Posted by Ok so we are half way through the semester, which seems crazy since we’ve had like 15 days of class right?
Now, I’ve taken Art classes before. So I’ve said many times that I went into this feeling like it was just going to be a rerun of Foundations with updated tricks but I was wrong.Lets take the chair project. When I heard that we were going to draw a chair I was all ‘oh this is easy peasy” because I’ve done still life before. (Vanitas always have a special place in my heart) But wow. WOW. I’ve never dealt with direction on how to draw angles or proportions. It was always more of a ‘just do it’ rather than a ‘process’. I’ve never even heard of the string technique. It was very healthy for me to be able to just draw a chair from what I knew up to that point then actually spend some time working it out and measuring. Art is always presented as this very abstract process when you feel the paint strokes and draw with your soul or something. So it was good to actually work through it.
And then came the box project, which I ended up loving. Of course, we did the same steps as shown on the chair, but since it was so simple, I got cocky. I kept drawing what I knew, instead of what I saw. (Yes, I want that phrase tattooed on me as well. I have a list.) But beyond that, just creating gradients. I took colors theory. I can do colors all day. So I nearly jumped for joy at the idea of breaking down hues. Asking people for pictures of their hair was probably the hardest part of it, honestly. And yeah, I am going to try and do it again with red and blue instead of grays. But thinking in that space and seeing your simple shapes come together to make shadows and lights and edges like that is soo satisfying. Its one of those times when you look at something up close and it looks like nothing but afar it makes a picture. But then you realize that you made that thing. Yeah. Wow.
Thinking in this kind of space is new territory. My last art teacher, god bless Ms. Prince, loved to just chuck us a thing. She would give about 5 minuets about the project then let us have at it. With a time frame, or course. So this, being able to sort of knead these projects out instead of pounding and ripping it to fruition is a good head workout. I love that it feels like a real studio, like I’m making ‘real’ art.(‘But what is real art?’ a man in a navy-blue ascot, drinking wine in front of a roaring fire asks.) I suppose if the class were to end tomorrow, never to be entered into again, I would take away from it that I should always draw what I see, not what I know, and to trust myself. Over and over again, I become sort of a nitpicky perfectionist. Never for the big stuff, like dirty lines, but for the placement of a shadow or dot on the chair’s wood grain. I guess I’m hoping to sort of paint with all the colors of the wind and let my whimsical soul do the drawing but at the same time understand the process and be able to say that yeah, I could totally draw those grapes again. But so far, I know enough to say that I am actually an artist. I know how to proportion and see perspective and talk about art and make colors do the thing. Yeah. Wow.
