Summer Series

Another summer session is finished, and now the assessing of six weeks of development in the practice of drawing, seeing, interpreting, expressing, and feeling is well under way. Still a few more hours of considering the surprises, decisions, expectations, and directions that have manifested before I have to get on line and send in final grades.

Again, similar to last summer, I think there were some amazing things that happened in this short period of time, and many of those amazing things came in the form of the series projects. I'm including examples from each below. In cases where it was logistically easy given the time element of when I have to have my work completed, and the work was small enough in scale to shoot the entire series, I did so. However, in many cases, I have only included one of the series to at least allow a glimpse of the varied directions everyone took in the process.

Allison did a series of eyes, each one confronting the viewer with a gaze of confidence and subtle expressions. They were executed in graphite and colored pencil.

Will's series was a four panel segmented Macaw, the head, then the torso and wings, and then the feet. Done in pastels, charcoal, and colored pencil. He called upon his experience in Florida when his family raised these beautiful birds.

Sue completed three mixed media quilts, in which she drew with thread and colored markers, exploring some of the plants from her garden.

Shawn explored a variety of ideas but then settled on landscape. This one, done from direct observation in Cave Hill, was the cream of the crop. Not only was I in that particular place, but I can imagine being back there just by looking at this drawing.

Randilyn created four exquisite pastel drawings inspired from her own experience with the "sounds of silence". Each panel is loaded with color, texture, and maturity of expression.

Miri created four large scaled graphite drawings expressing the abnormalities in the perception and expression of reality.

Michelle's series of five panels looked at the vegetables that are in her garden that are, in part, based on her personal experience in the food industry.

Louise continued the series she began in the spring with water and how light reflects and refracts in combination with the figure, perhaps moving a little more toward the abstraction of the inspiration.

Kim took a cathartic journey through a tough part of her past with three large scaled graphite drawings.

Katie was a bit lighter in subject with a series of four dog portraits, with each showing the unique personality of each puppy.

Greg did four bugs, each in tight detail and beautifully rendered. You could feel the prickly crustiness of each one. He worked in Water color, charcoal, colored pencil.

Elle took the political route with her three panels, exploring the predominance of media representation of Bush, Clinton, and Obama.

Connie was in her garden and inspired by the flowers and the element of nostalgia inherent in polaroid photographs.

Brittany captures the personalities of three friends from Facebook photos, using charcoal and pastel.

Aberlyn had three panels that explored the relationship dynamic that exists between she and her parents. Functioning both as triptych and as individual pieces, they are loaded with content, expressed with a variety of media, iconography, and construction.

The Final two days

Monday will be individual critiques over your series. That group of drawings should be in pretty good shape for our discussions. Any fine tuning will be considered at that time, and then there are essentially 24 hours to make it happen before our group critique on Tuesday. Your post-test will also be after your individual sessions.

Tuesday will be final critique, the format of which will be decided after I have a sense of the number of drawings we'll be seeing. It could be a groups discussion similar to our 'midterm', or it could take on a whole new approach. We'll see what happens.

Final portfolios will come in after the final critique. Your final portfolio should include two still life drawings, two figure drawings, three landscapes, and your series. Pick your strongest of these groups.

Your work should be presented in a portfolio, either bought or hand-made out of durable material, and large enough to safely contain your work. For protection of the work, no paper should extend outside the portfolio. If you have drawings that don’t fit in the commercially made portfolios, make a cardboard ‘sandwich” for the oversized pieces.

All work done on spiral bound paper should be trimmed of spiral fuzz. Edges and/or borders should be cleaned to the extent possible. The back of the works should also be relatively clean. All work should be presented in approximate chronological order, with the beginning of the session (still life drawings) presented on top, the end of the session (landscapes) on the bottom; the series will be the last pieces in the portfolio after the landscapes unless they are presented in separate portfolio. Drawings done in soft graphite, charcoal, or soft pastel should be leafed (newsprint may be used for temporary purposes) and spray fixed so as to protect them from smearing and/or transferring to the back of other works.

