This is the last day in our 30 Day Creative Challenge!
A big public THANK YOU to those artists who posted your sketches to Instagram or to Padlet. While the posting type people are wooting amidst their social media glitter and confetti, I’ll pass a word of quiet appreciation to the unknown number of you who responded to the challenges privately, without posting. You’re part of this. For those of you who did the challenges in your head and then, for whatever reason, moved on with your day without lifting a pen, I feel you, but really, do this one. Just this one. One. Pull out that scrap of paper and a pen. If you do this one today, you win.
Composition is a game, an optical illusion. Even though the square weighs nothing, gravity is implied. There is a tension of gravity vertically, as well as with the edges of the rectangle itself. Notice how a square that is centered and level within the rectangle is static. It’s stable. If you tilt the square it gets a less comfortable energy. It seems to want to move. If the corner of the square approaches any of the edges of the rectangle, those edges “activate” and kind of start to itch while the edges on the far side of the rectangle seem to deactivate. The closer the square gets to the edge of the rectangle, the more it itches. When it overlaps, the tension resolves. The square might also seem to weigh different amounts when it is higher, lower, left or right on the rectangle. Try it! Make a black square and put it on a piece of white typing paper to see for yourself.
Our final challenge is a composition challenge, with an inspiration from Kazimir Malevich. You can have one black square of any size, and you can put it anywhere you want to on your compositional rectangle, which is any dimension you choose. How big is it? Where do you put it? How do you make it? What are the materials you use? What do you think are the most interesting compositions?
Share your black square composition on Instagram with these tags: #30sal, #blacksquare
From the Latin (via Italian) fumare (“to smoke”), sfumato describes a painting technique with no harsh outlines. Areas blend into one another through tiny brushstrokes, which makes a hazy, atmospheric depiction of light and color. An early example of sfumato …
Children with jack-o-lanterns, a sketch by Katie Jo Keppinger, in Thursday’s class for drawing and painting. I love Keppinger’s marks, bold and sensitive like Kathe Kollwitz, moody as Edvard Monk. …
Sculptors think in terms of mass, volume, weight and texture. Those elements are present even in their 2D work. Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) is known mainly for his sculptures, but he also …
Day 30: Black Square #30SAL
This is the last day in our 30 Day Creative Challenge!
A big public THANK YOU to those artists who posted your sketches to Instagram or to Padlet. While the posting type people are wooting amidst their social media glitter and confetti, I’ll pass a word of quiet appreciation to the unknown number of you who responded to the challenges privately, without posting. You’re part of this. For those of you who did the challenges in your head and then, for whatever reason, moved on with your day without lifting a pen, I feel you, but really, do this one. Just this one. One. Pull out that scrap of paper and a pen. If you do this one today, you win.
Composition is a game, an optical illusion. Even though the square weighs nothing, gravity is implied. There is a tension of gravity vertically, as well as with the edges of the rectangle itself. Notice how a square that is centered and level within the rectangle is static. It’s stable. If you tilt the square it gets a less comfortable energy. It seems to want to move. If the corner of the square approaches any of the edges of the rectangle, those edges “activate” and kind of start to itch while the edges on the far side of the rectangle seem to deactivate. The closer the square gets to the edge of the rectangle, the more it itches. When it overlaps, the tension resolves. The square might also seem to weigh different amounts when it is higher, lower, left or right on the rectangle. Try it! Make a black square and put it on a piece of white typing paper to see for yourself.
Our final challenge is a composition challenge, with an inspiration from Kazimir Malevich. You can have one black square of any size, and you can put it anywhere you want to on your compositional rectangle, which is any dimension you choose. How big is it? Where do you put it? How do you make it? What are the materials you use? What do you think are the most interesting compositions?
Share your black square composition on Instagram with these tags: #30sal, #blacksquare
Or post to this Padlet.
I’ll publish my favorites soon.
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Sfumato
From the Latin (via Italian) fumare (“to smoke”), sfumato describes a painting technique with no harsh outlines. Areas blend into one another through tiny brushstrokes, which makes a hazy, atmospheric depiction of light and color. An early example of sfumato …
SAL Challenge Day 2: String Theory
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Children with jack-o-lanterns, a sketch by Katie Jo Keppinger, in Thursday’s class for drawing and painting. I love Keppinger’s marks, bold and sensitive like Kathe Kollwitz, moody as Edvard Monk. …
Henry Moore: Drawings of Sheep
Sculptors think in terms of mass, volume, weight and texture. Those elements are present even in their 2D work. Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) is known mainly for his sculptures, but he also …