Drawing II

My second semester of college, I had 3D design and Drawing II. Even though I'm sure it was important to my "artistic growth," 3D did nothing for me and I would have rather spent my time elsewhere, but drawing was one of my favorites. Drawing is what I know and what I do, and even though I'm currently trying to master charcoal, pencil is where I started and it's what I'm most comfortable with using. Without further ado:

We had various assignments throughout the course, but these assignments were more like creative challenges, where the professor gave us a general idea of what we were going to achieve, then left it to us to figure out how we would achieve it. These "idea generators" have since helped me through other creative challenges.

One idea generator is a photo roulette. Flip through magazines, newspapers, books, and find three random images. The challenge is to fit them together within one piece, whether they are merely woven with design or become narratives within each other.

Graphite - Charcoal - Gesso 

Another idea is to transform an object, in any way. This could range from physically altering it, making it unrecognizable, changing its properties (allowing remote controls to fly, for example), among many other solutions. I was flipping through National Geographic, and saw a picture of a person with water pouring over his head, and decided that I would transform his face into a candle, changing the flow of water to appear as melting wax rolling down his face. 

 Graphite - Charcoal

One concept that I had difficulty thinking of ideas for was the narrative. It's simple enough to understand a narrative as you look at a piece of art, even if it ends up different than what the artist intended. When people look at a piece of art, they see it through a cloud of their own experiences, memories, and knowledge, but to deliver the piece of art to for them to speculate upon and wonder what your intention is...it's a strange thing. It goes from being the one making the art to standing in your audience's shoes and making sure they understand where you're coming from. 

Narratives are a wild beast for me to tame, if looking from this perspective, and pondering this assignment left me with the mind frame of drawing something so open-minded that people can shade it in with what they think it means, rather than choosing the meaning myself.

Graphite - Acrylic

Last is my favorite, the incidental design. Looking around, there are many unnoticed designs and patterns, and I'm not talking about your couch or curtains. I'm talking about the wires hooked up to your television, the array of dishes piled in your sink, or the texture on the toes of your chucks. I chose pencil shavings.

Graphite