Its Over - - Final Drawing

With finals and final projects there hasn't been much time for the internet. Well school is out for the winter and I'm back. Here is my final for my drawing class. It is a self portrait done in charcoal.

SOFA

This weekend Navy Pier was host to a wonderfull art exhibit called SOFA ( and no it is not a display of different couches. SOFA stands for "Sculpture Objects and Functional Art" Fair. While I have heard about this exhibit for many years, I have been unable to attend for one reason or another. However, this year I was able to go. Northern Illinois University provided the transportation and we bought the tickets.

While there were a variety of media ranging from clay ceramics to crayons used the same way Seraut painted, my favorite portion and the most prominent was the glasswork that was on display. The pieces ranged from blown glass bowls to intricate pieces of jewelry. By far the most stunning piece was this blown glass chandelier.

No photos were allowed to be taken in the exhibit so these images were taken from the catolog that I purchased.

In addition to the exhibit their were several demostration that took place throughout the day. My favorite was done by the Corning Museum of Glass and consisted of a glass blowing demonstration. Here you can see the demonstration in progress.

Definitely worth a visit again next year.

Salute to a Master

This weekend's drawing assignment was to create a copy of a master's painting, drawing, etching, etc. I chose to do this piece by Cezanne.

Here is my drawing done in charcoal using a reductive technique.

Striking Silhouettes

In this project we were to take the sillouettes of everyday figures and by overlapping, enlarging, or even reversing the images we had to create a patern.

People are accustomed to receiving visual information in a systematic and organized manner and yet some viewers associate order with institutional rigidity and will reject visual communications that seem too highly structured. The point is to develop judgment about your audience’s preferences and tolerances with respect to order and risk.

In the second part of this project we were to choose a word a place it over figures to come up with a compelling compostition.

Value Value Everywhere..

Value is one of the most important tools available to an artist. With it an artist can define forms extremely well. In these drawings the lights were turned out in the room and spotlights were placed in places to get dramatic contrast. These drawings are put in the order that I created them. All of these drawings are reductive drawings, meaning that a mid-tone gray is placed on the paper and the highlights are then erased away from the paper.

Some 3-d work

My 3-D class has turned out to be really interesting. It is more like a drafting class. In this assignment We had to cut out designs of each side of the shape.

Here it is before I glued it together.

And when I spray painted the cube i got these awesome shapes that i had to show.

Modern day Values.

Finally we have begun value drawings in my Drawing 1 class! This is a very rough first piece becaue we were only given 15 minutes.

It is a reductive drawing, whereby I placed a midtone gray over the entire piece of paper and erase the highights out of the drawing and put in the lowlights into into with a charcoal pencil.

At the bottom of the page is a value scale.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Here it is, the final drawing dealing with the idea of line. In this drawing, one-point perspective was the main objective. In one-point perspective all lines converge into one vanishing point. Also in this drawing we were required to use create a surreal environment by placing objects that would not necessarily appear in the space. Can you guess the theme I chose for the surreal portion? This surreal portion contrasts a great amount to the rigidity of the one-point perspective.

I am not sad to see the end of the line drawings. Line drawings tend to feel incomplete. Up next are some drawings using value, as well as some 3d work.

Fall is Here!!!

Its finally here, the cool weather, the light sweaters, and ...wait for it . . . the fireplaces! NIU has finally lit the fireplace in its main common room. It makes the perfect place to read a book, surf the net, or even do some homework. I can't wait for the leaves to start changing all those great colors!

I Love the Smell of Sawdust in the Morning!

I had my camera with me today, so I decided to take some photos around campus.The architecture on these buildings are really cool looking.

The image below is a sculpture that I pass every day on the way to classes. I just think it is such an interesting sculpture. It is placed in the center of a large common area outside.

The piece is titled "The Balance of Equality" which is a fitting title becasue the common area that this is in is called Martin Luther King Jr. Commons.

This next photo is of a bulding on the way to class. I just love the way the ivy covers it.

