Author: Joe Meiser

Create five detailed sketches of five distinctly different solutions for your self portrait’s antithetical background.  (Please add these sketches to your research binder.)

Why we create sketches: Preparatory sketches can help you plan your project on a small scale before you commit the time and energy to create the project on a larger scale.  Sketches are a very fast means of “testing” possibilities.  Sketching enhances creative thinking, and this frequently helps one find innovative and novel solutions to problems.  This component is important because the quality of our ideas will have a dramatic impact on the quality we are able to produce in our finished product.  When we generate ideas, our first idea is usually not the best idea that we could possibly conceive.  Most often, our ideas will continue to improve as we consider a variety of possibilities and think about things from a range of perspectives with a flexible and open attitude.  Creative insight does not typically hit a person like a thunderbolt; it usually emerges gradually, through the persistent, patient, tenacious mulling over of an idea or question.

Step 3:

Select the sketch that you think will work best for your antithetical background, and then write a paragraph to explain what this background will communicate about you.  The writing assignment is meant to help you clarify your thinking in order to establish more direction with the execution of your drawing. Please post your writing on the class website in the “writing assignments” category.

Why we write about our ideas: Every decision that you make in the planning and execution of a work of art has meaningful implications.  When one begins a project by thinking about what they want to accomplish in the end, this enables them to have more control over the final meaning in their work, AND it provides one with a useful tool for editing their work during the process of creating.  While one could employ many methods for thinking critically, writing is especially helpful for developing this skill because it forces one to be precise and clarify ideas.

Step 4:

Add the background to your drawing.  As we’ve been discussing all semester, it is important to have visual references because doing so will provide you with a source of complexity and visual interest for your work.  Print visual references from online sources, gather real objects to look at, or create a collage– whatever will work best for you.  By Thursday, 11/8, I expect that you’ll have your background roughed out with the major forms established. You’ll have time next week to add a full range of value and develop the details.