• Sketchbook Challenges

    Remember, just as a musician has to keep practicing to improve, so does the visual artist. You never know when a sketch will also be a launching point for a great idea. Either way, it's like an athlete stretching and strengthening when we create even just a small study!

    I've made some of these Corona-themed (in orange). Remember, sometimes our drawings can be an excellent form of visual journaling! Coming to terms with a troubling issue can sometimes be helped along by creating art (just like talking to someone can help)! However, I will have prompts for sketches that are not involving the virus (in purple), because, well, maybe you feel you need a break from it!

    1) Corona Safety Still Life: create a unique composition using things such as rolls of toilet paper, soap, Lysol, and hand sanitizer. See how these everyday objects have taken on a whole new emotional visual meaning! Are you able to create strong lighting for a dramatic effect? Are they back-lit to create a halo-effect to add to the dramatic feel?

    2) Shoe Still Life: Take your favorite pair of shoes and arrange them in an interesting way and draw them. Be careful not to get in trouble for putting your shoes on the kitchen table! lol Many art schools assign the shoe still life, and it can really be an interesting statement about yourself...as well as a challenge to draw repetitive forms, and sometimes use fore-shortening.

     3) Corona Cartoons: So many of you enjoy drawing animated characters, why not really stretch you imagination with this! How can you use personification (giving an object human qualities) to create characters? It could be a single scene or a storyline! Could a bottle of hand sanitizer have a cape and other superhero attributes? Googling the microscopic funky corona virus shape as a reference, how could you give that a sinister quality? Whether you use a favorite movie/cartoon/anime as a foundation for your inspiration or just fly free in your imagination, what can you create? How could the objects in the corona still life (#1) be turned into different avengers? Star Wars...hmm, Emperor Palpa-coronus battling Lysol Skywalker! 

    4) Household Surrealism: Some of you may remember a past assignment where we took a paint bottle, and after drawing it, you were to have unusual things coming out of it...in the spirit of Surrealists such as M.C. Escher or Salvador Dali. What ordinary object from around your house could you draw as realistically as you can, and then what fantastical things can be coming out of it! A carton of milk that is pouring out a cow, a shoe that has an ogre climbing out, a tube of toothpaste squirting butterflies...! I encourage you to use google images for references if needed. Remember, Surreal in french technically means "beyond realism", so it's almost like a very real dream that has strange elements...but that the realism should be done to the best of your ability to make the most of the illusion.

    5) "Beam me UP!" Landscape: Soooo by now many of you wish you were somewhere else...everyone's daily landscape has been quite unchanged! If you had the technology to transport yourself to anywhere in the world, where would it be? I strongly encourage using google images as references. Are you at the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, some place tropical, etc? Coloring, as always is optional. But just like a good book can ignite our imagination to help us "visit" another place, so can the art we create! (I figure this is Corona-themed, but yet it's not! lol)

    More to come! Stay tuned! Please let me know of any suggestions, feedback or questions through my remind or school email! (I get Remind notifications more readily.)