Ellipses, Ellipses, Ellipses... They're Everywhere Unless I Need a Picture of One for Class
Class began on Monday. Wheee!
I'm really enthusiastic about actually starting up with art classes. The beginning is probably going to be rocky, I won't lie. Especially since my charcoal sketching class seems to be smiling at me and cracking its knuckles with anticipation. To begin with, I apparently hold my charcoal wrong. I've been holding it like a pencil when apparently you're supposed to hold it kind of horizontally and pull it across the paper. After having done it their way for my warm-up exercises, I'm beginning to see the benefits of their way --especially when you're working on an 18x24 surface. You sort of need to be able to make broader motions and not be dragging your forearm around on the paper, which would get messy REAL fast.
The warm-up exercises have been kinda driving me nuts though. Ellipses. "Fill up an entire page with ellipses. You're aiming for at least 20-30!' I dunno if it's adjusting to the charcoal (which I haven't used in YEARS) or the new grip, but my results are awful. Getting better though. They give you this video to download of a guy walking you through the process and after talking about major axes and minor axes and drawing from the shoulder he cheerfully goes '... and I'll have you do five or so pages of this until you've got the motion down.'
Me: ... meeeep...
I am fairly determined to succeed at this so I'll do his five pages and more if I need to. I've been practicing on scratch paper at work while sitting through damaged videos and it seems somewhat easier with a pencil. Maybe when I get home I'll switch from vine charcoal to on of the charcoal pencils. Possibly that will help.
Photography has been the least amount of trouble thus far, but that could be 'first week syndrome'... especially since the first module was written with the assumption that no one had bought their camera yet. I've gone through the lecture, posted my discussions, and done the quiz. I'll probably check the lecture a few more times so that things actually soak in, but then I think I can safely move onto the next one.
I have to say, I'm actually liking the on-line format so far. You know, all two days of it, but there is a lot of material and they supplement the written lectures with slide-shows, audio-tracks, and videos. There's pretty exhaustive images on what good results look like and what bad ones look like. Plus, you can't pause a professor in the classroom if you're suddenly hungry or need to visit the little girl's room.
Starting at the beginning-beginning isn't as chafing as I thought it would be. Being self-taught for the most part means I have some bad habits to overcome and walls that I can't figure out how to scale by myself. I was talking to a friend on-line about the whole '... and I hold the charcoal wrong!' thing and her response was something along the lines of 'They're starting you out there? Surely you're past that!'
The thing about art-education, I think, is that you can't really assume anyone knows anything. You have to start at the basics and work up no matter who you are. Take the charcoal thing. I didn't like the idea and I find it difficult, but it is a more effective way of doing things. It's just completely non-intuitive... or counter-intuitive, I suppose.
Those are my musings on art-school thus far. Not a lot more to report, except while unpacking the resin models I had to order for class I realized the cube was not actually a cube. It was a cube-like thing with odd bulges on two sides. From one angle it still looked OK, so I took photos of it and sent an email to my teacher asking if it was usable or if it would affect my classwork. To be honest, I was hoping she'd go 'Oh, it's fine. You only ever see three sides of a cube...'.
Nope. She sent me an email back advising me to return it and try and make the manufacturer pay shipping because it was clearly defective. Then proceeded to give me advice on how to manufacture something for the interim, which is going to be ... interesting, to say the least.
I'm really enthusiastic about actually starting up with art classes. The beginning is probably going to be rocky, I won't lie. Especially since my charcoal sketching class seems to be smiling at me and cracking its knuckles with anticipation. To begin with, I apparently hold my charcoal wrong. I've been holding it like a pencil when apparently you're supposed to hold it kind of horizontally and pull it across the paper. After having done it their way for my warm-up exercises, I'm beginning to see the benefits of their way --especially when you're working on an 18x24 surface. You sort of need to be able to make broader motions and not be dragging your forearm around on the paper, which would get messy REAL fast.
The warm-up exercises have been kinda driving me nuts though. Ellipses. "Fill up an entire page with ellipses. You're aiming for at least 20-30!' I dunno if it's adjusting to the charcoal (which I haven't used in YEARS) or the new grip, but my results are awful. Getting better though. They give you this video to download of a guy walking you through the process and after talking about major axes and minor axes and drawing from the shoulder he cheerfully goes '... and I'll have you do five or so pages of this until you've got the motion down.'
Me: ... meeeep...
I am fairly determined to succeed at this so I'll do his five pages and more if I need to. I've been practicing on scratch paper at work while sitting through damaged videos and it seems somewhat easier with a pencil. Maybe when I get home I'll switch from vine charcoal to on of the charcoal pencils. Possibly that will help.
Photography has been the least amount of trouble thus far, but that could be 'first week syndrome'... especially since the first module was written with the assumption that no one had bought their camera yet. I've gone through the lecture, posted my discussions, and done the quiz. I'll probably check the lecture a few more times so that things actually soak in, but then I think I can safely move onto the next one.
I have to say, I'm actually liking the on-line format so far. You know, all two days of it, but there is a lot of material and they supplement the written lectures with slide-shows, audio-tracks, and videos. There's pretty exhaustive images on what good results look like and what bad ones look like. Plus, you can't pause a professor in the classroom if you're suddenly hungry or need to visit the little girl's room.
Starting at the beginning-beginning isn't as chafing as I thought it would be. Being self-taught for the most part means I have some bad habits to overcome and walls that I can't figure out how to scale by myself. I was talking to a friend on-line about the whole '... and I hold the charcoal wrong!' thing and her response was something along the lines of 'They're starting you out there? Surely you're past that!'
The thing about art-education, I think, is that you can't really assume anyone knows anything. You have to start at the basics and work up no matter who you are. Take the charcoal thing. I didn't like the idea and I find it difficult, but it is a more effective way of doing things. It's just completely non-intuitive... or counter-intuitive, I suppose.
Those are my musings on art-school thus far. Not a lot more to report, except while unpacking the resin models I had to order for class I realized the cube was not actually a cube. It was a cube-like thing with odd bulges on two sides. From one angle it still looked OK, so I took photos of it and sent an email to my teacher asking if it was usable or if it would affect my classwork. To be honest, I was hoping she'd go 'Oh, it's fine. You only ever see three sides of a cube...'.
Nope. She sent me an email back advising me to return it and try and make the manufacturer pay shipping because it was clearly defective. Then proceeded to give me advice on how to manufacture something for the interim, which is going to be ... interesting, to say the least.