Exciting things are happening this fall! The original HV Jenkins, built in 1956, has been knocked down to make way for the new facility, and it is gorgeous (and huge)! The map above is ONLY THE FIRST FLOOR! Art Room 32 is now Art Room 1314, and Mrs. Baker's Art Room, 31, is now 1312. My schedule for the inaugural fall semester will be:
1 Planning 2 Art Foundations (Art I) 3 Art Foundations (Art I) 4 Drawing No worries, Painting will be offered during the spring semester. Stay tuned for Open House information!!
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Well, another year in the books.....my 14th year as an educator. As usual, I will miss this year's group but look forward to meeting my new babies in the fall. Now that standardized assessments have infiltrated the creative arts, my love of teaching will definitely need to override my hatred of testing. One definite highlight of this year was the return of my Printmaking program. I had a wonderful group of seniors who were very enthusiastic about learning new techniques and working in a new medium. That being said, I did not (and still do not) have a press, and the cost has made acquiring one very daunting. If you would like to help, I have set up a DonorsChoose site, and all funds go directly to the wholesaler from whom I hope to buy it: http://www.donorschoose.org/project/press-to-impress/1568609/
This week we are working on gesture drawing,which is new and different for most students. The biggest difference between contour drawing and gesture drawing is that the former captures an object (noun), while the latter captures an action (verb). The object is not to draw the thing itself, but to draw what the thing is doing. Our generous volunteer models did quick-change poses for us and here are my results: Stay tuned for some student work, some great still-life stuff, and more!!!
After an unexpected hiatus from blog life, I am back! We are starting a unit on color theory and who better to feature as the artist of the week than Peter Max? I adore him and his fantastic sense of chromatic exuberance! This one is called Cosmic Flyer, and it makes me think of my favorite grave to visit in my favorite place to visit, the exquisitely gorgeous Bonaventure Cemetery. Conrad Aiken's marker is a bench inscribed with the epitaphs "Cosmos Mariner, Destination Unknown" and "Give My Love to the World." I do believe that this is what he meant.....happy drawing!
The weekend is finally here! I get to go home and draw with my own children- me and my beloved Prismacolor pencils. Just as I discovered that Aqua Net hairspray was a great 99 cent alternative to the $9.99 pastel/charcoal fixative I needed in art school, I have discovered that cheap acetone (the kind used for nail polish remover) works just as well as any commercially available solvent used to blend Prisma pencils. The drawing of pearls in the earlier entry was done with Prismas and acetone, as were these older drawings of hard candies (the top one is a bit damaged): The secret here is to use the complement of each color, not black, for the shadows and lowlights, and to mask out the highlights before putting down anything else. Here's to a productive (and warm!) weekend for all of my readers. :)
I love this semester!! So far my efforts to teach shading to my new Drawing kids have met with much more success than I had during my last go-around. I have been preparing some example sketches ahead of time, as if I needed an excuse to pull out the supplies and draw: I am extremely lucky to have the job that I do. I get to hang out and draw eggs with cool people. It takes the sting out of the bureaucratic hassles and makes me happy to be me. Stay tuned for more fruit, seashells, and soda cans than you can shake a stick at.
My students have been very busy this week learning the fundamentals of contour drawing. We have taken for our subject the ordinary shoe, and I have taken them on a brief tour of shoes in the history of art. Some of the highlights include, of course, Vincent van Gogh's many lovingly executed portraits of footwear: In addition to contour drawing the lesson included rules #1 and #2 of good composition: balancing positive and negative space and the rule of thirds. I encouraged them to "pose" their "models" in an interesting way that included some overlapping to create a sense of depth and space. Your shoes are a couple, not twins, I told them; and they don't always agree. One may see things this way while the other sees them upside down. Speculation ran wild as to why this image by Rene' Magritte bears the particular title that it does. A couple of students found it to be "creepy", but most thought it was "cool, like when Marty from 'Madagascar' couldn't decide if he was black with white stripes or white with black stripes." Score one for Surrealism. After wrapping up the project and discussing the Warhol above, everyone was ready to put their shoes back on....much Febreze had been sprayed. Stay tuned for an update on how our hand studies are coming along......
It has, so far, been a wonderful semester. I had an extremely challenging group this past fall (only one; the other two were very talented and sweet), and it is so refreshing to have cheerful, enthusiastic students all day. In my Drawing I class, I introduced myself on the very first day with not only my name but also my philosophy regarding learning to draw, as stated here by my spiritual guru Jake: Don't be afraid, I told them, to be bad at this for a while. You will miss some free throws, play a few flat notes. So far we have been drawing small objects on large paper and large objects on small paper, and I have made them do all sorts of wacky things like use their non-dominant hands, tie their drawing tools to the end of a stick and draw without looking at their papers. As I progress through the year, I plan to continue to implement the wisdom of Jake the Dog. First and foremost, and most importantly, my new mantra: And speaking of my very talented students, many of them will have work on display in this exhibit. If you are in the Savannah area please join us at the opening and/or stop by to see the artwork:
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