FINAL PROJECTS and SCHOOL'S OUT

 Below are several of the pieces that really stand out amongst all of the very good work completed by the Art3 class of Summer 2013. Enjoy the remainder of your summer.

Christie Noe

Eunice Solis

Kacie Brunk

Ma Samson

Natalia Chamaki

Sophia Brisbois

AMBIGUOUS SPACE: Day 3

Today was the last work day in class for the final project. Tomorrow morning students will take the second quiz and we will critique the paintings. Pix to follow.

AMBIGUOUS SPACE: Day 2

Gage Sperry

Students continued working on the final project. Gage's painting above illustrates a series of cubes overlapping and stacked inside one another. Notice how the color choice influences spatial depth. The cool blues are receding behind the warm oranges. One more day of class time to complete this project.

AMBIGUOUS SPACE: Day 1

Mushky Rice

Students began work on their final projects today: Ambiguous Space. The objective is to create a space that simultaneously advances while receding.
The slide lecture introduced the class to paraline views and the work of Victor Vasarely. Mushky's sketch has four oblique view cubes in the corners with a distorted, fish-eye grid unifying the space.

LINEAR PERSPECTIVE: Two-Point

Gwenny Williams

Last Thursday students completed drawing their two-point perspective projects by adding tonalities and contours in ink. Gwenny's drawing above illustrates a zig-zag movement by way of the solid black shapes distributed across the structure. She has also used repetition in shapes (see the elliptical windows) and texture as well (see the parallel hatches and stippling). Gwenny has employed the principles of design very effectively.

LINEAR PERSPECTIVE: Two-Point

Class began with a critique of the one-point perspective drawings followed by a demonstration of two-point perspective. Students will continue working on them tomorrow. Portfolios are due as well. Portfolios must be prepared outside of class and ready to turn in our they will be marked late.

LINEAR PERSPECTIVE: One-Point

Christie Noe

Class began with a critique of the texture inventories. Followed by a lecture and demo on one-point linear perspective. Christie's drawing above has a left to right movement due to the placement of the vanishing point off to the right side of the composition. The strength of the drawing at this point in its unfinished state is the way she has repeated the "z" shapes and transforming them into an "L" down in the lower right.

TEXTURE

Jessica Xiong-Cisneros

Today's class began with a critique of the color schemes project followed by a lecture on Texture. Students made a painting exploring the elements of actual, simulated and invented textures. The goal was to create an image that stimulates a sense of touch as well as the visual. The actual texture of Jessica's painting has high points, low points, impasto and scumbled areas. The rest of the spaces primarily address invented textures evident in the checker board pattern and the striped areas.

COLOR SCHEMES continued

Students continued working on their color schemes. A column of six is complete. From top to bottom: monochromatic cool and warm, analogous, complementary, split-complementary, and lastly the triad. The key to a successful, balanced and unified image is to consider the value relationships as well as the color.

COLOR SCHEMES

Sasha Mattos

Students began painting their color schemes today. The examples above include a monochromatic (cool tones) and a complementary color scheme of red and green. A simple design yet very effective for exploring value gradations.

COLOR: Color Wheel and Schemes

Yesterday, students used the firs two hours of class to finish the Deep Space project. After a brief critique, we discussed the properties of color and color schemes (see tab at top of page). Before starting their design for the color schemes project, students made a 12 step color wheel.

VALUE: Deep Space

Students began the Deep Space portion of the Value Patterns project today while finishing up the Flattened Space as well. Pix to follow. Tomorrow we will start color with a color wheel.

VALUE PATTERNS: Flattened Space

Danielle Garcia

Students continued working on the value patterns project striving to create a flattened sense of space. Many students chose a more pattern oriented image whereas Danielle's painting above exhibits a combination of line and shape. This combination of elements evokes a more lyrical quality. The calligraphic lines flowing into shapes suggests a musical quality. The energy and dynamics of the image are complemented by the way the curvilinear elements transition into angular elements with abrupt twists and turns.

VALUE: Rhythm and Repetition

Ma Samson

Students continued working on the R and R project for the first two hours of class. After a critique they did some touch up work before the lecture on Value and Space. In the last half hour, students started their designs for the Flattened Space painting.
In the drawing above, Ma has created a space opening onto another like the parting of clouds revealing the blue sky behind. Her whimsical shapes suggest a playful, joyous and fantastical space complemented by her use of high key values.  Furthermore, the overlapping shapes, gradations and cast shadows create a sense of depth. Whereas, the flat, closed-values push back the negative areas adding a sense of transparency as well as clarity.

VALUE: Rhythm and Repetition

Students began the Rhythm and Repetition project today. We will spend half of tomorrow finishing them up and start our Value and Space project in paint. Pix tomorrow.