The assessment of final portfolios will be based on individual development from the beginning to the end of this summer session. I will be looking for a developing comprehension of form/composition, variety and uses of line, seeing and representing shape and space, both positive and negative, and the roles they play in your image development; functions of value and texture, and a personal approach to idea development through your in-class sessions and your series. I will be looking to see the kind of process you are developing in drawing and the confidence you’ve developed in that process during the course of the session.

The degree of comprehension of these issues will be considered along with your individual and group critiques, post-test, participation, series, and sketchbook. If there are obvious weaknesses in your portfolio, I will review individual attendance records and/or attitudes toward the subject to ascertain the reasons for the weaknesses, and will report them to you in a written evaluation, with your final grade, contained in your returned portfolio. You may pick up your portfolio after noon on Friday, June 25.

Questions?

Last Cave Hill Day

Our last day in Cave Hill was a bit frustrating for me since everyone relocated to new territory. I may have put 50 miles on the car searching and only found eight or nine of you, so those of you I could not find, I hope your day went well. Check back tomorrow for details about portfolios, sketchbooks, post-test, and any other details I can come up with.

A final thought about the past few days on a more personal, yet creative level. This year, my wife Cynthia and I endowed a scholarship for Fine Arts majors at IUS, and the first recipient was Ashley Bell, a BFA ceramics major. We set up the scholarship in memory of our daughter, Kate. Who knows, one of you could be next year's recipient.

Kate was an art and technical theater major at Millikin University. She was very creative and very talented, and enjoying a full ride scholarship. Of course, we enjoyed that too. Her boyfriend, Matt, was at the University of Illinois. The two campuses are fairly close to each other so Kate and Matt were able visit one another fairly often. They had finished their freshman years and were on a journey to Colorado for a much anticipated camping trip when we tragically lost them both. That was almost ten years ago, but as you can imagine, it is still a tough loss.

Before they left to begin their college careers, Kate took a photograph of the two of them by setting up the camera on auto-delay, and then ran and jumped into Matt's arms right as the camera took the shot. That photo, a special one to us, was used to commission the above sculpture that marks their adjacent places in Cave Hill. The words at the base are lyrics from a Dave Matthews Band song, one of their favorites.

So, while I think Cave Hill is a great resource for artists, it is also a magical place for contemplation, reflection, and ultimately appreciation. I hope it served you well on those and many other levels, especially of seeing, both physically and metaphorically, your own creative potentials.

Cave Hill tomorrow (or today if you're reading this tomorrow)

We'll be doing our last day of landscapes, again, in Cave Hill. The Falls of the Ohio is under water, which I know Connie would not like. So I'll see you at the same place at the same time.

Sue was at the Scattering Garden drawing the lake and the constant swan. A very peaceful location, but a struggle for her to get the oil pastels to do what she wanted. As I told Connie, do a Google search of "oil pastel drawings" an then click on "videos," it will take you to many 'how to' videos that show the many creative approaches to oil pastel. Some are quite amazing.

This is the tree that Louise is using for her inspiration. I'm looking forward to seeing her final expression.

Kim moved on to a shadier spot today, yet still hidden away. She was using graphite, a more challenging medium for the time and location. It was going quite well and maybe she'll be able to more fully develop it with another day.

Final crit's coming up, make sure all your ducks (or geese) are in a row.

Aberlyn parked her easel out side the cemetery, just inside the entrance, and got to a very engaging place. The negative shapes were pretty interesting, and the marks worked with the form really well.

Cave Hill Tuesday

Thanks to Shawn for lending me his camera yesterday. I got a few more shots of works-in-progress. Yesterday seemed a bit more focused and the majority of the drawings I saw were going very well. Some of those were continuations of the previous day and some were new beginnings that will likely be continuations today.

Michelle took on the actual "cave hill." There was a focus on the cave entrance and she began working in the landscape around it, keeping the textures active. It was a good start that might benefit from another day to build up the darker areas and to further push those textural passages.

