This lesson focuses on value and how to recognize it and begin to paint it.
In addition to these exercises you also need to create a blog to track your progress.
First you need to make a Tumblr. Go to Tumblr.com and sign up.
Once you get used to the interface you'll see that you can easily create different posts.
Make these different tags for each post. You will begin to collect research about the ideas that certain painters were interested in. You're going to be collecting images of artists you find inspiring. You will be taking notes, and posting pictures of them. You'll be uploading images of all your work at different stages of progress. And you will be collecting source material that you can work from.
To see what one of these blogs look like go to mine at lunarcave.com
Tag posts with tags like “my work” “research” “artists to look at” “videos” and “notes”
Then get an Instagram downloader app. Download images that attract your attention. Investigate different movements, download images that get your attention. Go to the library, and check out books and then photograph pages that get your attention. Look at the ideas artists are working with, investigate them deeply and look at all the connections they have to literature, science, and philosophy. Make videos of yourself talking about the ideas you’re interested in while looking at the work you’re making in the studio (you can set these to private but it’s important to be comfortable talking about ideas)
Make your blog with a theme (the theme I use is called "masonite" that allows a bunch of images to be seen together (3 or 4 column theme) then you get to see your work alongside the artists you admire, and you can read your own notes and see them next to the research you are doing. If you do this for a year, even if you don’t know where you’re starting, you’ll start seeing connections and you’ll be able to build on them.
Week 2
Today we are working with brush and ink and painting primitive shapes/forms. There will be a lecture on symbols, lines, and ways of seeing value as opposed to line.
Value scales
Primitives from your head
Cone, Square, Sphere, Cube, Mashup of two primitives
Primitves drawn from life
Cone, Cube, Sphere, Dodecohedron (15 minutes each)
Magic Bean Drawings (4 of them)
Lunch
Selfie. Take a picture of yourself with “form lighting” . Which means that the light should be coming from above and illuminate one side of your face more than the other. You will then make a drawing based upon the photo.
artist of the week
Ralph Steadman
