Free Flowing Painting
Using Christiane Spangsberg's work as inspiration, create a free flowing abstract painting. Your painting doesn’t need to look like anything. Do not worry about what “it is” or is “supposed to be”. Let it flow and just come out naturally.
Using Christiane Spangsberg's work as inspiration, create a free flowing abstract painting. Your painting doesn’t need to look like anything. Do not worry about what “it is” or is “supposed to be”. Let it flow and just come out naturally.
- Try to ABSTRACT shapes and forms.
- Be simple, clear, and clean cut. Don't worry about shading, values, or blending.
- Play with positive and negative space.
- Line thickness or thinness.
- Overall feeling of “cleanness” and fluid, flowing movement
- USE ONLY BLACK PAINT ON WHITE PAPER, OR, WHITE PAINT ON BLACK PAPER. Or, use neutral brown paper.
- Try painting with your non dominant hand for at least a few minutes!
Emotions
Pick 6 emotions to paint. Paint each one on a small, 6x6 inch piece of paper. You can use an color you desire, mix away! But, all images should be non-representational, so no happy faces or broken hearts. Try to capture the feeling of the emotion simply through your use of colors, abstract shapes, and brushstrokes.
Tie Dye and Paint on Something Other Than Paper
Sometimes branching out beyond paper is fun and refreshing. Find something you can tie dye in class, like a t-shirt, pillow case, or socks. The dye is our "paint" in this case. In addition, find an object you can paint on with acrylic paint. Good ideas might be your backpack, shoes, a binder, or a piece of wood.
Values and Blending
In order to practice creating different values (levels of lightness and darkness), blending those values evenly, smoothly, and gradually, we will practice painting 4 forms in direct lighting. Make sure that your brushstrokes follow and mimic the form of the object, that FULL range of values is present, and that your blending transitions don't feel like stripes. First step= pick what direction your light source is coming from!
Color Wheels
We will be making several wheels to serve as tools in our future projects, as well as to practice mixing colors and values.
- 1 Color wheel (primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries, colors)
- 1 Value Scale Wheel (black and white)
- 1 Lightening of a Color (tint)
- 1 Darkening of a Color (shade)
- 1 Intensity Wheel (complimentary pair)
TOTAL = 100 points (20 points per wheel)
Collaborative Color Strips (alternative to standard color wheel)
Cut twelve strips of canvas paper. Each strip will be one piece/color of the color wheel. For each strip, paint the pure color itself, the tine, tone, and shade of the color, plus dull the intensity with its compliment. You can show these five things on each strip however you please, such as stripes, patterns, words, etc. Make sure to mix colors on your palette and not the strip itself, as well as do multiple layers for a more finished, rich look.
TOTAL = 60
Symbolic Still Life
For this assignment, you will create your own still life and paint it on canvas using acrylics. Choose a few objects that have symbolic meaning for you personally or make some sort of statement. You need to have the actual objects in front of you OR source photos that you are looking from. You will complete the majority of the painting only using black and white paint and mixing different values, but choose one area to have a "blip" of realistic color. The blip can be any shape of your choosing, for instance: a stripe or band, a circle, a corner, etc.
- Meaningful choice of objects (not a landscape, portrait, etc.)- 10 points
- Realistic in style- 10 points
- DEFINITE values on objects and background, clear darks, middles, and lights, shadows and shading, distinct but gradual BLENDING- 40 points
- Color mixing (for the "blip" portions that are colored) as accurate as possible, avoid using the color straight from the tube- mix!- 30 points
- Use of multiple layers, no streaky see through parts, rich quality- 10 points
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Abstract Expressionist Project (Painting + Research + Presentation + Music)
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Portraits
- Done from an actual photo- print it out
- Accurately drawn and proportional before painting it- ask for help if you need it
- Show a range of values of skin tones (darks, middles, lights, cool and warm tones)
- Captures color likeness from photo, color matching/mixing
- Shows some PAINTERLY TEXTURE, balance of tightness and looseness- IMPASTO= build it up, use multiple layers, no streaky see-through paint
- Must be painted on something besides paper, like a piece of wood or canvas
Impressionism
Using Claude Monet's Rouen Cathedral series as inspiration (see images below), create two paintings that depict the same subject (anything of your choosing) but each should be unique in it's lighting and color. Both should visually look and "feel" different. Like Monet, aim to be looser in style, leaving visible brushstrokes, that "grow or flow" in a direction and length appropriate to whatever you are painting. We want to build up layers of TEXTURE! Try mixing ceramic tile adhesive in with your acrylic paint, and using a palette knife to distribute the paint directly on the canvas, Also in the impressionistic spirit, try to be experimental and more wild with color. Play with shadows. Try cool blues and purples instead of using black. Remember, an orange pumpkin isn't just straight orange in color- there can be a whole variety of other colors going on there.
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Watercolor + Literature
Surrealism
Using a specific color scheme, create a surreal painting that somehow relates to you. Perhaps it could be a dream or fear of yours. Before starting, research 5 surreal artists and look at their work.
Total = 50 points
Visual Artist's Trading Card + Recreation
Part 1) Visual Artist Trading Card-
On a 5x7 index card that I will supply, make a “trading card” on an artist of your choice. This can be any visual artist, dead or alive, from any point in time. I just ask that it not be a musician as this would fall under “performing arts”.
+ BACK OF CARD: Research your artist. On the back of the card, in a visually appealing way, list info about the artist. Such as their name, nationality, where they live(d) and work(ed), and if you can find any information about their life, schooling or lack their of, important life events and inspiration. In addition, include a section describing what media they use, what subject matter they generally do, describe their work (pretend as if I have no clue what their work looks like at all!).
+ FRONT OF CARD: Print out a color photo of one of the artist’s works of art. If you are truly unable to print a color photo, then draw/paint it yourself.
Part 2) Recreation-
Part two is to create a painting inspired by one of your artist’s works. The key here is not to copy directly, but rather borrow some components and change others. There is no size requirement on this, but I expect you to use all the class time left to make it a successful, impressive piece. I expect this will require work to be done outside of class in order to finish it in time.