Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Black and White In-Class Studies (Part 2)

I wanted to post another simple demonstration lesson today so you have some context for the student work you'll see tomorrow.

Much like yesterday's painting, this one also focuses on noticing and recording light passing across simple geometric forms. The goal wasn't to fully complete it but to render the three spheres against the foreground and background. While this demonstration didn't illustrate the nuances of each surface--dull or shiny--of the three spheres as well as I'd like. It did provide guidance on painting a three dimensional sphere and showed how foreground and background color impact the perception of values. One of the primary purposes for this demo was to illustrate how to correct the shape and size of their spheres. You'll notice the black remains, um, un-circular. The other two were corrected.

I felt rushed during this one. I can't say this isn't the case for most demos I do. Since nearly all of my students have no prior knowledge of art or its practice, they are not given to sitting still and gleaning insight from someone while he paints--even though I talk them through the what and why I'm doing what I do. They want to jump in and start despite the fact they don't know what they are doing. While I try to nurture their push to get started it rarely reaps the rewards I seek for them and I find myself doing mini-demonstrations for many students to help them "get it."

Today, I used direct instruction as I started a simple color still life of one object. So, I did something and then they followed after me. I monitored their work accordingly. I'll be curious to see it's long term benefit, if any. I feel I must keep trying different approaches to getting them to attend.

I'll be curious what your thoughts are as you see a few pieces they've done.

What materials do you use?

I was originally trained with traditional oils. I moved on to alkyd oils because I liked the fact that they dried more quickly but still pro...