Preliminary Drawings, Beginning Stages ...

As I've stated in a previous post, I encourage students to develop preliminary drawings as an integral part of the process of making art.  I tell my students that the drawings should not be treated as second class.  They are as much of a valid artistic statement on their own.  I try to get the students to think beyond the categories of "painting" and "drawing."  Either the drawing/painting works as a dynamic, intriguing image, or it doesn't.  I want student to appreciate that they shouldn't be constrained by the category, or by whatever their expectation is of how the media works.  Even though each student should become sensitive to the inherent qualities of each media, I would like to them to go where their ideas take them, and to control the situation, not be controlled by it.  I constantly encourage my students to work through their problems, and to understand that the history of the development of the image IS the image.  If my students are only interested in the finished "product," than they lose patience with the development, and resort to shortcuts that cause them to lose focus on the essentials, foundations, and structure of the image, based on a true analysis and response that reflects their idea and philosophy.

I want my students to also be  mentally aggressive and focused while they are working.  Much of what I talk about during class goes back to the fundamentals that have been presented in previous classes.  You will notice in the photographs below that the students have become increasingly confident and sophisticated in their approach, and have really applied so much from their studio experience from the last semester. I feel that they have become increasingly sensitive to what I see as the true essentials of the image - a development of the description of space, sensitivity to the proportion and gesture of the figure, use of sections/planes of color to describe form, and a sensitivity to the overall composition.  I often encourage my students to stay focused on what what matters in the image - to not get side tracked by the surface, cursory and random aspects of the image.  The work you see by the students below is the first class session working on these paintings, after completing sketches and more resolved drawings from observation.  You'll notice that the students have the drawings next to them to work from.  I don't want them to copy the drawings - as I have said before, I would like to them to appreciate that the drawings are a valid artistic statement in their own right, and do not "need" to be added to.  I simply submit that the drawings can be another level in the development of the painting, as a part of a body of work, a series of images that are now a fully resolved way of understanding an image.  This suite of images then becomes a richer and more engaged response, one that offers more to the viewer - a more thorough window into how the student/artist is thinking and growing.