Students were asked to develop a minimum of three concepts for their upcoming project. The concepts needed to deal with the idea of "transformation" and needed to include a "transition" from black and white to color. Students developed their 3 concepts, refined their ideas down to one final concept, and submitted photographs to use as references for their finished product. However, what the students did not know was that their final projects would be created without ever knowing what the finished image would be. I wanted the students to really focus on the colored pencil techniques they were learning and not on the image itself. I took each student's concept and created images in Photoshop, cut them into 30 squares, and gave each student a bag filled with their 30 individual squares. Students drew a grid on their final project paper, and one square at a time, began to transfer each square onto the final paper. As a result, students refined their colored pencil techniques by building up each layer of pigment, blending colors together, color mixing and pressure control. Here are the results!
Students were asked to look at different types of "interactions" and what the "interaction" means to them personally. Students looked at the interactions between people and nature, people and technology, people and art and the interactions we face with ourselves everyday. Students were asked to create a portrait about their chosen "interaction" using the full range of values. Students then completed three separate concept sketches in their sketchbooks and chose one concept to finalize. After students completed their final concept sketch, they were given 16 X 20 in. paper to draw their final work of art. Here is the work in progress! This project was designed so that students would potentially be able to enter their finished pieces in the National Portrait Gallery's "Teen Portrait Competition". Students can look at contest details and submit their final projects at http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/teen/index.html
It is arguable that one of the most frustrating subjects to draw is fabric, especially when you are a beginning artist. Students in my Art II class were asked to use two different techniques to go about drawing a still life of black and white fabric. The combination of dark and light fabric under a spotlight challenges students to find the difference in values depending on where light is hitting each piece of fabric. Students struggle with how to add darker values on a lighter fabric and lighter values on a darker fabric.
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