Still Life with Monster

In class:
Take a good look at your googly monster. Get to know your googly monster. Tell the googly monster a little bit about yourself. Draw detailed studies of your googly monster in class. Do not eat your googly monster.

Take your googly monster home to meet your roommate, family or imaginary friends.

Out of class:
Using your monster, create a still life fitting one of the following titles:

1. Dances at a Gathering
2. Confessions of the Lovelorn
3. At the Mountains of Madness

Shoot at least 20 different photographs of your still life. Change the angle, lighting, and distance at which you take your shots (but do not change the still-life itself) to create different compositions. Use the Molly Bang Principles to guide your compositional decisions in order to capture a specific emotional effect appropriate to your images title. Pay attention to the play of light and shadow and how it reveals the volume of the forms in your photo references.

Keep in mind that the aspect ratio of the drawing is not proportionate to the aspect of a photograph (that is, your camera’s viewfinder is a different shape rectangle than your drawing will be). If you are shooting your pictures on film, be sure that you give yourself enough time to get the pictures developed, as you absolutely need to have your photos for reference the next time class meets.

Print out ten images for review in class.

Photographs are due 9/7.

Based on feedback from the class to your photographs, create a small, 8” x 10.9” compositional study with cut paper. You may use black, white, and up to two different grays in this study. Ignoring the specific detail of the images you are working with, play with the big graphic shapes, and see how they can be emphasized or pushed in order to enhance the emotional effect you want from your final image.

Compositional Study is due 9/12.

Using both your photograph and the compositional study, create an 11”x15” drawing with litho crayon on white paper. When drawing the images, pay more attention to the light and dark values of your forms than the specific contours. In other words, draw the light, not the outlines.

Litho drawing, mounted and flapped, is due 9/12.


Materials
Camera
Monster
A sheet of good drawing paper, at least 15”x19” with an 11”x15” drawing area measured out
Tracing paper
Pencils and erasers
Litho Crayons of various degrees of hardness (#00 being softest, #5 being hardest)
Colored paper: black, white, and up to two grays.
X-acto blades, scissors, or other cutting implement
Adhesive
Ruler