TURSSDAY

Above is a drawing by Alberto Giacometti. You can see those searching lines that I was talking about in class in this drawing. The process is very evident and quite beautiful. It keeps the drawing from looking stiff and dead.


Here is another image I thought of in relation to self portraiture. We should begin to think of the self portrait as something more than an assignment. It is a portrayal of our true self, or perhaps a portrayal of our fake self. In any case, it is more than a front facing study. I want us to begin thinking about exactly what it is YOUR self portrait looks like and what it is your drawing says about you or about your world. In other words, what do composition, scale (full body, upper torso, lower torso, detail of teeth etc) line quality, contrast, all of that stuff you learned about last year, what do they have to do with you and how do you implement them in a meaninful way? You should begin thinking about this.

I'd like to do another round or two of the blurred to focused picture on Thursday so bring the same materials you brought Tuesday. I'll bring my white chalk again. Check out this link to the next visiting artist. She sounds awesome....

Anya Kivarkis

Chuck Close and Fashion and Art

If you look at the Chuck close portrait above, underneath all of the little squiggly marks he makes on top of the painting, you'll see that the foundation is made of big dark blobs (the kind you see when you blur your eyes). Once these shapes are in place, it almost doesn't matter what you put on top of them, it will look like the face. You can sort of think of this as a foundation to build a strong house on. No one tries to buy matching curtains before digging a big hole to put the house on, so why do we draw perfect eyelashes before laying a strong foundation of gestural marks?

If you like Chuck Close, you can watch an interview with him on the Charlie Rose show here...

Charlie Close, on the Chuck Rose Show!

Here are a couple of links I've been checking out that you might be interested in. If you are interested in fashion, prepare for addiction...

The Sartorialist

This blog is a great discussion of some of the problems and some of the solutions to making it as an artist...

Imasellout

See you Tuesday!!!

Face It

We're going to begin drawing faces on Thursday. We'll do a couple of exercises to get warmed up and then we'll begin drawing each other. Again, unlearning will directly effect our learning, especially when it comes to drawing the face.

Please bring your black charcoal, conte crayons (black or sepia), white (make sure you have some white!), your newsprint and canson pads, and a kneadable and rubber eraser.

Any guesses as to who did the self-portrait above???

Ok. Here We Go!

First, Kudos to you for Thursday. Those are difficult things to do and they can be draining but the energy you approached them with got me very excited about the rest of the year. Maybe I just have good luck but I feel like I have another incredible class. Some of the drawings from Thursday were really beautiful!



For Tuesday, please bring your newsprint pad, and your Canson Pad. Your black Conte crayon will be really great for what we're going to work on but so will your LYRA graphit stick. I suppose a pencil will be fine as long as it's pretty soft lead, like 6B or one of those Ebony pencils will work really great too. I forgot to tell you to buy two or three black China Markers (wax pencils). Bring those if you have them. If you haven't gotten your materials yet, make sure you get China Martkers too. If you already made the trek to pick stuff up, don't worry about it, but next time you go, pick some up. They're like 89 cents a piece and they make beautiful marks. Might want to bring an eraser too.

(Bring both of these)
Newsprint pad
Canson Pad
(bring some or all of these)...
Conte Crayon (preferably HB)
LYRA Stick
Ebony Pencil
China Markers
Eraser

Make sure you bring your materials. People leaving class to go get materials is very distracting. Let's not do it.
We're going to be working from observation, and from our imagination. See you Tuesday...if it doesn't snow!

Bonus points if you can tell me who made these drawing or who did the photograph of a mentally retarded white tiger below.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog. This is where I'll post what to bring to class, what to read, what to check out, what to walk it out, and stuff. Leave a comment so that I know you've stopped by and aren't having problems getting onto this site.