I’ve got a new piece up over at Neoteric talking about a project where I use Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind to teach art-making concepts. Check it out and if you teach, give it a shot. I’d love to know if others get good results with it.
Thursday and Friday, October 28th and 29th, 2010, painter and educator Matt Klos visited the University of Missouri Art Department. His talk – as much a short lecture on the richness of painterly exploration over the last 75 years as it was an elucidation of his art – was a vibrant and refreshing event.
After the talk, Professor Klos led a large group of Mizzou undergraduate students in a critique of works from art majors Derek Frankhouser, Marcus Miers, Danielle Moser, and John Schneider.
The talk and critique were well attended and really modeled the intense, engaged dialogue we are trying to foster among our undergrads here.
Thanks, Matt, for coming!
For more on Matt Klos, see here.
Marcus Miers is a current Color Drawing 3 student of mine. I’ll post work by my other students soon.
A year ago I started teaching all levels of Color Drawing (Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced) at the University of Missouri. While I really enjoy all of my classes, the Color Drawing sections have been particularly special to me.
So here’s just a review of some of the great work from this semester…
Danielle Moser, Beginning Color Drawing: Reflection Project Drawing, Oil Pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Jillian Blanck, Beginning Color Drawing: Master Copy Drawing (after Dali’s The Hallucinogenic Toreador), Chalk Pastel, 30 by 22 inches.
Scott Fisher, Beginning Color Drawing: Master Copy Drawing (after Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel), Chalk Pastel, 30 by 22 inches.
Holly Meador, Intermediate Color Drawing: Head Planes Model Drawing, Chalk Pastel, 44 by 30 inches.
Holly Meador, Intermediate Color Drawing: Self Portrait as Flaming June (after Lord Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June), Chalk Pastel, 30 by 36 inches. (Unfortunately, this drawing was stolen from my flat files at the University – I’m actually pretty pissed off about it. How can we expect our students to be willing to put forth their best efforts when their peers don’t respect that work? Really unbelievable.)
Roxanne Kueser, Advanced Color Drawing: Courtney, Chalk Pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Brittany Carney, Advanced Color Drawing: Neil (The Proper Posture), Chalk Pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Marcus Miers, Advanced Color Drawing: Untitled Composition, Chalk Pastel, 60 by 45 inches.
I want to thank all of my Color Drawing students for making the class so enjoyable. I could have easily had 100 drawings to show from the production of my 24 students; I don’t mean any disrespect to those I’ve not displayed here. These works do show the overall quality and worth ethic I’ve seen throughout all of the students this semester. I’m so glad I got to work with them. Here’s to setting the bar high for next semester!
I love this Group Project we do together. Click to enlarge.
It’s 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide (or thereabouts).
Me and MU BFA graduate Jake Crook at the MU Senior Exhibition on December 17, 2009. We had a donation of beverage cups from Culver’s… brought a new meaning to the phrase “get culverized!”
Me with one of my favorite art students, Shannon.
She earned honors for her work in Psychology at MU. She minored in Art, which is obviously where I worked with her.
Honor students often name a faculty person who walks with them in the procession to the ceremony where they receive their honors regalia. I was humbled when Shannon asked me to attend the festivities with her.
She is a dedicated, thoughtful, conscientious person. I’m looking forward to seeing the trajectory of her continued success as she looks toward Graduate School and combines her love for people with her love for art. Good job, Shannon!
In my Drawing 3 (basically Life Drawing) course at the University of Missouri, we have a series of projects that focus on developing drawings that have a dynamic, shifting arrangement of bodies and spaces. The goal is for students to hone their ability to combine observed form and light with a knowing, thoughtful editing of the overall structure in order to create/direct the psychological environment of the picture. In earlier projects, students are asked to create a drawing of a model who, after a certain period of time, shifts part of his or her pose. Students have to adapt their drawing, learning how to react the experience of seeing rather than freak out that everything isn’t the same (as if anything stays the same anyway). Later on, we work on a longer series of poses over the course of 8 or 10 class periods. Using up to three different models who strike a couple different poses, the class develops larger drawings that incorporate the combination of the different figures in some kind of invented, yet observation-based, pictorial framework. Below are a few examples of what students have done. Keep in mind that none of the models posed together, and often very little of the stage arrangement was the same. I could go on and on about how I believe these projects really strengthen the students to have an EXPERIENCE of art rather than simply executing an exercise, but I’ll let their work speak for them. Click on each for a larger version.
by Lindsey Cole
by Dan Jimenez
by Roxanne Kueser
by Charlie Hostman
by Jared Fogue
by Marcus Miers
by Mallory Parsons
by Derek Frankhouser
I love doing a project that deals with the color of light in my beginning painting classes. Here’s a shot of a set up from this semester:
…and a couple from previous semesters:
now, here are a number of student works:
Here is a selection of some student artworks from the drawing sessions I conducted at the University of Missouri this July…
eikonktizo 
