Today's Class- Today the main topic was the formal issue of value and its use in fine art. Value is the use of light and dark, which can be used in two dimensional art to describe local appearance, to imply three dimensional space, to show texture, to focus attention, to demonstrate time of day, and many other things. I showed a few dozen slides of historical art, from the ancient world to the 20th century, examples of all these concepts. This was followed by our latest portfolio exercise, value drawing using charcoal. Students who missed last week had the opportunity to choose topics for the research assignment.
How to make this up- You will need to set up a suitable still life. Place a box on top of a table and drape with a white or light colored sheet. Place on top of the box three white or light colored objects and light the whole set up with a directional light, creating patterns of light and shadow on the whole still life. Draw the whole thing using charcoal, trying to match the value of the objects as closely as possible. Background value tones can be whatever you want.
Above is a student example of charcoal value drawing from a previous semester. More instructions and an additional student example can be found here.
This is a portfolio exercise that can be made up for full credit any time before the end of the semester.
For next class 2/17/17- We will begin a new project, our first dealing with color. The assignment is a mosaic/collage, reproducing a color image from a magazine photo using small pieces of color from other magazine photos, similar in effect to the way mosaics build images from small pieces of colored stone or tile. Below are some student examples from a previous semester.
