Assignments

UNIT 5: Narrative/Student Choice FINAL PROJECT

DUE: Wednesday, May 2^nd (Last Day of Class)

For your final, you will be devising your own painting using some of the skills you have learned so far in your studies, following one of these prompts. Your project must be informed or inspired by the work of 2 artists of your choosing. At least one must be a contemporary artist working today (still alive). You can research your artist using the library and perusing art books and art magazines, and by using online sources ( such as Met online collection or Guggenheim, all nationally recognized museum collections). You will be expected to site your sources.

In addition to the final piece(s),

·      You will also be writing a short artist statement, we will workshop these statements on April 25^th.

·      And writing a paragraph about each of your artists, describing their work, addressing what they do materially (how they use paint, and other materials if applicable)  what their work seems to be addressing,  how the inspire you,  and a few sentences of biographical information about each artist. These artist’s styles should be visible in some way in your final piece/pieces. Please print and put in sketchbooks.

·      You will have at least 1 color copy of your inspirational artists work, with name of artist, title, date, size and materials listed, printed to go along with your statement and your essays. Please put in sketchbooks.

Choose an option for your final project from below:

1.  Student Choice:

You will propose a painting project that is informed by some of the things we learned in class already, and if you’d like, expand it with something new you would like to try out or, some aspect of painting that you would like to develop further or practice. You must find 2 artists as inspiration for your project. You will use some of their material, compositional, and stylistic approaches in your own work. You are researching the way that the artist works and studying their approaches to inform and expand your own work.

2. Narrative:

Create a painting that tells a story of some kind.

This story need not be linear and clearly descriptive or illustrative: the story can be very vague and exist only in the suggestion and the way the composition is constructed. You will create your painting taking inspiration from 2 artists working with narrative. Use some of their logic and stylistic devices to make your narrative as strong and surprising as possible.

Choose a format for your final piece:

1.     A canvas with a minimum of 3ft x 3ft or any other size you are interested in

2.     A diptych with a minimum of 1.5 x 2.5 ft each panel (give or take, could also be square)

3.     Approach doing your painting on a flat surface that is not canvas- can be on a found object, a different material, panel, metal, glass, wood, plastic, etc- or, stretch material that is not canvas onto a stretcher frame. Minimum size requirements still apply here, however, if you have a wilder idea, we can discuss and approve

4.     Propose your own other option and we can discuss whether it fulfills the requirements

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UNIT 4: Big Form Portrait Project

DUE: Wednesday, April 4^th

You will create a graphic, mixed approach portrait of anyone you choose using these parameters:

Supplies:

·      A prepared surface of at least 3 x 4 feet and not larger than 4 x 5 feet, dimensions within those parameters of your choice

·      **You may experiment with house paints: Latex sample house paints or mixed quarts from lowes/home depot/or any other home paint retailer who provides sample containers.

·      Acrylic paint

·      Oil paint

·      Appropriate PRINTED source material that is well considered and invested in- like, images of other art, post cards, your own photos, someone else’s, books, magazines, ephemera.

For this project you will be executing a portrait / picture by building or breaking down an image into flat hard edge shapes. You will be combining pure color, some naturalistically painted shapes, and some pattern, all in the same single work. Look carefully at your selected artists to give you an idea about how to approach this project.

Portrait:

Find an image for a portrait you would like to execute. Let the portrait also include part of the whole figure, so that you are not only painting a face. Allow hands, shoulders, or, even more of the body to be present for your portrait. You may use an image of your own, someone else’s, or an image from a found source, but it must be photographic.  You may also choose to collage a composition for your portrait by combining a variety of figurative sources like other paintings compositions or other figurative drawings or photographs.

7-9 total shapes:

to create our composition, We will then work on breaking the portrait / composition down into a total of 7 – 9 shapes, or big forms.  You must adhere to the only 7-9 TOTAL SHAPES RULE: This is a great way of problem solving a composition. You will keep the edges between shapes sharp and soft, sort of like a collage.

Thumbnail sketches:

We will make at least 3 thumbnail designs to find the most pleasing and dynamic composition. You may make collages as sketches or color in your sketches.

Make Color Samples:

You will come up with a 5 color scheme for your painting- this theme must be inspired by a found source and chosen based on color sampling. Find the source anywhere! Another painting, ad design, clippings photo’s greeting cards- anywhere that inspires you. Make few different samples.

** If you want to use acrylic paint--Once you find the colors, you may find the closest match at the paint department at a decorator store. It may help to use cups with lid to store your paint in. You may need to thin your paint down into a flat and even liquid consistency to get nice flat even shapes.

Pattern:

Add at least 1 pattern to your composition and not more than 2. You may use a found source for this pattern, or create your own. The colors may match with your scheme, or may contrast.

