summary part four: pastels verge on abstration

summary part three: drawing and painting the figure

marc chagall

kiki smith

francis bacon
pablo picasso
leonardo da vinci

summary part two: sumptuous still-life

david hockneypierre bonnard

paul cezanne
willem kalf

summary part one: multiple possibilities

Designing by repetition: using a single image as a modular building unit.

Zoe Leonard at Dia Becon

On Thursday we will have Yvette back for a long pose. Bring newsprint AND good paper; I have some if you don't. Bring what you like to draw with. We'll start with gesture drawings - see http://acpportfolioprep.blogspot.com/ - and then begin a pose that will last at least an hour. Make it your best yet. We will bring out some oil painting for the final session with Yvette.

Last week we composed through repetition of a simple shape, an anonymous form. Adding dark and light can add to such a design. We had looked at the Tara Donovan installations which are built with a similar approach.

This is apparently a big switch from drawing the model; but the concern for composition, for placing three dimensional stuff into a two dimensional situation is analogous throughout a range of observation drawings.

Value Drawing

With value drawings, you see the range of values of color or white to black of a subject. No lines; lines occur when two values bump up against each other. Light fall correctly portrayed gives the illusion of space, where contour line flattens the subject graphically. Value equals volume.

Contour line drawing

Contour line drawings are made with a single, continous, even-weighted line. Slowly, follow the most detail that can be seeen.

Contour line drawing is one to the three ways we will use to look at our subject.

This method of drawing, of seeing, is different from gesture in that it is done very slowly, and is concerned with every detail of the edges and outlines of the subject.

for Thursday next

On Thursday we'll start our drawing session with gesture drawings of the model. These rapid, vigorous drawings will warm you up and help you gain a sense of the energy of the pose.

After several 2 minute gesture drawings we will turn to contour and value drawings which we have already done together.

So that we can make maximum use of our evening, please view this YouTube video to prepare yourselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRTqpJMs98E

You can actually practice gesture drawing with ordinary objects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRTqpJMs98E