Art 120 Fall 2008
MW 11:00-1:50
Jennifer Meanley
jhmeanle@uncg.edu
Office Hours by appointment only: 222 Gatewood, 256-1110
'Searching': The act of deep scrutiny that examines, finds, and reveals what is concealed.
Course Description and Objectives:
Drawings carry many functions for both the artist and the viewer. Drawing challenges and develops the ability to look first: inquisitively, and then to see comprehensively. We will work out solutions to drawing problems by finding the relationship between parts and by breaking down design into its components. Drawing is an investigation which seeks two-dimensional translations of three-dimensional realities. Drawing is the primary and often first exhibited impulse of the creative mind. Learning to draw inquisitively is similar to learning a new language.
We will investigate:
-Gesture, and the intuitive relationship between the mind and the hand
-Form, searching for its underlying structure (learning how to see deeply)
-The experience and expression of the materials themselves
Expectations: We will develop the ability to use drawing as a means of exploration as well as a generative process that enables conceptual thought. This class should challenge your ability to work responsively, quickly, and with innate visual intuition, as well as to work and respond to the needs of the drawing itself. This class will help foster the visual intelligence intrinsic to and necessary as a component of visual language. It will illuminate the fundamental principles of design, composition, creation of form and light. Overall, you should finish this class as a flexible person who can use drawing and your imagination to accomplish a myriad of drawing applications and ideas.
This course will also consist of a series of slide lectures and readings relative to the processes and motifs explored in class and in assignments. Historical as well as contemporary artists in both art as well as literature will be introduced. It is my hope that this component of the class serves as both didactic as well as inspiration for your own pictorial ideas.
Recommended Reading:
A Giacometti Portrait, James Lord
Art and Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland
A Guide to Drawing, Daniel M. Mendelowitz
Attendance Policy
Being successful in this class is dependent on attending this class; attendance is a vital part of your participation and classwork grade. Classwork is applied to your grade; there are no makeup sessions for class work-time. Should serious illness or emergency make attending class impossible, official documentation is required for an excused absence. A doctors note would count as appropriate documentation.
1. You are allowed 2 unexcused absences during the semester. Every subsequent absence will result in the drop of a letter grade. Six or more absences (regardless of whether or not they are excused) constitutes an automatic failure of the course.
2. Tardiness will not be tolerated:
-You must arrive to class promptly and be set-up and ready to work by the beginning of the class period.
-Discussions, lectures and instructions are generally given at the beginning of class, interrupting these because of tardiness is not only a distraction to others but it also means that you miss information essential to your own success in this class. Tardiness will count against your final attendance grade. Three late arrivals equal an absence. Arriving to class 30 (or more) minutes late counts as an absence.
-You must utilize class time effectively: this includes working until the end of class and coming to class with the necessary materials for each assignment.
Homework:
-will be assigned every Wednesday and will be due the following Wednesday. This will be subject to slight change throughout the semester.
Midterm and Final Portfolio Review:
-You must purchase or make a portfolio large enough to carry all of your work. This portfolio will be reviewed twice during the semester in an individual meeting. ALL of your work must be kept neat and safe.
Critique:
All students are expected to participate fully in class activities, with particular emphasis placed on class critiques. Not contributing to class discussions is unacceptable. You are expected to be prepared to speak in an honest and forthcoming manner about your own work and the work of your peers. This promotes communal momentum regarding the making of work. You are to consider yourself working artists for the duration of this semester.
Grading Policy
-Artistic creativity is a comprehensive, developmental activity. Grading is based on the students performance in several related areas:
-Evidence of students understanding and mastery of techniques and concepts
-Implementation of those ideas in assignments
-Degree of participation in class and in group-critiques
-Attitude and willingness to experiment
-Initiative demonstrated and individual effort during and outside of class
-Overall preparedness and progress through the semester
-Students completing the basic requirements will receive a C grade
-Students meeting the basic requirements of each assignment who attend every class and contribute reasonable to the general educational environment of the group, will receive a grade of C+
-B work exceeds the basic requirements. A work is exceptional
-Talent alone does not ensure a good grade in this course. A student who works hard, adheres to the assignments and applies the lessons will excel.
Studio Policy and Classroom Conduct:
NO USE OF I-PODS, CD PLAYERS, CELL PHONES, OR ANY ELECTRONICS DURING CLASS TIME!!
As with any academic class, you are subject to the rules and penalties of the Student Code of Ethics.
-We will all treat each other with respect and behave in a manner conducive to learning.
-The studio will be kept neat and safe at all times. As in any art class, this means paying close attention to the use of your materials in order to ensure the safety of everyone. No food or drink is permitted in the classroom.
-Without exception, you will treat the Models with respect. Models are hired to do a job, you will refrain from making any comments either to or about the model that might be construed as offensive or negative.