Kim was harder to find than the rest, but I finally located her in the eastern side of the cemetery. She had gravitated to a particular tree that was loaded with bright yellow tassels, and she was taking advantage of the intense contrast of her paper and those fiery colors.

Greg found a more panoramic point-of-view down by the lake. He was using the prisma color sticks that he found a little frustrating on the black paper as the colors are not opaque enough to to bring out a lot of contrast. At the very end of the day he started working white over the colors and that seemed to give the image some punch. Maybe he'll continue with that today.

It looks like the weather is going to be cooperative today, but you might stay fairly close to your cars in case one of those out-of-no-where storms show up. It'll be warm again so I'm bringing some cold beverages...no, not Bud Light, water. This will be out last venture into Cave Hill so make the best of it. Two finished drawings out of the three cemetery days will be an excellent showing for having braved the heat. It mentioned int he paper this morning that the average temp for this time of year is 83, and we've been drawing in 10 degree hotter weather. Use this last day to pull your work together.

See you soon.

Cave Hill Monday

It looks like it'll be warm today so dress for success. I'll see you at the same place between 1:00 and 1:15.

Cave Hill: Day Two (forecast)

Sunday evening, too early to forecast tomorrow's weather. The 'official' forecast for tomorrow says: "Scattered thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe, High 91F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%." It also said about the same thing for today, but I didn't run into any raindrops, although it was pretty hot. I'll post tomorrow morning after looking at the satellite forecast.

However, one thing to consider is that it will be very warm tomorrow. So if we are not derailed by thunderstorms, please dress for warm weather and bring a bottled water or two with you.

Check back in the a.m.

Our First Cave Hill Day

Our first Cave Hill day was fairly productive and I think there were some pretty interesting starts on many of the drawings I saw. I missed many folks today during the session although I found many cars. Sorry I couldn't find the bodies that went with the cars.

There were some challenging issues that came up during the session that need to be considered, and some of them will be further individually addressed on Monday during our next session in Cave Hill. A few folks exclaimed, "I can't draw (fill in the blank)." For example (I know that Connie won't mind me using her as that example), she said, "I can't draw water." There are two misconceptions to that statement. One, the word "can't." That one word holds more people back from their creative potential than any other word. PLEASE, erase that word from your vocabulary, it is a tremendous detriment to your growth. The other, in the case of this example, is "water." Drawing water is no more difficult than drawing a sphere. It is about looking and seeing. We all interpret what we see through the art elements: line, value, shape, texture, and color. When I look at water, I see the same visual ingredients that I see on the sphere, all the art elements. No subject is more challenging than any other subject, it's imply how well we see it and how we arrange the elements.

I was talking to Cynthia (my wife) about it this evening (she did the cigarette drawing that hangs in the drawing studio), and she told me that she could actually remember when she changed from the left-brain way of looking at "water" to the right-brain point of view that was about line, value, shape, texture, and color. It was an epiphany that changed the way she saw the world. And I suppose on some level, it is an epiphany, to switch from seeing "water" to one that is about the art elements that we manipulate on a daily basis, and getting those elements to say 'water.' It goes beyond epiphany, it becomes the basis for an aesthetic philosophy that permeates our work.

So think about changing your way of thinking about your subject, let your process 'describe' what you see instead of letting a definition hold you back. Think about "how can I achieve that" rather than "I can't."

On a final note, the Cave Hill experience should yield two finished drawings. How you focus that work is up to you, so be open to visiting your favorite places at Cave Hill during the weekend and even next Wednesday. Here are some images from today:

Once Will got settled, he began his drawing looking down through a slight valley and across the lake to where Shawn was working. He objected somewhat, as only Will can do, to the difficulty of getting his oil pastels to "cover the paper." Of course, working on colored pastel paper is so the color of the paper can be incorporated into the drawing. The blue of his paper and the fact that its texture made it difficult to cover only enhanced the overall quality of the drawing. The blue sparkles through in many of the areas thus providing a unifying feel.

