Daily Sketchbook 4/2

Good morning!
I'd like to walk backwards a little bit today and look at the week as a whole as we get started.

Friday: mindful moment; wrap up and self assessment of current painting; looking back at what we have created during the month of March (this will require you to have all of your independent practice or self-directed pieces here this week (I would bring them earlier vs later). You'll need to have your sketchbook here on Friday as well.
Remember you should have been doing one or the other during March.
Hopefully we have time to begin towards our next work.

Wednesday: daily sketchbook - this will be our self assessment at the end of the grading period as we typically do; finish and turn in painting

Monday: daily sketchbook of which you have two options today. Option One: continue working on the negative space you began with your blackbird last week. Option Two: get a mirror from the tool cabinet and create a contour line drawing of your face resting on your hand (not a blind contour drawing).
Please spend a min. of 8 min. and a max. of 11 min. on this.
Continue working on your acrylic painting - due Wed.

Thoughts About Your Thoughts

After reviewing and discussing some of my thought process/thumbnails yesterday in class I was really happy to see some of you going through - and appreciating - the paintings that students have done in the past.
That's rad. I'm happy some of those are appealing.

So I have a few additional thoughts.

First, remember that you can do a "collage" - be it old school cutting and pasting photos together or new school digital style in photoshop or procreate. I'm happy either way.

Second, not everything has to be "deeply personal".
Yes, you need to address the topic (memory), and be able to back up your decisions. I would go a step further and say that your focal point needs to be what addresses the theme.
However, sometimes you need seemingly random items that help balance and unify your painting. You could even use those seemingly random items to help create a series if you have used certain subjects often in the past (as I have with sloths or donuts, for example).

Next, really (really!) think about composition.
It can be silly and fun and all sorts of other things in terms of the content, but as you are creating your own composition, think about focal point and rule of thirds and depth and overlapping and having variety of sizes and...all that stuff we have been trying to give you practice with since the tempera painting first semester of Art 1.

Subsequently, yes, you should be considering value, texture, etc. Those are all part of the Elements of Art and Principles of Design that you should be more than just intuitively aware of.

Finally, have fun!
There does need to be a personal connection with this, and you need to be able to verbally articulate your decisions and why you have made those decisions. "Because I like..." is NOT going to be a good way to start any of your explanations, so be aware of that.
With that said, though, you can still have fun, so let yourself enjoy the process!

Visual Update April 14

I took just a few photos in class yesterday so you can see what some of the process looks like.

What? Painting Outside?

Sometimes I do have weaknesses, it's true. Sometimes those weaknesses work to the advantage of my students, so today I gave my Art 4 students the option of painting outside or in the Art room.
Of course some of them took advantage of that. Of course. And they were productive I have to say.
Kudos!

Making Some Vans Custom Culture Progress in Studio502

Well, we got underway. Finally. I always love seeing the ideas coming to fruition in the studio.

Some Kids Working

Y'all know I love the process, and as much as I like taking photographs of you and your work with my iphone, there is a very different quality you can get with a real camera, so here are some of those.

Mixing flesh tone acrylic painting: How-To from YouTube

Here's a nice little video about mixing some flesh tones.
I think my favorite part is that while you know this is something this artist has done many times, you can tell it's a process. He has to add little bits of this and that in order to make it work.
This is all part of the process, right?!


Note: you can ignore the whole color wheel think with the hole in the middle at the beginning. That will save you some time.

Enjoy

Time Lapse Painting

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting local artist Tom Yacoe as we were preparing for the advanced art painting exhibition in the Town Council Chambers. Here is a video I ran in to recently that shows him creating one of his abstract landscape paintings using acrylic on canvas.
Short and interesting...in case you wanted to try one of your own.