More About Series

The above images are by two different students who developed a series of drawings thematically connected.  The two images with telephone poles by Preot Buxton (there are others I couldn't get posted) were the result of his wanderings around the city with sketchbook and charcaol, looking for abstract shapes in the urban industrial landscape.  He climbed on and off derelict bridges, and in and out of abandoned warehouses searching for the inspirational forms that would prompt him to return to his studio to develop the larger drawings.  These two are 36" x 24" and combine charcoal, ink, and gesso.

Eric Pike developed the series of still life drawings that combined self portraits with objects that had autobiographical references.  Eric was a graphic design student (not at IUS) so he had a clear interest in the design of the page and used bold shapes to activate the space. These images are done in charcoal and measure roughly 36" x 40".

Both of these students developed a series allowing one image to grow from the other sequentially, both in process and formal elements.  They also both had a good grasp of the positive/negative relationships in their images.  One does not detract from the other and the integration of the positive and negative create unified images. Don't lose focus on your negative areas in the planning and execution of your series so you don't get caught later on trying to figure out what to do with your "backgrounds".

I'm looking forward to seeing where we are at the midpoint of the summer session.  See you in the morning.

Monday's Critique

Group critiques for the series drawings will be very different than the ones for specified assignments or out-of-class projects that result in singular expressions.  Because each of you are working on unique ideas, each of you will essentially be presenting your series-in-progress to the rest of the group and filling everyone in on what you're doing.  However, we will be participating in a more constructive dialogue with the 300 and 400 level students.  It is a good idea to be prepared to talk about your ideas, how your series has already progressed or changed, and what you think the next step may be. I posted a few questions a few days ago for you to consider and that may be helpful in getting to a place to discuss confidently.  Here are a few more to consider:

From the response of others during our critique, are people seeing what was intended, or are you seeing one thing while everyone else sees another?

Can you resist pressure to be pushed in a direction you are not interested in, but remain open to other's ideas at the same time?

When you listen to constructive criticism, can you listen without feeling defensive?

See you Monday.

Life Drawing

We will have a model for class this week and next.  Please make sure to bring newsprint and vine charcoal.

See you in the morning.

The Element of Time

Above is a series of three drawings by a student, Eileen Gillespie, which began with a focus on the subject of interior space.  You can click on it to enlarge. She started with an 18" x 24" charcoal drawing of a window frame inside her apartment depicted with traditional perspective (not pictured).  However, very quickly she began to distort interior spaces with sharp compositions comprised of large shapes, and also increased the scale of her work.  Those shown above are roughly 44" x 108". As the complexity of the spaces increased, the drawing's structural physicality became more pronounced. Inevitably, viewers are compelled to navigate unusual, shifting perspective constructions, as they are pushed around or even expelled from the drawing and forced to search for a suitable reentry point.  

Gillespie makes clear that for her architectural mayhem functions as a powerful visual metaphor for complexity, confusion, and frustration. Further, these unpopulated dreamscapes with strange and alienating presences convey a disconcerting emptiness.

Clearly, Gillespie's scale is beyond what would be expected for a six week project, but still seeing a series such as this one may provide inspiration for any of you to consider dealing with interior spaces.   

We've had five meetings so far this semester, essentially 1/3 of the session completed.  After the Memorial Day break, we'll have two more sessions before our first critique, which has yet to take a definite form. So here a few questions to consider at the stage of your series development:

Are enough time and commitment being put into the work? Considering that the expectation was for seven hours per week and that the project constitutes 30% of final grades.

Is a clear direction emerging, or do you sense several different possible directions? If several, what are they? Which one makes the most sense to you and why?

Does the size of the work and the media being used seem to be working with the ideas?

And as we get closer to critique, please consider:

Are there signs of a breakthrough or are surprising new directions emerging? Are these good surprises (positive potential for development) or bad surprises (unforeseen problems or contradictions)?

Is the work invigorating, that is, does it excite you? Do you feel fully engaged with it? Would you rather be working on your series drawing than just about anything else? Does the work interest other people?

There will be other questions posed along the way toward the final critique.

Have a good and productive break, see you Tuesday.

