End of Semester Business

For the final two classes I will be reviewing your semester's work. I would also like you to continue with the development of the Idea Studio project up until the last class next Tuesday.

As a result of the conversations we have had in class over the past few weeks it is apparent that not everybody is keeping separate notebooks for the Conceptual and the "Traditional" sketchbooks. We had determined that most peoples sketchbooks were a hybrid. I ask that you devise some system for navigating the hybrid. This means imposing some (artificial) order on the material for the sole purpose of the in-class presentation. You should also be ready to present the other projects that we worked on in class.  Please bring your laptops to class if you have digital elements in your presentation. Check the older posts for an idea of what I expect.

For the final class we will be projecting from a computer linked to the web. The purpose of this will be to explore in class some of the Astitst Notebook sites that I have liknked to this blog as well as others you may have links to as well. I will expect to see you on the final day of class. There will be a real and virtual experience available to you that day.

Here is a list of the assignments:

Criteria for Credit:
Attendance for all classes, lectures, slide presentations and critiques; excused
absences only; assigned work missed, must be made up.
Participation in class
Quality of work
One major project resulting from sketchbook explorations. This may be done in conjunction with another class. All sketches and final project must be presented together in-class, during the fourteenth week of the course.
Four, or more completed sketchbooks showing significant effort. One of these should be a “source-box”. In addition, a brief digital sketchbook should be presented in some form for classroom viewing.
Sketchbooks required for credit:
Traditional sketchbook – containing a visual language concerned with training the eye and the hand; observing and absorbing visual information; drawing from memory; developing studies for a final work – to be used for most of your in-class sketches and should be with you when we visit different locations and generally at all times. (Observational studies)
Conceptual Sketchbook/Notebook – addressing ideas in both visual and written language beyond what is concrete and observed, possibly for exploring radical ideas pushed to the limit or, putting to formal use what were observational studies – to include a lot of writing so that ideas are clarified verbally and visually. (Abstract and conceptual studies)
Final Project – a major work that emerges from the explorations in a sketchbook or, sketchbooks from this course or, might develop through the conceptual sketchbook evolving through writing as well as visual studies – This project may become finalized in conjunction with another course. Both studies and finished work must be presented together to the class before the end of the term. (Final project)
“Source” Box – to collect materials that have some meaning or stimulate some artistic interest. This may include objects, notes, doodles, newspaper articles, postcards, photographs, sketches, measurements, marks, notes, scraps of drawings or paintings, or colors, collage materials, found objects, non-perishable, non-toxic garbage from the street, etc. This may be a collection of eclectic objects and notations for future reference or, it may be a collection specific to one idea. (sketchbox)
Electronic Sketchbook – a brief exploration of the digital approach to a sketchbook to be investigated outside of class. (Digital sketchbook/notebook flickr, facebook, website or blog)etc.

The Ideal Studio

Where else but your sketchbook would you entertain the idea of an "Ideal Studio"? A completely hypothetical "place" that has all of the things you would need to be creative and productive..?

I ask you to think about the physical layout and the circumstances that have proved productive for you. Consider how you might create a "place" where those circumstances could be replicated and accessed repeatedly, A STUDIO 

This Week

For Tuesday we will be working on formats for the presentation of your work in the conceptual sketchbook and the traditional sketchbook. We will also still be working on the large collage drawing from the printmaking room. We also will be scanning and copying work and preparing files for uploading. I will work with some of you to set up digital versions of your sketchbooks.

Bring your sketchbooks and blank CD's to move files.

Print Room Drawings

The print room drawing project combined with a photographic view of the room. This project is unfinished. Needing either further coherence of design or more intentional fragmentation or focus. All of the drawing are attached to the scroll by tape and can be moved, multiplied or rearranged. This project is still open to modification.

Tuesday in 202

For Tuesday we will be combining our drawings from the print room into a collage on the wall of room 202. Those of you who missed the drawing session should come in with sketches of the printmaking room looking toward the litho press area. In making the collage we will attempt to reconstitute the room with the drawing frames fitting into place according to the point of view.

For this collage we are keeping in mind the Polaroid collages of David Hockney. In these collages Hockney is continuing to explore the cubist concept of presenting multiple views of an object in the same pictorial space.

New!! for Tuesday

Notebookers be prepared to look at each other"s research on the Statistical Information assignment. Some may be ready to present their works in progress. We will be shifting attention to our traditional sketchbooks with an off-site assignment on Thursday.

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

This periodic chart looking layout is full of popup diagrams and graphic representations of statistical information. I include this as a further prompt to your thinking and making for this next assignment. Thanks to John McVey.

 

A link from John McVey

A biographical site for H. Ross Ashby the British scientist, cyberneticist and notebook keeper who died in 1972. He was a copius note keeper and an avid generator of aphorisms.

http://www.rossashby.info/index.html

YOUR CONCEPTUAL SKETCHBOOK

For your conceptual sketchbook we have been exploring some of the functions of drawing, Drawing as DEFINITION, drawing as EXPLORATION, drawing as EXPOSITION and drawing as RITUAL.