Shawn was on the opposite side of the lake taking in a great deal of space which will bring him all the way to his immediate foreground. He's also using oil pastels, and after I stopped back by around 4:00, I was pretty impressed with the 'painterly' quality of the image. He had blocked in some colored shapes and was blending in lights, darks, cools and warms.

Randilynn was positioned with a point of view that intersected Shawn's and Will's, so we'll have some nice lake drawings after they spend another day on the ones they started today. Randilynn was having a little bit of struggle getting the leaves to look "right," so I told her not to think of them as leaves but as clusters of texture, working light colors over the darker colors to get the sense of form and space.

Rachel put her focus on the plant life on the hillside next to the lake, and although I didn't see it in the later stages of the day, she had a pretty good start, although she may move on in her next effort.

Louise and Rachel found a shady spot to work from. Louise was focused on the circular fountain out it the lake. Both were working fairly small scaled so I'm meeting with them for a chunk of time on Monday to work through some stuff that they'd like to address.

Connie was out in the sun (impressive) working on one of the mausoleums because she had decided not to work by the lake. She said of the drawing on Monday that had I been around I would have heard her cussing me for my requirement that water be included in the 8" x 10" drawing. She said, "I don't know how to draw water!" That'll change soon.

Allison was close by to Connie's drawing site but worked on a different mausoleum, she was very focused on her drawing in spite of the impromtu visit by Jerrye from last summer's drawing class (it was good to see you, Jerrye).

Have a productive weekend and I'll see you Monday. Be sure the check the blog or ONCOURSE for any last minute changes.

Cave Hill Tomorrow Afternoon

The forecast for tomorrow is partly cloudy and 87 degrees, humidity about 60% so it'll be warm. Bring a garbage bag to sit on as the ground may be wet, or if you have a little folding chair. See you tomorrow between 1:00 and 1:15 on the main avenue of Cave Hill.

Please don't think that because we're meeting in a cemetery that you have to do drawings with monuments, you can just focus on the landscapes. If you choose to incorporate a monument, look for ones that have figurative elements instead of the "expected" graveyard stuff.

See you tomorrow.

On to Landscape

We're going to be exploring landscape for the final five drawing sessions. The landscape brings in a whole new range of complexities that are quite different from still life and figure drawing. Ultimately, though, its commonality is observation. Some tips that might be helpful:

1. Try not to use your eraser unless you're using it to draw with, such as controlling light. Every line you draw in a landscape is important. Your mark-making process is the basis for a unique creative development.
2. Try to incorporate blind contour drawing, looking at your subject and letting your pencil follow the lines of your subject. Sometimes trees will look more natural if you don't get caught up in drawing what you think you know about trees, but rather drawing waht you see.
3. Drawing negative spaces can make landscape drawing a little less complex than following the lines of positive forms. It also helps to develop stronger observations skills.
4. Squint your eyes to see the light and dark patterns.
5. Us your pencil to take measurements such as what you did with still life and figure drawings.
6. Find ways to respond to the textures of the landscape instead of trying to draw all of those leaves.

Over the next five sessions, be sure to check in with our blog and with ONCOURSE to see if there are changes in the calendar. On those days when we are meeting at an off campus site, if there is a strong chance of rain, I will notify you through both portals, so be sure to check prior to the session.

Mid-Session Critique

Just a few comments about our critique before it gets too far away from this past Tuesday. The grouping format worked well and seemed to generate a lot of constructive and instructive comments to which everyone seemed receptive. I think posing some pre-critique questions for consideration was also helpful. Based on that experience (a few more questions):

• From the response of others, 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 hear constructive criticism, can you listen without feeling defensive?

At this halfway point, it is now important to budget time, set priorities, and move toward a cohesive group of completed drawings that inform, inspire, engage, educate, and move us. Looking forward to the 22nd!

Shawn, Allison, Sue, Kim, and Greg the secretary, discuss their responses to Miri's drawings of distorted and skewed points-of-view.

Connie, Elle, Aberlyn, Will, and Randilyn discuss Shawn's diptychs of psychological narratives.