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.