The last six weeks of the course will be devoted to a single drawing project of your own design. Below are some suggested subjects and themes.
You’re free to use the drawing medium of your choice (including colored pencil, pastels, oil sticks, or colored chalk), method, size, or approach. It can be one, long-term drawing or a suite of drawings devoted to a common question, inquiry, or topic.
This project is an opportunity to either investigate a side of drawing that we haven’t explored as a class, or to delve deeper into a technique or approach that we have covered this semester (or in Drawing I). Above all, whatever you chose, make it something you’ll enjoy, feel excited about, etc.
Above all, KEEP IT SIMPLE. This project is about narrowing your focus and going into depth rather than breadth. A simple, well-made drawing or series of drawings will have much more power than something overly ambitious, complex, and multifaceted that falls short.
Even a quick look at the history of art will tell you that the best work has a very simple, direct approach to subject matter—it’s the spirit, intelligence, craft, and determination that the artist brings to her or his work that sets it apart.
Suggested Subjects
Choose one of the following subjects, or suggest one of your own. Each can be undertaken in any drawing medium or style of your choice.
1) The human figure or portrait
2) Still lives or interiors
3) Landscape
4) The natural world (flora and fauna)
5) Abstraction (meaning forms derived from nameable, observable objects)
6) Non-objective drawing (meaning original forms and images. The two classic categories being geometric abstraction and gestural abstraction).
Suggested Themes (optional)
The above options can be pursued for their own sake, which is absolutely fine, or through one of the following thematic “lenses” (or one of your own):
Tell a Story
One of art’s time-honored purposes, whether inspired by an existing text (parables, fairy tales, myths, films, poems, songs, etc.) or one of your own invention.
Extended Vision
A drawing or suite of drawings that respond to the ways in which technology has extended and amplified our sense of sight through microscopes, electron microscopes, ultrasound, magnetic resonance, binoculars, telescopes, radio telescopes, deep space photography, satellite photography, spy satellites, aerial photography, camera phones, and so forth. How does the world look different through any of these devices, and how can that be used or otherwise addressed in a drawing?
Identity
A drawing or suite of drawings that respond to the ways in which our likenesses and identities are multiplied, publicly shared, interpreted, and altered through family photographs and albums, high school photographs, drivers license photographs, passport photographs, government records, social networking, internet photo sharing services, Google image searches, and so forth. Consider how images of yourself or others are shared, amplified, distorted, and interpreted through television, newspapers, political statements, the internet, celebrity, the entertainment industry, and so forth.
The Intersectional Body
A drawing or suite of drawings whose focal point in the human body, especially the ways in which science, technology, and medicine have extended life expectancy and have transformed the fields of health and/or public health, including transplants, transfusions, pacemakers, artificial limbs, sex‐change operations, cloning, stem‐cell research, animal research, cancer treatments, trauma care, nutrition, vaccines, antibiotics, X‐rays, MRIs, CAT scans, EKGs, and so forth.
Consider the fragility of the human body in relation to disease and trauma, as well as the development and embellishment of the human body, as in body‐building, athletic training, endurance training, tightrope walking, tattooing, scarification, and so forth.
Consider also how media, advertising, government, political institutions, education, culture, family, friends, and/or peer groups seek to define, lay claim to, or otherwise influence your body, your appearance, and /or your identity, including the ways that we alter and/or adorn our bodies to both mask and assert one’s sense of self.
Get Real
A drawing or suite of drawings in the time-honored tradition of painting from direct observation (no photos), whether it’s a still‐life, an interior, a portrait, a figure, a group of figures, or a landscape.
Das Unheimliche
A drawing or suite of drawings that reflect Sigmund Freud’s notion of “the uncanny” (from his essay “Das Unheimliche”), in which he addresses the discomfort, anxiety, or cognitive dissonance that are produced when ordinary, comforting, or familiar objects take on strange, foreign, or unfamiliar qualities.
The Buddha in the Gearbox
A drawing or suite of drawings in which the materials, methods, and structures of the piece are both the means and the end of the artwork. This would typically embrace geometric abstraction, gestural abstraction, or a combination of the two. This theme could also embrace aleatory methods or any approach in which the emphasis is one the drawing process itself.
Compared to What?
A drawing or suite of drawings that read as abstraction but evoke familiar relationships of form and space, creating images that verge on something we might be able to name or that we’ve seen before, while remaining un-nameable.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
A drawing or suite of drawings that utilize or incorporate the numerous waste products and cheap, mass-produced goods of consumer society as a potential source of art material and/or a subjects.
Bonus points—can you make a drawing entirely out of found materials?
Altered States
A drawing or suite of drawings that explore visionary, hallucinogenic, and dream-like perception or states of awareness.
Criteria for This Project
1) Steady, ambitious, and productive progress week by week, reflected in the quantity of work.
2) Evidence of trial and error, flexibility, growth, and the search for deeper understanding and expression of your subject and theme (if you’ve chosen a theme).
3) Exploration of materials to find the best tools and supports for your project.
4) By May 7th, a coherent, proficient, and unified portfolio of work.