THE LAT DAY OF SPRING SEMESTER. Effing A!

Student work from the color theory part of the Drawing Fundamentals class I taught this semester. (Lest anyone think I jumped ship and walked over to the dark side of representational painting.)













The beginning drawing curriculum calls for 12 hours of color theory. Some sections don't feel the need to teach color theory since students have other opportunities to pick up the basics (Beginning Design, Intro to Painting, Color Theory, to name a few) but big surprise, I love color and wet media, so of course, I'm going to teach it. This semester, I accidentally may have snuck in a a few more hours and justified it as value, composition or aerial/atmospheric perspective. I promise, it was an accident. I wasn't being subversive.

To keep me on my toes, I switch the media every semester or so, but it's either watercolor, gouache, color pencil or pastels. Natch, I prefer watercolor, but I'm leaning toward gouache and I've concluded it's easier to teach beginning drawing students who have no experience with paint whatsoever, how to paint AND demonstrate color skills in a mere 12 hours, more successfully with gouache rather than with watercolor. I thought watercolor would be easiest since I've been working with watercolor for about 30 years, but I've decided there are too many nuances to learn on top of the basics, and with only 12 hours to devote to color and a new media, I've settled on gouache.

After the obligatory color wheel, they painted a monochromatic still life. Next, we went outside and had a 5-hour plein air session of campus surroundings. Then for their final project, I let them choose their own props, arrange their own compositions (though I offered suggestions, where warranted) and basically let them do their own thing. I thought most of them did an excellent job of pulling all their drawing skills together, implementing successful paint handing AND depicting local color and values. Plus, a couple of them want to take some painting classes. I'm very proud of this class.

Oh right, did I mention the California budget cuts? I'm without a class beginning fall semester. If you know of anyone who's hiring, let me know.