Elizabeth Pontvik

I saw this flower pod in the yard this morning just about to lose its white cap. I couldn’t not draw it.

As promised, here are a couple examples of the final projects in Drawing II. This was the first time for most students working at this scale (30×44″) and with this medium (charcoal). However, not all was new. The students were pulling from their experience of two types of drawing studies that we had emphasized this semester. One was very slow careful observation and the other was very fast gesture where you draw what your subject is doing rather than what it looks like. The requirements for the assignment were to draw a natural object at least 8 times using variations of speed,  line, scale, direction, etc…

Just before starting our final project we spent one week drawing outside the classroom.

Thanks to Hidden Hills Farm for letting us come and draw on their lovely grounds.

We also  set up in front of the Student Center to draw free 10 minute portraits!

 Thanks students for the best semester yet!

It’s finals time here at the School of Visual Art & Design and the building is abuzz with activity. The Drawing II final project is quite a departure from the slow and small scale control building assignments that we’ve been working on so far. In this photo students are experimenting with the different media that they will use on their final project which will be a whopping 30×44 inches! More to come soon!

Where do these little lamps take you?

My two year old niece and I had a grand time drawing and gluing and painting in this little travel sketchbook. It was fun to watch her dive right in with such zeal. Reminds me that that is what sketchbooks are for anyway.

This big bunny by Paul McCarthy rides atop a mobile children’s art museum housed in a container. The convertible museum can easily travel by boat and truck and has already toured France and is currently in Africa, bringing works of art from 20 world renowned artists to children. The artist list includes Maurizio Cattelan, Jim Lambie, and James Turrell.

The museum, called Musée Mobile, or “MuMo,” was founded by Ingrid Brochard and aims to share art experiences with children and break down barriers. Apparently only children are allowed inside except two MuMo guides. What fun to have this roll up to your community!

Here are some film clips by Gilles Coudert  showing the museum in action: MuMo Film

“Not another still life!” is oft heard or at least thought during formal art training. In the 2nd still life assignment in Drawing II, we covered why working from the still life is so helpful. For example your subject matter doesn’t walk away, you can work on perspective, explore how to depict different types of textures, and control the light source. In addition to all of these technical reasons why still life is so important, we also talked about how objects reflect the age and society in which they were formed and contain story telling potential. Each student started with objects that they already had strong associations with and then used lighting, and layout to help tell their story.

Students will be posting links in the comments section with their drawings.

Each week I have decided to spend some time perusing the art periodicals in our library for some much needed invigoration. This week’s came from Yamini Nayar’s photography featured in the February issue of Art in America. Now, I do respect photography, but I have to admit that I was caught totally off guard by the painterliness and collage quality of this work. Nayar creates sculptures and mini dioramas that she photographs and then disassembles. Check out more of her work here.

In painting class this year we are using Painting as a Language as a class text. Despite its priciness, it is a fabulous book that rounds out the discussion of how paintings are made with how paintings mean. It is also filled with interesting journaling and painting exercises. The exercise you see here is a student’s study of creating first a column of grays using ivory black and titanium white on the left and then a column of grays using the complements ultramarine blue and cadmium orange. The student had to mix just to neutralize the gray without veering too much toward one hue or the other. Then they added white to create the lighter values.

This particular combination of complementary colors seemed to work really well at achieving neutral grays. They are ever so slightly cooler than the titanium white and ivory black grays. Other combinations such as viridian and alizarin crimson also worked. It was interesting to see the subtle differences between the chromatic and achromatic grays.

The complementary colors of purple and yellow were not as easy to mix into gray. Does anyone have any pairs of purple and yellow pigments that they mix for grays?