Here is the castle of NIU. Did you know that it is a state law for all public universities in Illinois to have a castle. Sorry about the photo. I was in a rush to get to class. I'll get a better one another day.

Here is the art building at NIU. There is always something going on in this building. When I walked in today I was bombarded with the smell of sawdust and acryllic paint. Art buldings always have a distinctive smell. The smell of the art wing at my high school was a mixture of paint, metal shavings and pencil graphite. A very comforting to smell to all artists!

Contour Line Sketch

In this drawing we were simply creating a rough contour line drawing.

A Contour Line is a line that defines the inner and outer edges of a form and suggests three-dimensionality.

In this sketch done in my drawing 1, class cross countour lines are also used.

Cross-Contour lines are multiple, curving, parallel lines running over a surface of an object horizontally and/ or vertically which describes its surface topographically.

The image shown is of a still life of sheets placed overlarge boxes in the drawing room.

Abstract Composition Part 3 and 4

These two assignments were done concurrently, which is why I am posting these two parts together.

In part three (below),

This is an 8X8 composition where I took marks that I thought looked interesting and arranged them into an interesting composition by arranging and affixing them to the surface. The final product is layered with a significant amount of newly generated imagery without being overly complicated or busy.

What’s The Point? The idea is to begin the difficult process of imposing order on chaos, finding concrete meaning in visual ambiguity, and defining for myself in practice, the principles of gestalt. The point is to learn from the challenge of creating a cohesive and harmonious abstract composition from scratch, as opposed to the slightly easier task of simply reorganizing and reacting to existing imagery.

The final part of this project is conceptually rather simple, I had to choose my favorite composition/individual square of all from part 1 or 2 and then recreate it at a much larger scale (at least 22x22”). I projected and lightly traced the outline of marks, areas, and lines.

Second Drawing assignment

In these two drawings we were continuing our study of line in class. Using different line we were to create an interesting composition.

This first drawing was done right outside the art building. It shows a very interesting sculpture and some stairs that lead up to the building.

In this drawing some lines that were used were intuitve perspective lines, and scribble lines




This drawing was done after the drawing above. In this drawing, we were to focus more on compositon. Some things that the teacher was looking for were that objects ran off of the page, and your eyes should wander around the paper without getting stuck.

Some lines that I used in this drawing were again scribble lines and intuitive perspective lines.

In addition to intuitive perspective there is also atmospheric perspective which states that as things get futher away from you they get smaller and their lines get fuzzier.

The above drawing was done in my dorm lobby. In this view I am looking out of a window.

My Deserted Island

Although this is a fairly old art project that I completed in my senior year of high school, I still love the way that it turned out.

The process used to create this piece was printmaking.

The type of print making used in this piece was a solar plate

The process is a somewhat simple: A transparency is used to create an image(Below)

In my case I created a collage using Adobe PhotoShop and then printed it out on the transparency.

After the transparency is made, a UV sensitive plate is used. Placing the transparency over the plate and exposing the plate to UV develops the plate. After 5 minutes of exposure to UV light the plate is placed in a tub of water to complete the developing process.

Ink is then applied to the plate, which is then put through a printing press.

By differing the amount of ink used and the color you can create hundreds of different prints using the same plate.

Here is an image of a the entire process that i framed

To start with . . .

To start my blog out I will be posting an assignment I had in my 2-D art class.

Abstract Composition

In this composition I cut out 4X4 squares out of a large sheet of paper that I created marks with using found objects and india ink. I then put 16 of these squares together to create a single composition.

Gestalt theory states that we tend to continue shapes beyond their ending points and things which share visual characteristics will tend to be seen as belonging together. I was supposed to think about how the clever choice and arrangement of smaller squares can generate visual movement, fluidity, and rhythm so that each sqaure can be seen as a singular whole utilizing similarity and continuity.

What’s The Point? The idea is to begin the difficult process of imposing order on chaos, finding concrete meaning in visual ambiguity, and defining for ourselves the principles of gestalt in relation to continuity and closure.