Personal Study Brainstorming

  1.  Eliminate the following:

    • cheesy ideas

    • insincere (World Peace, Famine, Global Warming if you don’t really care about it)

    • overly pretty

    • overly sugary sweet

    • overdone ideas

    • common ideas

  2. I will ask you the following questions:
    • How will you convey emotion through mark-making?
    • How will you use color to get your point across?
    • How will you use The Elements and Principles of Design?
    • What materials will you use that correspond to your idea?
    • What artist or art movement will you base your idea off of?
    • What steps will you take for inspiration & idea development?
    • Why this subject?
      • Example: You chose trees. Why trees?
      • Is it about growth?
      • Negative space in nature?
      • Protective canopies?
      • Strength and endurance?
      • Branch and leaf structure?
      • The “design” of a forest in compositional relationships?
      • Have you explored artists like Mondrian, van Ruisdael, Courbet, van Gogh and Fairfield Porter?
    • How will you go deeper than taking a subject and executing it in a variety of media or styles.
      • Example: Trees rendered in watercolor, stipple, crosshatch, cubism, fauvism and surrealism.
  3. Visit places that correspond with your idea.
    • Example: If you are interested in the way in which humans kill animals in order to consume their meat, visit the inside of a butchery and look for the following:
      • colors
      • shapes
    • Take pictures to use in your work
  4. Write a rationale on
    • WHY you want to do this topic
    • HOW doing this topic is interesting
    • WHAT you want to show the viewer

  1. Common concentration themes that NEED a focus

    • PORTRAITS need
      • Format
        • the way in which something is arranged or set out.
      • Intent
        • the reason for which something is done or created.
        • “I wanted to explore broad strokes of orange color.”
      • Point of view
        • a particular attitude or way of considering a matter
        • opinion, view, belief, attitude, feeling
      • Lighting
        • the arrangement or effect of light
          • use of strong contrast between light and dark
          • Emphasis on 1 object?
        • What is the mood? Dramatic? Playful?
      • Style
        • a distinctive appearance
        • manner, way, technique, students voice, method, approach, and system
      • Expressiveness
        • effectively conveying thought or feeling
        • conveying (a specified quality or idea)
        • demonstrate, reveal, meaningful, eloquent, suggestive
    • STILL LIFE
      1. tell a story
      2. emphasize a certain interest in composition or design

Rationale Example

  • The  variety of media and mark-making will reflect richly layered images as well as minimalist statements that charge a space with relatively few marks.
  • Approaches include carving, collaging, printing, gestural drawing, and expressive painting.
  • The work will reflect highly informed decision-making by using the elements and principles of design and drawing, including a knowledge of art historical movements such as surrealism, dada, and neo-expressionism.
  • The work will achieve a look of gestural spontaneity, with the images reflecting a keen sense of balance, figure/ground relationship, and decisive compositional organization.
  • Well executed drawings that display apparent student “voice.” (style)
  • Strong technical control with a lot of risk-taking.

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