Your next asssignment is to explore the visual representation of quantitative information. Taking charts, maps, lists and other statistical information about you and your life, find a way to make a visual representation of this information.

Look for ways to organize the information into a visual metaphor for the "content" you want to convey.

Possible options;

• copy and multilply

• overlay

• plotting on existing charts or maps

• measure and represent change

• locate yourself in relation to something

• map an aspect of your life

The challenge in this assignment is to find a visual form which carries the information and while you address the subjective aspect of that information.

Functions of Drawing

Artists approach drawing in a variety of ways. On Tuesday we will examine some of the functions of drawing. 

We will examine Definition, Discovery, Ritual, Expression, Delineation and some of the others functions of drawing. Bring drawing materials and your current sketchbooks. Be prepared to show your two pages a day drawings as well as the results of your work with photographs.

Commonplace Books

John McVey Talks about Commonplace Books
Today in class John McVey discusses the commonplace book as a way of organizing and understanding things. John will bring his unique relationship with books to bear on this topic. This talk may make you reconsider your own relationship with books.
See this link http://www.jmcvey.net/rerum/index.htm

Gather materials for class

Gather photographs from various printed sources for use in collage projects in your sketchbooks. We will be working with these pictures for several sessions in class. Also bring x-acto type knives and glue sticks for applying the photographs to pages.

TWO PAGES A DAY

Two Pages a Day Assignment for Tuesday 2/23.
Begin a discipline of doing two pages per day in your sketchbook. The pages can be any combination of drawing or other media or notes for ideas. By ideas I mean the visualization of something either observed or imagined for the purpose of clarification or understanding.
So we should be looking at 10 pages for Tuesday 2/23.

Strategies for variety

Artists Notebook
Strategies for Creating Variety. Or Things to do to/with a Drawing.

Photograph
Stretch
Rotate
Reverse
Layer
Thicken
darker
lighter
bigger
smaller
Connect it to other drawings
Fill it in
Empty it out
Draw it’s negative
Change the proportions
Mix up the elements
Write
Erase
Cut
Paste
Blend
Fade
Shift
Repeat
Wrong tool
Wrong hand
Wrong size
Wrong color
Use math
Kill
Nurture
Negate
Infer
Clarify
Simplify
Expand
Contract
Inflate
Wander
Declare
Photocopy
Scan
Trace
Rub
Splice
Group
Randomize

From the ONE to the MANY,
Use the editing process that we went through in class to make progressively narrower choices from among the 30 drawings. Arrive at one drawing. Next, make thirty drawings from that one drawing. Your intention should be to create variations within the visual characteristics that you identify in the drawing you chose from the first set. You should work spontaneously an try to make the drawings in one session. Be aware that each drawing should be different in some way but share the same visual characteristics but perhaps with different emphasis or nuance. Bring both sets of drawings to class we will continue to work with them in class.
See you Tuesday.

Putting LIne to Work
Before computers, before photography, before magic markers even, images were reproduced in woodcut, engraving or etching. From the 15th sixteenth to the 17th century visual information was encoded into lines, shapes or dots. This was the vocabulary of reproduced images.
In your sketchbooks you often have a felt tip marker or a sharpie to work with. How do you make shades of grey with a tool like this? You can achieve a broad range of grey tones by overlapping layers of line with different angles and spacings. It's called crosshatching.
Using just a felt tip pen or sharpie, draw for an hour from a subject that presents you with a broad range of value. Drapery forms or arrangements of planes will have a variety of continuously changing value. Shadows cast on walls and floors, cloud forms, and the classic rumpled paper bag will give you good material to work with. The aim is to avoid depending too much on contour to identify the forms. Emphasize the value ON the form and inside the forms, work from the interior toward the edges.
Draw for on hour and try to extract at least five levels of value from the tools you choose.
Work inside some kind of framing device as well. Draw rectangles or squares in your sketchbook and draw inside them. Get used to working with the edges this way.
Check out these links for more information on this technique.
http://www.dannygregory.com/2005/09/cross_hatching.php
http://drawsketch.about.com/library/blinktexture.htm

Spontaneous Expedition

Artists Notebookers!
For Thursday's class we will be going on an expedition. We will be going to the gallery to meet the visiting artists Saskia Janssen and Jonas Ohlsson who are creating a studio project in our gallery. They will talk about how they use drawing to plan and visualize their projects. They will show the drawing that they are currently using to develop the installation project in the gallery. Over the next two weeks you will be invited to participate and collaborate in the installation. We will meet first in 203 and then go on our Expedition. See you tomorrow!

