Foundation Drawing, Day 3 and 4January 29th and February 5th, 2013

In class today we all turned in our chair assignment and posted them on the wall for everyone to see. It quickly became very clear that just because one might have a fair knowledge of art history, which I would say that I do, this has nothing to do with having the eye or the hand for making art. I think this is quite counterintuitive. Whereas people who are talented at Biology tend to also have a knack for Chemistry, the same is not true for Art History and Studio Art. So I realized as I looked at everyone else’s drawings that I somehow completely missed the nature of the assignment, and if this had been graded, I probably would have done very poorly. I now know that I have a lot to learn in this class, but I don’t feel discouraged because I already feel as if the class has changed my way of looking at art dramatically. And if I can feel that change after just one really instructional class (since the first two were merely introductory and we didn’t really learn anything), I can’t imagine how much I will have learned by the end of the semester. The class has even gotten me to consider minoring in Studio Art because I can already feel that it would be extremely helpful for a future curatorial and art criticism writing career—although the minor requirements are quite intimidating since I don’t consider myself a natural artist but would have to put myself and my art out there a lot in order to be a minor. Simply put, I have my work cut out for me.

Anyway, some of the drawings that other people made of chairs were really fantastic and impressive. One person’s drawings reminded me of Mies van der Rohe’s designs. I really wish I had gotten to photograph the drawings to post here, but I don’t know how people would feel about that.

Our next assignment for next Tuesday was to draw the effect of tree branch shadows falling onto other surfaces. We have to have four smaller sketches that look at our chosen subject from different angles and/or perspectives with different cropping, and then make a large drawing that is a larger version of our favorite of these four sketches. For this large drawing, we had to draw a frame on the Newsprint paper we’re using and color it in with charcoal, and then erase and blend to make the relevant shapes. The professor said that edges and positive vs. negative space are still important things to remember when making the drawings, but this time we should also focus a lot on the design.

Here is what I came up with (scroll down, the image doesn’t fit on this page):

Without intending it, my drawings became very abstract and minimalist. The shadow of the branch on the blank grass reminded me of that shining bolt of lightning on a clear, inky black sky at night, and so I tried to capture that in my drawing. But when I was finished with it, I felt like I had done something wrong or left something out, especially because our professor said the drawings should take 4-5 hours and mine only took about 2.5. My drawings actually reminded me a lot of Franz Kline’s work, which I think I’ll feature as my Painting of the Day for today.

Here are photographs of what other people did in my class, which I thought was absolutely stunning. Once again I felt very inadequate in my work and as if I had done something wrong, like I wasn’t on the same wavelength as

everyone else:

Everyone, even without previous artistic training apparently (that’s what they say in class), had done exceptionally well in my opinion, and I felt once again as I had with the previous chair assignment that I had unintentionally dropped the ball. I also felt like I was not really expressing my true personal sense of aesthetics, only that I was channeling the different schools and artistic movements that I am aware of through my study of art history.

So I talked to my professor after class about the problems I appeared to be having. While he thought that it was a bit premature of me to critique myself too harshly, he did say that he could tell I have a deep admiration for a broad range of art (which is true) and I therefore possess a kind of humility, which may be so humbling that it actually prevents me from expressing my personal style. My drawings reminded him of Ellsworth Kelly, and he wanted me to bring in a book on Kelly to talk about it. I realized as the class went on

that while I’m not one of the best artists in the class, I would say I’m one of the best at talking about art and analyzing art because that’s what I normally do as a student art historian. My professor also said that my drawings were the most “sophisticated” of all the drawings presented in class, and that may not be necessarily what we students should be aiming for right now. I think I know what he means; he might mean that my drawings are the most conceptual and more about thought and brains rather than the actual creative, expressive process of the picture making. So that is something I really need to work on as the class progresses.