ART M43 / Beginning Painting / Erika Lizée / Fall 2011

Limited Palette Still Life Collage Due at the Midterm Critique Project Description: In this project we will be inspired by American artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Wangechi Mutu. O’Keeffe will influence our work as we combine skull and flower elements that are realistically painted. Mutu’s influence will be seen with the incorporation of collage and drawing into our paintings. We will be working with a limited palette and simple color scheme for this project to unify our designs. Objectives:

• Develop a cohesive idea that supports the combination of realistically painted, collaged and drawn elements.

• Practice composing a painting with the aid of a viewfinder and through a series of thumbnail sketches.

• Use a limited palette and simplified color scheme to unify a complex image.

• Hone blending skills through realistic representation, accurately matching paint to actual hues.

• Explore alternative methods of paint application, experimenting with transparency, translucency and opacity.

Process:

• Developing your idea: Studying the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, we saw the way she painted both skulls and flowers realistically, but pushed them compositionally into the realm of abstraction. When developing your idea for the project, consider how each of these objects could be symbols for life and death, beauty and decay, hope and despair. Part of the process for figuring out your idea will be the collection of your collage materials. When working with collage, you are often at the mercy of the existing images/text that you can find. Therefore research is an important part of this project. If you know exactly what you want to do, then it may take time to find the right collage materials that support that idea. You may also find that your idea changes as your find new things out about your concept or discover things that pull your idea in a new direction.

• Composing your painting: As always you will be doing a series of sketches to determine your composition for the project. Because you will be working from a still life set up in class, we will be working with viewfinders to help in this process. You will need to think about how you will be combining the realistic elements from the still life, with your collage/drawn elements to make a cohesive image. The key when working with mixed media is integration. This means making the (perhaps disparate) elements feel like they belong together visually. You want them to work together, creating a harmonious relationship. Watch for collage elements feeling “stuck on”. Collage elements should feel like they belong in the space of the painting. You may find that drawing is an immediate way to connect these elements together. We saw the amount of integration in Mutu’s work, where often times you didn’t even notice the collaged aspects right away. The quality of this combination of collage, painting and drawing keeps the viewer’s attention and makes our artwork dynamic and interesting.

• Color Scheme: Because our designs for this piece will be complex with the combination of painted and collaged imagery, we will be using simple color schemes to help tie things together visually. Consider the colors of the realistic elements you will be including in your piece and develop a color scheme for your painting that relies on one or two color combinations. Possibilities include Achromatic, Monochromatic, Complementary, or Analogous color schemes.

• Collage: Once a composition is determined and you have your collage resource materials, you can begin attaching them to your canvas board. See the Collage Handout for greater detail on this process. I will also be demonstrating this process in class.

• Painting: After your layer of collaged materials is dry and ready to be painted on, you can move into the painting phase of the project. Sketch in the realistic elements from the still life and treat this aspect of the painting as you would any other realistic painting. You will be working with a limited palette of paints,

but should be able to match the colors of the realistic elements in the still life. Play with the level of transparency/opacity with the realistic elements, revealing/hiding underlying collage materials.

• Figure/Ground Relationship: You will also need to consider how you will be painting or treating the remaining ground areas of your painting. Play with the density of your paint by leaving some areas transparent or translucent, contrasting against areas that are opaque. You can do a series of glazes to develop contrast and help push/pull the space. If you choose to incorporate drawing into your piece, this could be a way to develop the relationship between the figure/ground. We will cover this in class as well.

Supplies: Sketchbook, ruler, pencil, scissors, X-acto blade, minimum 18 x 24” canvas board or wood panel, limited palette of acrylic paints, collage materials, acrylic medium, sandpaper and your other regular painting supplies. Vocabulary:

• Figure (Positive Shape): The principle or foreground shape in a design, the dominant shape or figure in the figure-ground relationship.

• Ground (Negative Shape): Any clearly defined area around a positive shape, the receding shape or ground area in the figure-ground relationship.

• Figure/Ground Relationship: the relationship between the shapes or figures and the other parts of the composition (the ground or background).

• Viewfinder: Created when a small window is cut out of a piece of paper in the same proportions of the artist’s surface. The window helps the artist determine composition. (Similar to looking into a camera.)

• Thumbnail sketches: A small and loose drawing, used to determine composition.

• Local Color: The true color of an object or a surface as seen in typical daylight, rather than its color as seen through atmosphere or interpreted by the taste or imagination of the artist. The local color of a lemon is yellow.

• Collage: The process of creating an image through attaching paper, cloth, photographs and other materials onto a surface.

• Integration: A combination of parts that work together to create a harmonious whole.

• Mixed Media: Combining two or more mediums in the creation of a visual image.

• Transparent: If something is transparent, it means that you can see through it. It allows enough light to pass though it that you can see what is behind it.

• Translucent: If something is translucent, it means that the material is dense enough that you can see through it, but the image behind it is greatly obscured. It is the quality that is in between transparent and opaque.

• Opaque: If something is opaque, it cannot be seen through.