POSITIVE/NEGATIVE

Today we gave more consideration to negative areas in our work, and when we start working with the model, the importance of negative shapes becomes even greater because those areas tell us so much about the proportions of the figure.  All of the surface areas in a drawing contribute to total unity.  Those areas that represent your initial selection of forms are called positive shapes, such as the sewing machine or the frames, "unoccupied" areas around those forms are called negative shapes. The negative shapes are just as important to total image unity as the positive shapes, which seem tangible and more explicitly drawn. Positive/Negative is also referred to as figure/ground.

The term positive/negative was first introduced to you during your foundations experience, probably in F100. It's an important concept to beginners investigating composition because the lack of compositional experience tends to direct the beginning student's attention to positive forms, while neglecting the surrounding shapes.  We're past that now, so instead of the overcrowded, busy, and confusing imagery that results from neglected negative shapes, as we often see in F100, we're orchestrating our images to a more unified and integrated place, but we have to be more aware of how those shapes function in our work 

When your drawing utensil first touches the picture plane, your piece of paper, leaving a mark, two things happen.  First, the mark divides to some extent the picture place.  The mark is seen as a positive image leaving the remainder to be perceived as a negative shape. Secondly, the mark instantaneously takes a position in space with respect to the picture plane.  Each of these two factors should continue to be an important consideration for you as your image develops.  

You can kind of think about it like this: when you're hanging a picture on your wall, you consider the placement of that picture relative to the size of the wall and its general location to windows, furniture, and maybe even other pictures.  You're considering the negative space and how it work in relation to the positive, the picture.  Keep thinking, and have a good weekend.  

Thematic Development

In the original introduction of the series, we discussed the idea of a of a body of related drawings created around a unifying visual idea or approach.  Examples included Hilary Brace's small scaled cloud drawings and my larger ashtray drawings.  Throughout history artists have worked in series thematically.  If you look at Rembrandt's self portraits, for example (40+ paintings), you not only see the evolution of his process, but the aging of the artist.  Thematic drawings present the option being able to express more ideas and more variations on an idea than is possible to address in a single drawing.  Our recent two sessions with the reflective objects on striped fabric and the awareness of Jeanette Sloan's series utilizing that same subject points to the importance of thematic development.

There are a number of reasons to develop a series of drawings based on a single theme. Perhaps the most basic is that art involves the mind as well as the coordination between eyes and hand. Art sometimes begins with an exercise in thinking and moves to an exercise in doing. Each of you are probably at the point where your thinking is about to become your doing. But it can also reverse and the doing can lead to the thinking, but the process of thinking, observing, and executing drawings are always in tandem.  Your thematic series will allow you to go into your own work more deeply, with more involvement and greater concentration.  You're also working more independently, setting your own pace.

The process of working on  a series develops a commitment to your ideas fostering a professional approach.  And as you develop that professional attitude, you will begin to notice the thematic patterns in other artists' work.  Let's say that you're series will be based on landscape, what other artists have shared that theme with you? Look at the work of contemporary landscape artists such as April Gornik, Peter Doig, Scott Goudie, Neil Welliver, chuck Forsman, and Susan Puetz.  How about portraits?  Look at contemporary artists such as Sylvia Sleigh, Richard Avedon, Robert Weaver, Duane Hanson, Cindy Sherman, or Everett Kinstler.

Eva Hess said, "If something is meaningful, maybe it's more meaningful said ten times."

Some Seeing Responses

Nate Stormer

Shawn McPheron

Ashley Cornelius

Aberlyn Sweetland

Fran Dietl

We finished up the reflective objects on stripped drapery this morning and there are many fine examples that were completed.  I have selected a few of those: two from the 200 level, two from the 300 level, and one from the 400 level.  I selected five because blogger will only upload five images at a time, so it's a matter of expediency, and I didn't want to bombard you with too many images.  I selected these particular five because they were perhaps the most resolved in total form and that they also evidenced very strong observation.

