4/16/15 2D Design

Today's Class-  Tonight we opened by looking at the color temperature collages.  I collected them and will return them graded next week.  Then we started a new graded project- a mixed media collage inspired by early 20th century art movements.  I showed examples of collage based art from the past 100 years, from Picasso to Dada to Pop, as well as slides of student examples of the project from previous semesters.  Borrowing the idea of randomness from Dada as both an inspiration and a working method, I had students pick random words from paper bags, forming randomly generated phrases, which will be the subject of their collages.  Some students spent the rest of the evening cutting potential collage items from magazines or sketching ideas, while others used the time to work on previous unfinished projects.

How to make this up- You can't begin until you have your topic.  Your choice is to either e-mail me to request  the topic and I'll draw the words and send the phrase to you, or you can wait until next week's class and pick them out of the bags yourself.  Once you have a topic, you need to create the piece.  It must include items that are collaged printed images, paint, and drawn elements.  You can modify collaged items by drawing or painting directly on them.  The chosen topic words must be included in the image, either by collaging your words (which have been cut from a newspaper headline) pulled from the paper bags, or drawing or painting them yourself.  You may be as literal or metaphorical as you like in how you interpret the subject, as long as you can explain your interpretation in our critique.  

Use a full sheet of your 18" x 24" paper, either vertical or horizontal.  Besides interpreting your topic, you are creating an artwork, so you need to take into account composition, value, balance, basic color theory, how you might use text, and everything else we covered this semester.  Above and below are student examples from previous semesters.  Above is "City of Zoo" and below is "Untamable Deluge".  More instructions and additional student examples can be seen here.

Homework- This mixed media collage graded project is due at the beginning of class on May 7, 2015.

The limited palettes color studies project is due on April 30, 2015.

For next class 4/23/15- We will be doing our last portfolio exercise of the semester, a color still life painting.  To this point we have mostly used color in a theoretical sense, so here's a chance to put it to a more traditional purpose.  Bring your 18" x 24" pad, paints, brushes, palette, and everything else you need for painting.