Art 1: Your First Painting

I will try to keep this short, I promise.
But no promises.

I looked through all of the brainstorming pages and thumbnails that were turned in last week while sitting in my comfy blue chair in the living room on Sunday.
There are some good ideas, but some things that certainly need to be addressed.

-First, have you read through all of the notes and pages for the color theory unit (topic four) in Canvas? I can tell some of you have not.

-Let's go over some reminders in terms of best practices for composition. The below are in no particular order.

-Do not sit objects all on a line. Or along the bottom or edge of the paper. You don't want everything to look like it is flat and/or on one place of existence.

-Overlapping! Make things closer to us look bigger and have them cover up part of whatever it is that is in the background. Please. This adds visual interest and a sense of space/depth.

-Be aware of the angle of view. If we see the top of something we should probably not also see the side of something. Think about perspective and depicting a 3D box in space. We have drawn this before, and if you don't remember, have you thought about googling something? (not a huge deal with thumbnails, but sooner or later it matters)

-Would it be more interesting to combine more than one or two of your "cultures"? You do not have to focus on one thing.

-Speaking of that, your use of your cultures can come across in a lot of different ways. Could you include some things in your painting that are what you just like to paint or some things you think are just interesting? Again, you can put a lot of different things together. It makes it more interesting sometimes, and it gives you more stuff to put in your painting (and more places to put the painting requirements - more on that later).

-Does it help to think of other/similar words than "culture"? Maybe "heritage" or "identity"? These aren't necessarily interchangeable, but might help.


I know it can be strange making these tiny sketches, but it is a good exercise. Remember that the final piece is 14"x18". The small rough draft you will move on to next is 7"x9". Even that is quite a bit bigger.

We will talk about the technical requirements in class tomorrow - or next week.
Please also begin watching at least the "getting started" video in Canvas. I'm not sure we will have our paint out tomorrow, but maybe...

Lastly, please review the composition notes in Canvas as well as re-reading the above points again.

For real my last comment...
I know we all want to be on vacation mode tomorrow, but you really need to use the time to be productive and efficient (otherwise we will be hurting even more when we come back from break). If you are waiting for me to approve your thumbnails, work on your sketchbook for Ch. 3.