24" pad, more or less filling the page. Bring that to class and I'll select the shapes to be outlined and colored. This is a portfolio exercise and must be made up by the end of the semester, but I recommend completing it before the next class, as we'll be starting the more complex graded projects with our next class meeting.
Homework- Choose 10 objects that can be considered personal symbols. They can be items that are rare or unique, or things that are very common. (think about the Cosplay show in the Dryfoos Gallery; the objects in each photo can be considered personal symbols of those characters) Do pencil contour line drawings of each object in your sketchbook, one or two per page.
***2/18/13 President's Day. No class next Monday***
For next class 2/25/13- We will discuss the use of structures and constraints in the creation of art, and begin our first graded project of the semester. Bring your 18" x 24" pad, sketchbook, pencils and eraser, and black markers.