Required Materials:
Drawing
Portfolio
Masonite Drawing Board 24x30 or
larger
Drawing Clips
Drawing Pad-
18x24-(Strathmore 400)
A viewfinder (3x4
with a window and a 6x8 with a window)
A Sketchbook 9x12 or
11x14 (hardbound)
Newsprint Pad-18x24
One package of Char-kole (name brand)
SOLID GRAPHITE
(woodless) Drawing Pencils 2H,HB, 2B, 4B, and 6B
Charcoal Pencil HB,
2B, 4B, and 6B (hard, medium, soft and extra-soft)
Conte crayons-black
(2)
Vine charcoal
(soft/medium) several packets
Compressed Charcoal
(alpha color black charcoal)
Large Kneaded Eraser
White Staedtler Eraser
Workable Spray
Fixative
Pencil Sharpener
Artbin or Tackle Box
Several
cups for ink and water
Medium Bamboo Ink
Brush
Black Waterproof India
Ink
1 Chamois
1 small tube of white
acrylic paint
Masking tape
Fine felt tip black
sharpie
1 box clear push pins
Scissors
Rubber cement
Specialty Paper will have to be purchased as needed from mid-semester on:
To begin with you should purchase 3 sheets of Rives BFK
Semester Breakdown:
The semester will be divided around major drawing concepts and motifs.
1.
We will begin with drawings that rely exclusively on line to convey the gesture, shape, volume, visual weight, and integration of objects and spaces. We will use blind contour, contour, and construction lines to accomplish these objectives. Line is incredibly diverse as a visual tool. It can be singular or plural tentative or bold, lyrical or architectonic.
Line also has the capability to transition easily from the graphic into the atmospheric and thus can serve as a good transitional tool into understanding the function of tone and value in drawing. As you will find, line must be built in order to indicate tone and thus it differs significantly from charcoal, ink, conte or other tonal drawing materials. Because of this, line is a good tool for teaching us how to envision the construction of form from the inside out and not just in relation to its edges.
2.
We will use line to begin to understand the play of light and shadow over a motif. From here, we will begin to construct drawings that rely on light and shadow as descriptive elements that provide the transitions and fractures between objects and space. Light can homogenize or clarify the relationships between the masses formed by objects; similarly, it optically influences the read of edges and contours. We will use ink, conte, and charcoal to explore the potential of light and tone. Conte and ink are tricky as they are additive materials: preservation of light is a factor as is the correct massing of the darks. Charcoal presents the opportunity to work in a subtractive manner in which lights are pulled out of a midtone and darks are massed.
Working with tone can help us to understand the shaping elements of constructing spacial compositions. The dark shapes and the light shapes move the viewers eyes and also syncopate the rhythms contained within the picture plane. When dealing with tone, it is important to keep in mind that harmonizing the whole is important from the beginning: individual light effects mean nothing without a supporting context.
3.
Throughout the semester we will work from life: specifically from the still life and the figure. In addition to this, we will begin to venture into narrative or conceptual based projects that couple work from life with imagined elements. In one such project we will explore the idea of storytelling in light of other artistic mediums (writing or music for instance) and its success based on the artists ability to create associative imagery within the imagination of the audience. Are the visual components of storytelling made up of references to objects and specific things, or is the visual more palpable and potent when it references CONTEXT through the use of the tools we have already explored: figure vs. ground relationships, light and dark, movement vs. the static, containment vs. openness, and the establishment of perspective?
You will chose a piece of none visual art (such as some form of music or writing) that you find visually evocative. It is your job to create a drawing that invokes the same sensibility as this other piece of art. This can be accomplished through observational drawing from many sources. You will be responsible for finding or constructing one or more life-sources into a scenario or possibly a diorama from which you will draw and try to mold to an idea or theme. This may be a composite drawing that uses more than a single source. This will constitute a final project.
Course Schedule (subject to change as needed):
Wk 1: Introduction to course and materials. Slide lecture: overview of different artists and drawing applications. Introduction to line drawing: continuous-line drawing and blind contour drawing. Ideas: Engagement of the inside and outside of the form simultaneously.A look at the descriptive potential of line.The idea of line as an element of movement, speed, rhythm.The temporality of line.Line becoming form, becoming topography.
-Purchase all materials for Wednesday's class!! Bring Complex organic objects.
-Blind contour and Continuous-line drawing.
Assignment: Drawing of shoes. Inside outside. Simultanaeity. Stacking of line.
Wk 2: Moving from the schematic line to the line that conveys space: conversation on the weight of line, density of mark in correlation to the near vs. the far; the visually emphatic vs. purposeful understatement.
View Finders
Lyricism, cadence, parts to the whole (shoes?)
In class: work from object landscape concentration on developing recessional space, and topographical form through the diversification of the continuous-line technique. Beginning to think about intention within the picture-plane: picking your composition: space = composing along the diagonal. Forward to back scale change: subsequent line modification. View finders.
