We've spent the last few weeks studying the figure in my AP Studio Art class. We started with quick gesture drawings and worked up to longer sessions with the model. The students spent about 2 hours on these drawings. I feel like a proud mother showing off their work...I am proud of them! These kids are the cream of the crop and I'm so pleased with the results of this unit so far. After we finished these drawings, I set up simple fruit arrangements for acrylic painting studies. Inspired by blogger Lisa Daria's compositions, we painted fruit for two days. The sole intention was:
seeing value and developing form
color mixing
zooming in on the subject matter
The compositions were painted on toned ragboard. While not 100% visually dynamic, the goals were reached. I saw the students mixing colors in a broad range of values and hues and the compositions were interesting.
After studying fruit forms, the students are back to figure work; my hope being that they'd bring what they'd learned painting fruits to the figure work. They're painting the figure using acrylics, successfully developing form and good compositions. So far, so good! The real plus is the kids are really enjoying the painting process. The paintings will be posted as soon as they're done.
