1/27 No Class This Evening

Class canceled tonight due to family illness.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

1/25 Ideal Solids

Monday evening began with a discussion on composition.  From there we talked about Ellipses and Ideal Solids; standard or common geometric forms found in many man-made objects.  Our attention was on rendering spheres, cones, cubes, open and closed cylinders.  Key points to remember about ellipses are: 1. The front portion of the ellipse is wider than the back half. 2.  Although ellipses will narrow as they reach eye level, they should never have pointed ends. 3. Because it is further away from eye level, the bottom ellipse of a cylinder should be fuller (wider) than the top ellipse. The opposite would be true of a cylindrical object held above your head (eye level).  In addition all forms were rendered with the categories of light: cast shadow, reflected light, core shadow, shadow, light and high light. Drawings by Alan DeMarche and Justin Edwards .

1/20 CONTOUR LINE DRAWING

Wednesday evening began with some review of continuous line and gesture drawing.  From there we discussed contour line and made drawings of tools.  Contour Line is a single, incisive line that defines the exterior volumes (outlines) as well as interior volumes of a form.  Contour line drawings should be three dimensionally volumetric and have a sense of "touch".  In other words, feel like you could grab the object.  In addition, contour lines can also identify changes in color, texture and value (weight or light).  Contour line drawings should isolate the parts working towards completing the whole.   Contour lines may be uniform in width and value (ex. drill) or for a more dimensional appearance the line may be accented with dark and light variations as well as "swelling" the line with thick and thin variations ( student drawing by Catherine Hill).

This drawing by Stephanie Mezzanatto (student) has employed accenting for a more volumetric rendering but has also used light contours to identify value variations in the surface of the objects.

Emile Rosewater (student) has used an ink pen to render his objects.  Emile's drawing bridges the two approaches to contour drawing by using a thick, uniform line to render many of the exterior volumes and a thinner, broken line to identify the interior volumes.

1/18 Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday

1/13 GESTURE DRAWING

First night drawing.  The evening started with some cross-contour exercises. Subject: gourds.  Cross-contour lines map the topography of an object similar to the latitudinal and longitudinal lines on a globe. Note the lines crossing the gourd accentuate the roundness of the gourd by arching from left to right.  The lines also transition from dark to light.  This gives a greater sense of volume and suggests a light source (darker lines representing the shadow side).

Next, we made continuous line drawings.  A continuous line drawing is composed of one long continuous line.  The pencil should not leave the paper from start to finish.  Continuous lines should record the path of the artist's eye as it moves across his/her subject. Continuous lines wrap and draw through forms defining structure. Again when the line quality is varied with thick lines and thin lines, dark lines and light lines, you can suggest more depth and volume.

And finally after viewing some slides, we made gesture drawings. Gesture drawings are a quick and spontaneous, all encomposing line that searches to define its form. Like the previous exercises, it records the path of the eyes. We addressed three different types of gesture: Line, Mass, and Scribble.

Line gesture suggests structure and volume. Mass and Scribble gestures suggest mass, volume and light. The example above is a Scribble gesture.

Back To School

"Welcome to Art 7A."  Opening night.  A full house. I talked about the syllabus, of course, materials and such.  Wednesday night is when the real fun begins.  Get your materials while on sale but here's what you need for Wednesday: 18 x 24 in. newsprint pad, compressed charcoal, vine charcoal, charcoal pencils, white plastic eraser and one kneaded eraser.  We'll start with some gesture drawings.

Hope to see you there.