Drawing from Observation

by Fulton Cunha

It's been a long time since my last blog entry, but I am committed this year to keeping you all informed about what is happening in Artroom 3111. We have exciting new students this year and our experienced, honors students, have started the year off with great enthusiasm!

September is all about drawing from observation. Yes, actually looking at what you are drawing- not looking at a picture of what you are drawing. My biggest challenge is always asking students to look up as they draw. Many students think it's "easier" to take a picture of their still life with their phone and draw from the picture, but any artist will tell you that the quality of that drawing will never measure up to a true life drawing from observation. My Drawing 1 students started off with learning about line, qualities of line, space, and composition. They created thumbnail sketches of a still life I arranged with different chairs. They then filled in the negative space in each thumbnail sketch black. After they had completed a page of thumbnail sketches each student picked their most successful compositions to enlarge. The enlarged, final works included zentangle line designs in the negative space or positive space depending on the composition. Check it out!

Thumbnail sketches

by Katey Latassa

on display outside Artroom 3111

By Jessica Oliver



*** all bold highlighted words are vocabulary words that each student is responsible for knowing**

Drawing classes off to a good start

Marissa Lane

Cara Stockman

Megan Russo

Nicholas Lane hard at work sketching

E Block boys transferring their sketches to final drawings

Patsy MacDowell working on final drawing

My E block and B block drawing classes are off to a terrific start with the iconic "CHAIRS" project. As posted before, this project is the first drawing lesson on line and space. Our students learn the vocabulary terms listed below before we get started with three thumbnail sketches of our subject matter: chairs. As you can see from the pictures posted above, our students really did a nice job at setting up an interesting composition with such a simple subject matter. Students then transferred their sketches to their final drawing paper and decided which compositions worked better for postive space and negative space.

We then talked about various qualities of line and pen strokes. What emotional association does a zig zag line have? A wavy line? We talked about pattern in pen strokes and how pattern can create movement and texture. We looked a several works of art that showed us examples of pattern as texture and line has texture and movement. We then began to explore line as pattern and zentagles. Zentagles by definition is: a drawing using structured patterns. We practiced pen strokes and zentagles in our sketcbooks before using them on our final pieces. I will post pictures of our finished products when they are handed in next week.

Composition: The arrangement of elements such as line, value and form within an artwork, princples of design are considered in order to achieve a successful composition.
Compositional Movement: A path that the viewers gaze is directed to follow because the arrangemnt of the elements in an artwork.
Positive Space: The areas containing the subject matter of the artwork. Also referred to as figure.
Negative Space: The areas of a work of art not occupied by the subject matter, but which contribute to the composition. Also referred to as ground.
Figure/Ground Ambiguity: exsits when it is impossible to determine what would be considered figure and what would be considered ground in a work of art.

 **SPARKLE WORD**

Ambigious: Open to more than one interpretaion. Having a double meaning. Unclear.

Drawing Positive/Negative space and Zentangles

Sara Francis

My drawing classes are off and running with the completion of our first in class project and our first creative sketchbook assignment of the marking period. We have spent the first couple of weeks in class talking about positive and negative space. Positive space by definition is the areas containing the SUBJECT matter in a work of art; the objects depicted, as opposed to the background or space around those objects. Negative space is then naturally, the areas in an artwork NOT occupied by the subject matter, but which contribute to the composition. Negative space can also be background space or empty space but not exclusively. 

We drew simple outline sketches of chairs, focusing on shape and space. The key here: getting to draw the chairs big enough that there would be more positive space than negative space. After completing about 4 sketches, students chose one for a POSITIVE space drawing and one for a NEGATIVE space drawing. In the positive space drawings students were to fill in the space with Zentangle designs. In the negative space drawings, the negative space is filled in with Zentangles. All though simple, the outcome is complicated and beautiful as you can see in the examples above.

Our first sketchbook assignment was to take the zentangles and create a figure using zentangles to create hair! What are zentangles you ask? A Zentangle is an easy, fun way to create beautiful, decorative images using structured patterns. There are some great sources to learn more about zentangles, but the best place is the official web site that you can find here: www.zentangle.com 

Here are some of the assignments:

Erin Jermyn

Meryl Glaser

Michaela Kotob

Veronica Gibbs

Everest Crawford

Jordan Pallazola

Gloria Kabulo