a blog to accompany the Fall 2009 course
Click here to go to a folder of images of your masks and 3D paintings.
Or if you’d like to download everyone’s (big zipped file) click here.
Masks above created and modeled by Beth Ratcliffe, Piper Melanson and below by Kris Bredemeier and Jenny Hsu.
Using your plaster face cast as a base, create a mask or headdress that fully engages the three dimensional space around your head. There can be planar elements, but you are making a sculpture that is fully in the round, so it should be visually interesting from every angle. Consider engaging one of the five main categories that masks often fall within, but you may also conceive of something completely new.
Rites of Passage
Can your mask represent movement away from, or towards a new stage in life?
Festivals of Renewal
Can putting on or shedding your mask be renewing, restoring, or awakening?
Is it symbolic of what you need | desire, re-imagine, or re-define?
Men as Women | Women as Men | Humans as Animals
Consider your identity, gender or nature… instinct
Theater | Performance
Take on a new persona or character as an actor… consider the notion of catharsis
Offense | Defense
Consider the concepts of protection | safety… danger
Here is a pdf with more historical masks for your contemplation. Come to class Tuesday prepared with ideas, sketches, and materials to work.
Make fourteen contour line drawings of your own face from as many distinct viewpoints as possible. Choose seven and reassemble them into a single, larger, composite piece, and then add two distinct media so the new composition gives the viewer a sense of the interior world of your mind / who you really are. See the project sheet pdf for more specific details. Final size must be at least 24 inches in one dimension (vertical or horizontal). And for fun, click here for my self portrait in wire spinning to Tom Waits’ Black Rider.
We will be joining Professor Shreck’s photo class to create some site specific earth works in the Winfield forest preserve. In your groups you will make four distinct proposals, and then refine a single one before we make our field trip. For further inspiration, the works above are by Andy Goldsworthy and Wolfgang Laib, and below: Robert Smithson and Ana Mendieta. Document your work with photographs from many viewpoints and then choose three that best represent your initial vision and are descriptive of the actual form of the earth work. Finally, write up a short statement about your process and idea.
In three dimensional work there is a greater complexity to the phenomena and perception of color and value than is present in two dimensions. In flatland, space and form are only illusory, while in the third dimension they exist (along with light) as real entities.
As you consider the repainting of your construction, use your growing understanding of color (recall our earlier color studies) to change our perception of your painting’s internal spatial relationships (make some planes seem further from or closer together). You may look to the original color palette for ideas of how to paint your structure, but you are not to simply repaint it. You may also choose a completely different set of colors, perhaps from another source/painting. I would suggest you not be completely arbitrary in your selection of colors, and do not settle for color as it comes from the tube/bottle. If you want to shift color on a single plane, do so in a gradual and even gradient, with not too much painterliness.
Make sure to photograph your piece before you begin to add color. Paint it completely with a base coat of gesso so the surface of the foamcore will accept the paint better. Please use the paints sparingly and economically, wash your brushes after use, and close paint bottles so they don’t dry up. Your final painted piece will be due next Thursday, 15 October.
Before the end of the weekend, you should have chosen the painting you will be reconstructing. Send me an image or link for my approval. Remember that the library has a whole host of monographs on artists with many more images than the internet will provide.
For Tuesday, please have a full size drawing as accurately scaled as possible. The final size should be between 260-300 inches square, which is roughly 14×20 inches. If your painting has a narrower proportion it might end up as 13×21.5, 12×23.5, or if it is more square: 15×19, 16×17.5, etc…. To make scaling the drawing up easier, make a grid overlay on a copy of the original.
Once this drawing is completed, spend significant time looking at your painting to determine the apparent spatial organization of the colored planes. Make these decisions purely based on your optical perception of the colors’ relationships in space, trying to disregard drawing or shape relationships that might influence you otherwise. This is especially tricky if your painting has recognizable form (ie. a cloud in the sky that “should” be behind a tree), but also if a plane seems to overlap another. Looking at your painting upside down or sideways will help you see the color relationships more purely. Mark each plane on your drawing with a letter or number to indicate the “level” it will appear on in your construction. Some planes may appear to slant in space, and you can indicate this by making multiple notations on a plane. Finally, indicate any “hidden” edges of planes that seem to continue behind other planes with a dotted or dashed line.
Make sure to bring your own xacto knife and pack of new blades (I would suggest at least a 10 pack… and of course they get cheaper as you buy more). You will want to change blades regularly to keep your cuts nice and sharp. I will give a demonstration Tuesday and then we will have the day to work in studio.
Here are more detailed instructions for your next two color studies. Please work on a heavy paper or board of your choice.
For the first, you must choose two disparate colors—colors that are radically different in two of the following: hue, value, and saturation. For example: a bright scarlet red and a dull gray-green, or a muted lavender purple and a rich grass green. Another way to think about these colors is that they don’t look good together. Try to mix fourteen (14) distinct tones that bridge the gap between these two colors. Paint them in an unpainterly way that emphasizes this gradation. See the examples above.
For the second, you must choose two near complements. These need not be prismatic colors, but instead can vary in their saturation or intensity (ie. a rich earthy gold and a soft violet, or a deep sky blue and pumpkin bisque. Mix a slightly larger amount of both. Then mix a chromatic gray midtone between the two, adding white to lighten it, and paint the background. Freely paint a composition of your own design from combinations of just these two colors and white. You should be able to mix colors that are both lighter and darker than the background. Examples above and below are from David Hornung’s Color: A Workshop Approach.
Choose a painting that has 10-20 distinct colors. Send me a link if you did not get my approval in class. You will make two (2) paintings of equal size and proportion on a single page of Bristol board (or other sturdy paper). 1) The first is a proportional inventory of the color in the painting. This means you will mix colors to match those found in the original, and then paint them systematically in the same proportion. Each color should appear just once in the composition. 2) For the second, you will use the same color palette, but its composition is completely up to you, and you should shift the balance of colors. In addition, add one distinct prismatic color (on the outside ring of your original color wheel) that most closely corresponds to a color in the painting. For example if there is a warm, unsaturated orange-brown, include warm, saturated orange in your new painting. Incorporate collage into this piece in some manner. Some examples from David Hornung’s Color: A Workshop Approach.
Greetings. This is a blog I’ve started to accompany our Creativity & Design course. I will occasionally post things for you to consider as you work on the current project. Here is a link to the contemporary illuminated Bible project I was mentioning in class, directed by Donald Jackson. Above: first page of the gospel of Luke from The Book of Kells, ca 800AD; Some/One by Do-Ho Suh, 2004; and Don Justo Gallego’s self-built cathedral near Madrid, ca 1961-present.