Reading: Line and Its Expression: Mendelowitz
Homework: Virtual Landscape project: Create a virtual landscape by choosing any small type of manufactured form that you have a lot of. For example: thumbtacks, nuts/bolts/screws, paper clips. Using a flat surface arrange these objects so that they form both, a mass or pile and also a point at which they scatter in space away from the pile. Your objective is to use the continuous-line type drawing to describe this situation in such a way that the viewer is aware of both: the objects and the way that they relate to one another to form the overall mass, and also the ways in which the objects retain a sense of individualism that creates space through visual emphasis (line weight and density), overlap and scale change. How will you lead the viewer through the space? The drawing should be executed in such a way that the objects feel larger than life: as though the viewer is an ant located in this object-scape.
Wk. 3: Beginning sighting and measuring. Transparent construction line. Ideas: Creating form without relying on the contour. Emergent form that is seen as though felt through touch. Line as both object and air: the atmospheric line/ Transparent Construction. Edge quality: the palpability of visually emphatic intersections and high points on forms and the lightness/obscurity of non-visually emphatic edges. Drawing what you see not what you know. Building form from the inside out.
Work in class from paper-bag still life. Accounting for what falls in your field of vision but being accountable for creating the subject of the drawing: what is the event in the piece and how is it distinguishable through the line and drawing?
Reading: Learning How to See Deeply: Mendelowitz
Homework: Construction line drawing of organic forms. Examples: dried leaves, plants, flowers, sticks/twigs. The objects must be oriented in a way that indicates space through forward to back overlap and transition. Creating space through the forms themselves: pushing and pulling the forms forward and back through the differentiation of mark and line quality. Atmospheric perspective. The wandering Composition/Editing.
Wk 4:
Direction and movement: anchoring forms at intersections: movement traveling
outward from static points.
Ideas: Creating a drawing is a bit like creating a
flat matrix of marks on the page that is then interpreted to appear visually spacial. When forms are open (think of looking through the
branches of a tree) the intersections created between the areas of solidity
communicate information, not only about the forms themselves, but also about
how they occupy space. The intersections located close to the viewer appear
fewer and more open than as the eye travels back in space where intersections
occur with more density but possibly with less individual distinction. We
advance the use of the construction line, to create a drawing based on the
notation of intersections and built to indicate directional movement and
arabesque through the reading of the forms.
Work in class from set-up.
Reading: Begin James Lords A Giacometti Portrait.
Homework: Manufactured and Transparent objects. Texture, touch, fragility vs. weight.
Wk 5: Negative and positive shapes. Creating form through the drawing of negatives.Parts to the whole.Advancing line towards tone. Texture.
Work from complex installation setup - Aerial perspective of objects. Picture plane as embodiment of the literal space.
Homework: Negative shape drawing
Week six:
Positive and negative shape continued as a basis for introducing
light/shadow/tone. (three tones) Artists: Morandi, Dickinson, Diebenkorn. Lateral/horizontal composition and read.
Work from slides andCollage of still life. Simple to complex fracturing of tonal relationships.
Reading: Continue A Giacometti Portrait
Homework: Collage as seen through a framed doorway. (view finder to door relationship)
Wk. 7: Introduction to charcoal with simple geometric forms. Reductive vs. additive technique.Light as the illuminator of form and the destroyer of descriptive information.
Work from the setup. How do both light and shadow visually syncopate a space? Trying to establish a sense of context as well as visual navigation through passageways of light and dark.
Homework: Simple Reductive drawing.
Wk 8: Midterm portfolio reviews. Charcoal and line drawing coexisting.Intro to multiple tool approach.Communal round robin drawing.Visit the Weatherspoon. Critical Writing Assignment.
Drawing in a darkened space/theatrical space.
Reading: An assortment of poems: Rilke, Neruda, Ginsberg: How does language become visually associative beyond the realm of subject matter? What types of drawings act in the same way? How do you begin to create a visual environment without relying on merely illustrating subject matter?
Homework: Drawing that deals with 'light as the main event'
Wk. 9: Light and dark as speed and rhythm. How darks create the visual passageways we see. Work from the interior space.
Homework: Tonal drawing from interior space that becomes transformative/emotive in nature due to the 'feeling' attached to the nature of the light.
Week 10: Introduction to ink. simple objects. massing of forms. retaining the white of the page. page as picture plane.
Homework: ink studies from shoebox dioramas. Creating the mini-drama. Real abstraction: creating a visual context through observational drawing of everyday objects seen from unconventional vantage points. For example, if set up in a diorama, with a deliberate lighting situation/cast shadows, normal objects can be visually personified and a story can be told.
Wk 11: Introduction to the portrait. Proportion.
Homework: self portrait.
Week 12: Round robin portrait groups. Ink. Collage.
Homework: self portrait composite collage
Reading: Julie Mehretu Article
Week 13:
Figures in space: simultaneity
Homework: Final project proposal and beginning. Large quality
paper.
Week 14:
Continued: figures in space: Simultaneity
Homework: first review of final.
Week Fifteen: Begin Final Critiques and Meetings
Week Sixteen: Finish Final Critiques and Meetings. Portfolios due, they will be available for pick-up at the end of exam week.