Welcome to AP Art!
This is a very challenging course, designed with the advanced art student in mind. The problems which the AP art students will be solving are college level problems, planned to familiarize them with the process and preparation of creating a body of work and a visual portfolio. The structure, goals and procedures for the class are included in this "letter to AP parents" below.
To read the letter, click below.
AP PARENT LETTER- DRAWING .doc
'08-'09 AP students
SUMMER ASSIGNMENT
The following assignments must be completed by the first day of class for the new school term. Make sure that you stop by and see me (room 124) before the end of this year!
AP DRAWING AND 2-D SUMMER ASSIGNMENT
Summer Assignments
Students coming in to the AP Studio courses must have the following five art works on the 1st day of class. These may be done in your sketchbook – or, if you have taken Pre AP 2, you may submit the pieces done in this class.
1. Still life in ebony pencil – FULLY VALUED
2. Drawing portfolio: Still life in prisma – showing hatching and cross-hatching.
2D portfolio: Still life in cut or torn paper.
3. Drawing or painting showing reflective and transparent objects. May be done in conte’, charcoal, pastel or water color.
4. Printmaking. Any subject matter. If you don’t have access to a printing press, create a “potato” or “eraser” print.
5. Figural representation. This may show a skeleton, full figure or combined, multiple body parts (hands, feet, eyes, etc.). This needs to be mixed media on a collaged ground.
Students are required to work in their sketchbook over the summer. The summer sketchbook often leads to a beginning investigation for the student’s concentration.
Your sketchbook should be your new “best friend” this summer. You need to carry it with you every day, everywhere! Open it up first thing in the morning and last thing at night and many times in between. Draw in it, write in it, scribble in it, paint in it, glue things into it, cut the pages, tear the pages, change the way it looks to make it look like your own book. At the end of the summer it should reflect YOU and your experiences throughout the summer. Work in your sketchbook is an ongoing process that will help you make informed and critical decisions about the progress of your work. Your sketchbook is the perfect place to try a variety of concepts and techniques as you develop your own voice and style.
RULES for working in your sketchbook:
1. DO NOT make “perfect” drawings. Make imperfect drawings; make mistakes; make false starts. Let your hand follow your feelings not what your brain is telling you to do.
2. ALWAYS FILL the page you are working on. Go off the edges whenever possible. Do not make dinky little drawings in the center of the page. Make every square inch count for something.
3. FINISH EVERYTHING. Do not start something and abandon it. Go back later, change it, and make it into something else. Being able to rescue bad beginnings is the sign of a truly creative mind.
4. Always finish what you start no matter how much you don’t like it.
5. Put the date on every page you finish.
6. DO NOT DRAW FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, magazines, etc. THE USE OF PUBLISHED PHOTOGRAPHS OR THE WORK OF OTHER ARTISTS FOR DUPLICATION IS PLAGIARISM.
7. NO CUTE, PRETTY, PRECIOUS, ADORABLE OR TRITE images. This is a college level art class, not a recreation program to make pretty pictures to hang in your house. Expect your ideas about what makes good art to be challenged.
8. Don’t be boring with your work. Challenge yourself!
9. Avoid showing your work to others unless you know they are going to understand what you are trying to do in your sketchbook. You don’t need negative feedback when you are trying out new ideas or experimenting. This is a place for risk taking. Don’t invite criticism unless you are confident that it won’t derail your free spirit.
10. Fill at least half of your sketchbook by the beginning of school in August. This will be your first major grade.
WAYS TO WORK IN YOUR SKETCHBOOK
§ Draw, draw, draw, paint, collage, mark, print, stamp, sew, draw.
§ Use pencils, pens, crayons, sticks, fingers, charcoal, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, anything that will make a mark. You have the power to make a mark!
§ Draw what you SEE in the world, not what you think. No drawings from published images (plagiarism). You need to learn to draw without the crutch of someone else’s composition.
§ Use gesture, line, and value in your drawings. Try to create a sense of light and depth in your images.
§ Use the principles of perspective to show depth.
§ Glue into your sketchbook – make a collage. Ticket stubs, gum wrappers, tin foil, lace, lists, receipts, sand, shoe laces, etc. Add these things to pages you don’t like and let your imagination go wild.
§ Build the pages up by layering things, paint on top of collage, newspaper and drawing. Attach pieces of fabric and photographs and paint over parts of them. What are you trying to say?
§ Express yourself! Work to develop mastery in concept, composition and execution of your ideas.
§ Make decisions about what you do based on how things look. Go for the tough look, not the easy solution.
§ Do not be trite. You have something important to say about the world you live in – say it!
JOURNAL AND SKETCHBOOK IDEAS
§ Take a news story and interpret it visually, use abstraction to express new ideas.
§ Play around with geometric and organic forms, interlocking and overlapping to create an interesting composition. Use color to finish the work.
§ Create a self-portrait using distortion, Cubism, Impressionism, Minimalism or Pop.
§ Repeat a shape, color, form, image or idea. Create a strong focal point.
§ Use a photographic reference to illustrate a dream, an illusion, or fantasy. Use a variety of images on which to base your work. Use any medium. You must take the photographs yourself.
§ Find lyrics of a song, a poem, or even your own writings that inspire you. Illustrate with images.
§ Make a work of art that is composed only of writing. You may use some meaningful statements, poetry, quotations or ideas for work. Your idea should be both visually complete and work with the text.
§ Light in the Dark. Using a felt tip marker, black paint, charcoal, pencil or pen/brush and ink; draw an outdoor night scene or a darkly lit interior space. Do a second piece showing the same scene in color.
§ Respond to an Artist. Alter a famous artist’s work. Change at least 3 major elements of the work.
§ Create with cut colored paper designs for: Hope, Fear and Anger
§ Do a torn paper collage of a favorite photo of yourself
§ Do a sequence of 3 images showing rebirth / reconstruction / and healing.
§ Inside the Ball. Draw / paint what you see in the silver ball. Do not draw your hand or the area around your hand. Try not to center your own image. Format your work in a rectangular shape even though you are drawing a sphere.
§ Make an artwork using one word as your inspiration.
§ Use different or really extreme viewpoints of common subjects.
§ Create many contour drawings from a model. In the inner spaces of these contour drawings create a surface design using text. This text could tell a story, be a series of repeated words, or a single word. The negative space should be used also to continue the surface design idea or be a completely opposite concept.
§ Develop a drawing of a section of a musical instrument and part of its case.
§ Steel monsters. What can you find in building sites, under the hood, inside the computer, in gears, pulleys, etc.? Look at works by Leger.
§ Doorways. Shadows and shapes. What’s behind? Architectural elements.
§ Combine, Add, Transfer, Animate, Superimpose, Change the scale, Hybridize, Metamorphosis, Fragment, Isolate, Distort, Disguise, Contradict
§ Anything and everything that you can see, hear, feel, smell, touch and imagine!
In addition to the sketchbook, students are encouraged to read and develop art works from either of the following drawing books:
Basic Drawing Techniques by Greg Albert and Rachel Wolf
Drawing: A Contemporary Approach by Betti and Sale
The syllabi for each of the AP classes, 2-D, Drawing and 3-D are as follows. The stated due dates are for the '07-'08 school year and will be updated in August.
AP 2D syllabus.doc
AP Drawing Syllabus.doc
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