just pics today folks. see Anne? I got out of my house and into the hills. If I'd gone earlier in the day, there would have been sunshine. oops.
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fighting gravity and other incontrovertible forces
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6 comments:
Wooo! I love it!
Fiona or Nalu (can't tell them apart by sight yet) in that second picture looks so in her element. A big change from the backyard across from the Memorial Centre, eh?
Love the colors of the moss etc. Looks like a great place to go walking. What's the rock? Is it all dark black and ropey? Does it have light chunks in it? Reds?
Your art classroom sounds amazing. What do you think you'll do for the first couple of weeks?
I worked all day with K the last couple of days. Fun; although he is sick or allergic, so took some allergy medicine that made him g-o s-l-o-w. I also learned that H doesn't have an answering machine at all... somehow this is very fitting, I think. Nice guy, but a distinctive character.
It's chilly here, the time of year when you wear a long-sleeved shirt outside but bring a sweater with you just in case.
-Anne
I think K is just sick because he misses me. It's psychosomatic ;)
I think we'll start with some sketching, then do a few perspective exercises for the first week. I want to mix it up with speed-sketching, to make them loosen up a bit - it's only art!! it's only paper and pencil! but I want to get into something more fun within the first two weeks to capture their interests. we might even start with something pictionary-ish, because i want them to get engaged right off the bat. or finger-painting because it's so fun and messy and it's impossible to take it seriously.
that's fiona eating a caribou bone. she's the black-and-white one. I believe the rock is granite, but I'm not 100% sure. something metamorphic for sure. everytime I look at tundra landscapes I can't believe how prehistoric they look. I keep accidently believing that some ancient civilization must have placed the rocks where they are. sort of like the Giant's walkway or staircase or whatever it's called in Ireland.
Do the exercise where they have 60 seconds to draw a gesture drawing of a person in different poses, and they're not allowed to look at the page! Or the one where they have to draw a still life, but never lift their pencil so it's all one continuous line. I love those first, elementary drawing exercises.
-A
see here's the tricky thing: I've never ever actually taken a fine arts class. I've done lots... oils, watercolours, sketching, cartooning, pottery, plaster casting, leather tooling, copper tooling, lino block carving, other carving.... I have lots of experience. But I've never had a drawing class. I just learned about gesture drawings today!
Any other little tips for me? I should've taken an elementary art class...
The content of a basic drawing course. The exercises are all meant to get you to turn off the part of your mind that relies on "symbols", and enable you to draw just what you actually see. I don't know what order to put these exercises in, but...
1. Gesture drawings of human subject. 60 (or, 120) seconds per pose, draw fast and try to capture the "essence" of the pose. After 60 seconds, the model switches positions and the artists start on a new drawing. A nice soft black crayon or charcoal is better for this than pencil, if you can manage it. Do 5 or 10 of these in a row; each kid will have some that she likes and some she doesn't. You can discuss which ones capture the pose best, and why.
2. Contour drawing. Draw only the outlines of whatever the subject is (still life, human model). Do a few short ones, maybe 5 minutes per.
3. Blind contour drawing. Draw only the outlines, but don't look at the page as you go. This forces you to really look at all the bumps, notches, smooth places, etc. It doesn't matter if the final drawings look right; you're meant to be honing your observational skill, and the ability of your hand to draw what your eye is seeing. Drawing your own hand is good for this. Here's a link:
Blind contour drawings
4. Take a photo or drawing of a scene -- maybe of the main street of town, maybe of some city they've never been to. Make a copy for each student. Have them spend 5 minutes copying the scene. Then have them turn the model upside down, and spend 5 minutes drawing it that way. Compare the drawings they came up with -- often copying a photo/drawing upside down allows you to reproduce it more accurately, because you're just recording what your eye sees, rather than what your brain tells you is there.
5. To teach shading, paint a bunch of still-life objects matte white. Balls, cups, pop bottles, etc. Assemble a still life out of all these white things. Then they can practice how to draw the shading to make the round parts look round, and the flat parts look flat. You can show them how different kinds of cross-hatching work, etc.
6. To illustrate how different line weights can influence the way a drawing looks, have them draw an object as if it were a wire frame -- that is, with contour lines all the way across the surface. Make the lines heavier and darker on the parts of the object that are farther away from you. A ball is a good place to start, but then your own hand is great. Drawing your own shoes is also good.
7. Perspective is good!
8. Projects they can be working toward:
a. symbolic self-portrait
b. realistic self-portrait
c. flag or tourist brochure for their town
d. comic book page
e. one really good still life
f. drawing of any subject, using the different kinds of perspective you talk about
Sigh. Ok, now I've given myself a headache. :) Off to not look at the computer screen....
-A
Another thought -- I don't know how all this standard western drawing curriculum fits in with the local art style up there.
But something you can show them is some of Picasso's later works, contrasted with what he was doing when he was 14 years old. For example, the second image on this page: Here
He was incredibly technically skilled, and could make a completely realistic scene. His later art is non-realistic by choice, not because he was unskilled. (This blew my mind when I was about 14.) So by learning these drawing skills you don't automatically give up the ability to make non-realistic kinds of art.
-A
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