advanced drawing

Artists to Look at for Atmosphere

Painting by Ferdinand Hodler
Lake Geneva as seen from Chexbres,
oil on canvas
1905

Class notes from Advanced Drawing with Barbara Rossi, SAIC,1991

For help with my current work, look at:

Heiderrat, India – rock formations like Enchanted Rock from National Geographic or Life.

Ferdinand Hodler for narrative.

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Your Work Must Grow

Painting by Arshile Gorky
The Artist’s Mother, 1926 or 1936
Charcoal on ivory laid paper
630 x 485 mm

Class notes from Advanced drawing studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991

Look at Gorky’s portrait of his mother in our collection.

Focus on theme, medium or image of our work – substantial # of drawings – qualitative development of idea through many works.  Sketchbook, also.

Work must grow.

Make a collection of whatever subject or form for our project.

Look at Mona Lisa, other Renaissance portraits.

Drawing Masks as Analogies for Self

Sketch of Sulka Mask, Melanesia, 1900-1910
Fiber structure covered with pith, feathers and pieces of wood
Drawn at the Field Museum, Chicago
Pencil on paper
7″ x 5″
© 1991 Marilyn Fenn

Class notes, from Advanced Drawing with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991

Basil, switzerland – Folk Museum – tradition of Carnival prior to Lent; also South Am., Mexico, New Orleans.

  • Plant form growing out of nose
  • Animal head-masks
  • Pig-tail nose
  • Skull-mask – design fashion

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Start Where You Are. Move On from There.

Copy after Chagall’s “Birth”
The Art Institute of Chicago
Pencil on paper
7″ x 5″
© 1991
Marilyn Fenn

Class Notes from Advanced Studio Drawing, taught by Barbara Rossi, Fall 1991

Purpose of class: development of personal resources, more inventive with how you represent things; more significant to you.

Look at modes of representation, both Western & other.

It happens by doing it all the time – TOTAL COMMITMENT!

Start where you are. Move on from there. Maximize your good points, push them further.

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Draw Abstracted Form Merging with Landscape

Sketch of anthropomorphized landscape form
pencil
© 1991 Marilyn Fenn

Some random class notes from Advanced Drawing with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991

“The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature—translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive and every work of art should be alive.”

- Hans Hoffman

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Cloud People in James and the Giant Peach

Class note from Advanced Drawing by Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991.

Check out the book, “James and the Giant Peach,” by Dahl – children’s book with lots of cloud-people.  This is related to a series of paintings and drawings I was doing at the time that involved cloud people.

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