COMPOSITION: Parts of the Puzzle (cont.)

Lukas Lohden

Students finished up their compositional studies on Thursday. Lukas' arrangement above has employed similarity and repetition allowing the "eye" to move from one shape to an entirely different type of shape. Notice in the middle left piece how we are pushed from the wavy, red lines to the red rectangle. Remember, similarity works through line, value, shape, color and texture. Elements just need to share one likeness in order to relate. He has also established a strong rhythm through many of the compositions by cropping the crescent shape and multiplying it creating a ripple effect seen in the bottom left. All in all, a very solid display and all the pieces stand well together.

COMPOSITION

Today we discussed Composition and began the Parts of the Puzzle project. The vocabulary terms are above under the COMPOSITION tab. I'll post examples of work tomorrow.

REPRESENTATION vs. DISTORTION

Eunice Solis

Students continued with their investigation of Notan. The project began with the organizing of the picture plane into 5 variously sized rectangles sharing no more than two of the same value. The upper right-hand corner is the unaltered shape. The objective for the remaining rectangles was to distort the shape sequentially striving for a balance of the light and dark areas. All of these formats exhibit a balanced distribution of light and dark. The composition would be stronger yet with a diagonal separation of the values of the positive shapes (ex. the black positives are both in the center left and the white positives are both along the right edge). This could be remedied by making the bottom right positive black, the bottom left positive white and the central positive pink.

EXPANSION OF THE SQUARE

Today we started with the characteristics of shape. Students made collages addressing the dark and light concept of NOTAN. True Notan achieves total balance of positive and negative areas; each working together without one negating or dominating the other.

Ayda Uraz

Ayda's collage exhibits a symmetrical design of two overlapping shapes with the centralized star. The beauty of the design is strengthened by the contrasting square and rhombus that seem to expand, rotate and contract.

Sophia Brisbois

Next students made an asymmetrical design. Sophia's collage exhibits a strong rotational rhythm propelled by the direction of the triangles and complemented by the circular or curvilinear elements.

LINE AND THE ILLUSION OF SPACE

Kelly Sherwood

Today students made line drawings with the intent of creating the illusion of space. The constraints were to use a specific number and type of shapes and render them with either vertical parallel lines or horizontal parallel lines. There are no outside contours rather the shapes are defined by continuous lines across the composition of varying values. So this project in Line is very much a project in Value as well. Kelly has very skillfully placed dark values in a manner that moves diagonally across the composition creating a dynamic as well spacious image. In addition, her treatment of overlapping shapes and transparency adds an extra level of visual interest. The inclusion of cast shadows has given the design a sense of light or time.

LINE DYNAMICS

Ayda Uraz

Kacie Brunk

Today students made drawings exploring the various methods of creating the illusion of depth within their compositions using line and mark-making techniques in ink. The Distal Ques are explained in the menu above. Ayda's drawing above very skillfully  illustrates atmospheric perspective. Notice how the line quality and size of the objects diminishes as the image recedes into space.
Kacie has employed line weight variation, overlap, value and gradations as well as size change to suggest a deep sense of space.

Mushky Rice

After completing two quarter sheet compositions, students changed the format to a half sheet with the same objective of creating a deep sense of space.  With her use of dark values to recede, overlapping shapes and variable line quality, Mushky has effectively addressed the objective of the project while adding a psychological twist with the subtle distortions applied to the shapes and lines.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LINE

Sasha Mattos

Today we began our investigation of the art element Line. Sasha's drawing above is a Line Inventory illustrating various line types. The objective was to explore different types of lines and what happens to them when 1. the format changes, 2. lines are repeated, 3. lines intersect, 4 lines move outside of the format (cropping)., etc. Format in particular may stretch the line, or in the case of a "tondo" or circular format, the negative areas are drastically altered.

Kacie Brunk

From there students made drawings exploring straight, curved and angular lines individually as well as combined. Notice in Kacie's drawing how the dynamics become more powerful with the changes to line and weight. In addition, when a line expands at an end or in the middle it may look more like a shape. Observe the left tondo composition how the line becomes "almond" shaped.

Ma Samson

Lastly, students chose one of the thumbnails from the previous drawing to enlarge. Ma's drawing has maintained much of the integrity and interest witnessed in the original. Notice how the bold lines advance and the thin lines recede and the broken or dashed and dotted lines bring a different rhythmical quality to the image than that of the continuous lines. Furthermore, there is an "implied" line within the spaces between the "actual" lines. All of these lines create a sense of unity in there likeness (similarity)  but are visual interesting for their variations (variety).

First Class

Summer school officially began today. We covered the syllabus and materials list with some examples of artist as well as student work. Tomorrow we start our explorations with Line. We'll draw in our sketchbooks and then move on to the bristol paper.