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UNIT 3: Zooms

DUE: Monday, March 5th

You will be creating a progression of 3 paintings beginning with a crop of an image that is interesting to you. This can be something from any print source or it could be a section of the painting you just completed.  You may choose to use a crop you explored in our Unit 2 assignment. When choosing a crop, choose a section that is interesting to you. “Zoom” in on something fascinating or pleasing or even gross or boring.  What you focus on is your choice. We are going to try and think both conceptually and abstractly for this project, so be willing to make a weird or surprising decision. As we move from one painting to the next, we will make choices based on the paintings that came before to get to an image, an object, and paintings that are an abstraction born from exploring representation.

Your paintings for this project may be completed on gessoed paper, Masonite, or canvas. I recommend paper for the first 2 and a sturdier surface for the last one.

Painting 1: 12 in x 12in or something similar (Small)

The first painting you make will be a direct and naturalistic painting of whichever zoom or crop you choose.

This first painting will be completed in class on February 21^st.

Painting 2: 16in x 16in or something similar (slightly larger)

Your second painting will be based off of the first painting. You will use the first painting of the set as a source, and zoom in somewhere on this painting and get very interested in what you see. Be aware of marks and the material of your paint. Be aware of textures present. Explore your painting to find the next one.

You can make choices that make the pictorial information more apparent. You can exaggerate, reduce, minimize, accentuate, repeat, and refine. Choose to approach this painting in a way that expands your idea about what a painting is and how you get to a painting.

The second painting will be completed over the weekend, and start the third one.

Painting 3: 36in x 36in or something similar (much larger than previous two)

Your 3^rd painting is based off of the second painting. Take it a step further, zoom a little closer, and riff off what you discovered in painting 2. In this stage you will further exaggerate, reduce, minimize, accentuate, repeat, and refine. You can make decisions that vary greatly from your second painting, and are inspired by some aspect of it, such as composition, texture, pattern etc.

DUE AFTER SPRING BREAK

Approximately 4’ x 5’ canvas made in the wood shop, stretched, gessoed, and ready to go. Please plan and do this on your own time. The wood shop will not be open over Spring Break.

Then, please also consider making some other canvases with your left over material--- these can be used for your final project in the course. However, these are not needed complete until after the Big Portrait assignment.

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UNIT 2: Image and Word (DOG/CAT/Animal Paintings)

DUE: February 19th (MONDAY)

Compile a list of 20 words from your daily journal exercises so far and 10 words from the list below (total of 30). Perhaps choose a drawing and a few found materials from your daily journal exercises.

Find online or in person, 10 images of cats/dogs/animals- print out.

Follow these steps for each.

1. Juxtapose a word with an image that are congruent and have a relationship.

2. Then combine a word and an image that are incongruent and have no relationship to each other except for they way you decide to connect them.

3. Crop the image into interesting design or compositional format that brings a sense of vitality or focus to your picture. Create a fresh and dynamic visual connection between your image and word.

Create three of each: congruent and incongruent combinations (TOTAL OF 6). Chose from your list of journal words. Find an image from a magazine source, book, postcards, ephemera, your own photo’s, friends photos etc. Make sure you crop the photo to make an interesting composition, rather than using the entire image or photo. Your photo’s can be simple/color/pattern, or can be more “pictorial” or narrative.  Look at each other’s examples shown in class.

Place your image on a nice sheet of drawing paper/in a sketchbook, etc- present it in a way that is professional and cared for.

Choose 1 from your examples for the final painting. Your final painting will be minimum 18” x 24”, made from woodshop.

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UNIT 1: Personal still life (neutral tones)

DUE: Feburary 5th

Supplies:

·      Set of oils and mediums

·      Set of a variety of brushes

·      A gallery wrapped canvas, 1.5 inches deep, at least 16 x 20 inches, up to 36 x 48 inches, any ratio of these measurements are fine ( ie: if a 20 x 20 square makes the most sense, try that. Your surface dimensions should coincide with your vision and not be limited to the minimum size requested)

·      Other general painting supplies as found on your materials list: Liquin

·      Found materials for still-life setup

Goal:

Re-acquaint and practice your skills of observational painting with neutral tones, using 1 or more light sources.

Directions:

before we begin painting:

You will need a few items of your choice that make sense together for you, whether this is thematic or formal (similarity in size, texture, surface, color- or difference, rather than story or meaning of the object ) or both.  You can make things. Find things. Use any sorts of things. It is your choice.

You will need to gather supplies to build a set or environment to install and set up your still life. This should be easy to take down and put back together.  The scale of this should make sense with your objects and idea. This may be complex or simple.

Colors used should represent the actual colors of objects in your still-life.

To build your set You may use cardboard, plastics, paper- you should paint/tailor the colors to suit your desires. You may accentuate your “still life set” by using special lighting in it- colored bulbs, regular bulbs, or otherwise.

We will use an “under-painting”  allowing our color choices laying underneath to affect and relate to the painting we do over it

We will explore glazing and different thicknesses and approaches to our subject.

“Retinal Studies in class”—a snapshot or reduced color format of what is going to happen in the painting.