Week 8

Week 8 (Mar 6-11)
Southwest, Wednesday 12:30-3:30
This week at Southwest, the students in the IP/AB class continued to work on concentration and sketchbook work in preparation for their exams, and the Beginning Painting class began a new set of projects focused on value rather than color.

Of the students that I spoke one on one with, a student who largely drew cartoons showed an interest in exploring animation, and abstract representations of people in the room as they moved and changed places in time and space. Another student who makes abstract art was interested in understanding different media, especially acrylic and gouache as mixed media, and was very excited to explore the solubility of gouache after I pointed it out to him. Another girl who makes abstract art spoke to me about her work and process – she creates marker drawings that have a stained-glass, Lisa-frank-camouflage-like appearance, and, like many of the students, create work procedurally according to feeling. Many of the students procedurally generate their work in response to their own instincts,  except the students who draw specific characters, or the ones whose process is laborious (papercut, embroidery).

The Beginning Painting class had mixed feelings about the bowls they painted according to a value scale they made, but a number of students felt that their grip on acrylic as a media is getting firmer. One student responded well to applying makeup language to painting (highlight, contour), and was very excited to think of painting in terminology of something they loved.