Course Description

The Artist’s Notebook DR311

SYLLABUS, Spring, 2009

Ethan Berry, Instructor
3 Credits, T/Th 3:30-6:10
Office Hours: Mon, Wed 8: 30-11:00 and by appointment
eberry@ montserrat.edu

Course Description:
Throughout history, the artist’s research has played an important role in the artist’s development of visual imagery, from the sketchbooks of daVinci, Turner, Picasso and Kahlo to the folders of Phillip Guston. This course examines the methods and materials artists employ to work through visual issues to reach meaningful and coherent aesthetic resolutions: students apply these strategies to their own creative work through in-class and assigned studio projects.
Course Objectives:
Course objectives are to introduce students to the sketchbooks and their equivalents of historic and contemporary artists so those students may study their methods of idea development and adapt some of these procedures for their own use.
Students sketch observing and absorbing visual information, draw from memory, develop studies for a final work, address abstract and conceptual studies in both visual and written language.
By exploring fundamental ideas in a work of art, examining sustained variables on one idea and using the visual language to explore concepts on a small scale without the responsibility of producing a finished work of art, students are given the opportunity to take greater risks and liberties and produce more in-depth investigations.
Class Format:

Visiting artists presenting and discussing their sketchbook methods
Slide lectures supported by books and other visual aids
Students presenting and discussing their sketchbook methods
In-class studio work on and off campus
Individual and group critiques on assigned work
Assigned reading
Field trip(s) when an appropriate opportunity occurs
Final Projects
Criteria for Credit:
Attendance for all classes, lectures, slide presentations and critiques; excused
absences only; assigned work missed, must be made up.
Participation in class
Quality of work
One major project resulting from sketchbook explorations. This may be done in conjunction with another class. All sketches and final project must be presented together in-class, during the fourteenth week of the course.
Four, or more completed sketchbooks showing significant effort. One of these should be a “source-box”. In addition, a brief digital sketchbook should be presented in some form for classroom viewing.
Sketchbooks required for credit:
Traditional sketchbook – containing a visual language concerned with training the eye and the hand; observing and absorbing visual information; drawing from memory; developing studies for a final work – to be used for most of your in-class sketches and should be with you when we visit different locations and generally at all times. (Observational studies)
Conceptual Sketchbook/Notebook – addressing ideas in both visual and written language beyond what is concrete and observed, possibly for exploring radical ideas pushed to the limit or, putting to formal use what were observational studies – to include a lot of writing so that ideas are clarified verbally and visually. (Abstract and conceptual studies)
Final Project – a major work that emerges from the explorations in a sketchbook or, sketchbooks from this course or, might develop through the conceptual sketchbook evolving through writing as well as visual studies – This project may become finalized in conjunction with another course. Both studies and finished work must be presented together to the class before the end of the term. (Final project)
“Source” Box – to collect materials that have some meaning or stimulate some artistic interest. This may include objects, notes, doodles, newspaper articles, postcards, photographs, sketches, measurements, marks, notes, scraps of drawings or paintings, or colors, collage materials, found objects, non-perishable, non-toxic garbage from the street, etc. This may be a collection of eclectic objects and notations for future reference or, it may be a collection specific to one idea. (sketchbox)
Electronic Sketchbook – a brief exploration of the digital approach to a sketchbook to be investigated outside of class. (Digital sketchbook/notebook)
Course Outline:
Week One:
Discussion of syllabus
Discussion of content of the course
Introductory slide lecture concerning various approaches to keeping sketchbooks, artist’s notebooks and journals using examples from books of historic and contemporary artists.
Concentration: Repeating an image/concept in a variety of ways and considering the entire space, in the process.
Week two and three:
Concentration: Developing one ideaColor
Week four and five:
Concentration: Sustained variables on an idea as opposed to radical change
Week six and seven:
Concentration; Many uses of the photographed image
Week eight and nine:
Concentration: Continue all of the above
Final Project are discussed and presented in-process
Week ten and eleven:
Concentration: Conceptual or abstract development of ideas.
Electronic sketchbook
Continue all of the above
Week twelve and thirteen:
Concentration: Concentrate on an aspect of Artist’s Notebook most important to you
Final projects are presented in progress and discussed in groups
Week thirteen and fourteen and fifteen:
Presentation and critique of final projects
Week Fifteen:
In-class individual student reviews; these are mandatory for credit

Links to artists notebook sites.

Watch this space for links.

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_techniques#.C.3.89tr.C3.A9cissements

http://blog.art21.org/2009/01/23/jenny-holzer-writing-difficulty/
http://www.studiohoffmann.com/
http://street-fodder.blogspot.com/

Deiter Roth in His Studio

Artists Notebook Blog

Welcome to  the Artists Notebook Blog. This site will contain the readings, images, links and references that are part of the Artists Notebook course for the spring semester of 2009.

http//boklist.blogspot.com/2005/09/artist-notebook-project.html