The term thus far......

Summer term is experienced at such a breakneck pace; I feel like I'm only hitting the high spots sometimes. With only 23 sessions, I suppose I am.

Week One: Time spent exploring media and exercises to develop seeing and some basic concepts like proportion, measuring, and plumb and level lines.  Gesture drawings, simple tonal drawing (and working reductively), mark-making, ink wash and line, and looking at negative space and figure ground relationships.  My mantra is "energy----draw with your shoulder, not your fingers! The energy perceived in a work is directly related to energy expended in making it".  Homework this week was to set up their own still life, light it, and create an 18x24" tonal drawing using charcoal, chamois, and erasers.  Emphasis is placed on drawing with the eraser, not just erasing mistakes with it.

90% enrolled in this class are NOT art majors, but they all (with an exception here and there) are really pushing themselves to develop in ways that are totally new to them.

Week Two: Contour line, searching line, calligraphic line, hatching, and cross-hatching. Homework was to copy an old master drawing (from a stack I offered) that focusing on line. Drawings were required to be 2x (or more) the size of the reproduction.

Week Three: Value; we created value scales and talked about the 3 factors that influence value:
1. amount of illumination
2. local value
3. value of surrounding space
A short, simple value study from still life was completed, and then we began a longer study of cast drawings.

Week 4: Drapery Study. We looked at Leonardo's drapery studies, and talked about texture, shading and heightening (lightening with white).

Leonardo da Vinci drapery study. 

Images to come, but here is the drapery still life (3 values).  I think this is where the class started to hate me. They worked on grey Canson paper with black and white prismacolor pencils.  The quality of these pencils really disturbs me.  After years of not using them because they break constantly, I had finally started using them again because they seemed to be improving.  I was wrong. Crappy.  I recommend Derwent pencils instead.

On Tuesday of Week 4, students selected a small object from a group of items I collected.  Focusing on texture and pattern, they reproduced a small section of their object. We also watched a video from Art 21 about Veja Celmins.

Wednesday of Week 4 was a chance to take texture and pattern into collage.  We looked at Picasso, Romare Bearden, and assorted other collage artists.  I find that most students try to cram too much into their first collage, so we focused on keeping it simple and economical. Emphasis on pattern and texture.

Homework this week was to put the finishing touches on the cast drawing, drapery drawing and the collage.  Images to come!

WHEW!!