Mark Making
Student Drawing and Painting Exhibit
This collection of work was created by introductory drawing and painting students under the instruction of Professors Peter Bonner, Stephen Cope, Mary Henderson and Marta Sanchez.
The drawings are created with charcoal and pencil. Charcoal is an incredibly dynamic medium, it can be constantly changed and blended until the artist is satisfied. The softness of this medium lends itself to drawings focused on mass and movement of a subject. Charcoal is used for rendering the light, shadow, and contour of a subject. Many of the drawings displayed in this exhibition from Professor Sanchez’s class are life drawings. Students rendered these drawings from direct observation of a constructed scene in the Toland Hall studio. Still life is a popular genre of Western art and includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, wine and so on. Historically, still life drawings and paintings can be a celebration of
material pleasures such as food and wine.
Students in Steve Cope’s online class created drawings in a photorealism style. To keep the assignment fun and interesting, students were tasked to take a photograph of themselves, friends or family making a crazy face. They studied the photographs and created a pencil and charcoal drawing focusing on proportions, shading and highlights so that the emotion was captured in the drawing.
Students in Mary Henderson’s online painting 1 class studied historical examples of trompe l’oeil still life paintings which is a technique that dates centuries back. Painters use realistic imagery to create optical illusions so that the painting appears to be a three-dimensional image. This is very popular with theater set design. Students then set up a shallow-space still life in their houses using everyday objects and painted the scene using the techniques they learned.
The first six weeks of the semester Peter Bonner focused on language, shapes, structures, color, drawing so that students were familiar and conversant with the language of painting. For one assignment late in the term, Peter Bonner instructed each student to choose what they wanted to paint, with a few conditions, namely it had to be personal (from heir own life experience) and they had to be excited by it. Professor and student then entered into a dialogue together to work through and refine ideas before starting the drafting and final painting process.