I shot several others with the intent of posting them, but interestingly they manifested some issues when they were reduced to the smaller scale for posting on the blog. Some of the values washed out, ellipses became somewhat wobbly, and there were a few verticality issues.  In fact, even now I notice that the silver bowl in Shawn's drawing is starting to lean a little to the right. Sometimes those kind of things aren't as noticeable when we're looking at them at their original scale.

I hope all of you see, even those not posted here, the strength in your drawings, because I think each of you did a very good job with this project.  Many have gone beyond what I expected, and I think your patience with the stripes has paid good dividends.  This was a five hour project, and the results indicate that the seven hours you're investing per week on your series will produce some very strong groups of drawings.

See you Thursday.

Seeing

Seeing is at the heart of the interactive process of drawing.  We perceive external reality, such as reflective objects sitting on stripped material, with our eyes open. With our eyes closed, the mind searches the images of our inner reality. Our inner reality stores memories of past experiences, interactions, loves, fears, and feelings. In addition, it is here, our inner reality, where we imagine the future.  Our drawings comes out of these two forms of vision, one external and one internal.

A drawing of reflective objects sitting on stripped material can communicate our thoughts and perceptions  as well as our awareness of the world. The information your eyes send to your brain, such as a silver bowl sitting on black and white fabric, begins an active search by your brain and the mind's eye for structure and meaning. But often those features are neglected because of the tendency to draw what we think we know rather than what we see.  We limit our perceptions of the world by abbreviating.  Black and white parallel stripes are just that, so we don't have to look to draw them.  However, that is the case only when the stripes are two dimensional, when they are parallel to us.  If we're going for an illusion in our work, an illusion of a three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface, and if we are going for a drawing that will engage a viewer's eye and imagination, we have to see those stripes as undulating from thick to thin, from one value to the next to the next to the next.  We have to see how they change direction from parallel or diagonal to perpendicular.  We have to see how they interact with other forms and reflect that reality in such a way that the relationships between the two become apparent and essential to the illusion.  It is a communication between your physical eye and your brain, between your brain and your hand, and all of that communication is being sifted through your mind's eye and all of those experiences that inform your work and imbue it with meaning particular to you, the individual who created the drawing.  Let's look harder.

Working in a Series: The Value

Why are we working in a series this summer session?  Staying with an idea or theme over a period of time will enable you to establish a definite and considered attitude in your work as possibilities in the subject are discovered.  You can see this attitude in Hilary Brace's cloud drawings and in my ashtray drawings. This attitude and the specific possibilities that are pursued in a series distinguishes one artist's work from another.  Work that remains on the surface of an idea merely travels where many artists have been, such as many of the "out-of-class" projects from previous semesters.  Conversely, an intense immersion in a focused direction will get you to a place in your work that you did not realize existed.  Again, going back to Nate's series that is hanging in the gallery, that body of images is the result of a lot of experimentation, risk taking, and focus.  Exploring a combination of media has opened up some pretty exciting possibilities for him as an artist.  So, working in a series most often leads you to do drawings that you would never have made otherwise: drawings that will communicate your ideas, insights, feelings, and/or gut responses in greater depth.  With this level of involvement, it stands to reason that you will have more invested in your series than in daily studio class projects because you will determine its direction. That creative freedom with this project will allow you to take the risks you need to take in order to grow.  Enjoy and work hard.

Summer Session I: Drawing

Tomorrow, May 12, is the beginning of the first summer session of classes.  Drawing meets from 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m., in KV 127.  It's a full class, mostly 200 level, but a few 300 and a few 400.  It will be a challenging series of 18 classes spanning 42 days, unlike a regular semester that has about 30 classes spanning about 105 days.  Obviously, the incubation period to synthesize processes and ideas is considerably shorter, and therein lies the challenge.  We will be doing a lot of drawing, a lot of looking, and weather permitting, a lot of traveling.  Spending time at Cave Hill Cemetery is always inspiring, as is the Falls of the Ohio provided it's not under water.  It is the flood season after all. A lot of the previously beautiful landscapes on our campus have now been replaced with Lodges, but that may allow some refreshing of our perspective eye.  Other off-campus sites could also be considered, such as the Zoo, and we can toss around some other ideas.

I'll see you in the morning with a pot of coffee brewing and a lot of things to discuss.  See you then.