Marilyn Fenn Studio

7/16/09 – Today I’m participating in a collaborative online project with other art bloggers. We are re-posting one of our favorite posts from our blogs. I chose to re-post some notes from art school from way back when, because I find these tips personally useful to review every so often, especially this year when I am exploring various other avenues in my creative process. Perhaps other artists will find some of these tips helpful, too.

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” — Vincent Van Gogh
I knew I wanted to be an artist pretty much from the second I was born. As a young child, I found a thrilling and peaceful refuge fingerpainting in our [...]

I just learned that Ray Yoshida, one of the Chicago Imagists and one of my painting teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, passed away this week.
I studied with him in an advanced painting studio for one semester: he once told me my work was “too sentimental.” (Thank goodness!).
I’m sad and [...]

Sketch of cells by Marilyn Fenn
Colored pencil, c. 2004-5
6″x6″

I started this art blog* to put all of my notes from art school online in one place — mostly for my own convenience, but if anyone else benefits from my clumsily compiled notes (often with no real date), that’s good, too.
I’ve back-dated these posts, back to [...]

Sketch by Marilyn Fenn
Copy After Leonora Carrington’s “Juan Soriano de Lacandón,” 1964
Sept. 1991
at the Art Institute of Chicago
Pencil
7″x5″
Class notes from SAIC, 1991
The image must communicate something special which appeals to the senses through the way they are presented.
Abstract concepts help to provide visual meaning (aside from subject matter).
The subject supplies literal meaning.
The essence of a [...]

Painting: Song of the Nightingale
by Hans Hoffman
1964, Oil on canvas
84 x 72 inches
Class notes on Color, SAIC, 1992
Strive for awareness of movement from:

warm to cool
bright to dull
repetition to change
quiet to noisy

Sketch by Marilyn Fenn
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″x5″
1991
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
[...]

Sketch by Marilyn Fenn
Copy after Chagall’s “Birth” at the Art Institute of Chicago,
Pencil on paper
7″x5″
1991
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 [...]

Select wood with good, straight endgrain, straight (not bowed), few knots, no critical knots.
Cut all pieces to length (2×4’s & 1×6’s) on miter saw.
Set table saw to 15 degrees – rip 2×4’s in half (??”), rip both halves of each piece of wood.
Set table saw back to vertical – rip 1×6’s in half or thirds.
At [...]

Painting by Susan Rothenberg
“Triphammer Bridge”
1974
Synthetic polymer paint and tempera on canvas
67 1/8″ x 9′ 7 3/8″
More Notes from Art School, SAIC, 1991
More artists to look at:

Sketch by Marilyn Fenn
Anthropomorphized landscape form
pencil, 1991
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 [...]

Painting by Christian Rohlfs
“Birkenwald”
oil on linen
110 x 75 cm, 1907
Class notes from SAIC, 1991
Look at the work of some German Expressionists:
Kathe Kollwitz
Hyman Bloom
Christian Rolfs
Ernst Barlach

Painting by Nancy Plotkin
“Chaya, Dancer”
20″x22″
date unknown *(I believe this image is newer than the class note).
Class notes from SAIC, 1991
Nancy Plotkin at Artemesia – MUST SEE!

Painting by Georges Braque
“Still-Life: Le Jour”
1929
Class notes from SAIC, 10/29/91
Christian Metz
Check into film theory (time).
Iconology and iconography.
“The Banquet Years” – Roger Shattuck – mix of art and ideas.
“I no longer know how to live with everyday objects.” Braque to Shattuck, 1951.

Painting by Hans Hoffman
“The Golden Wall”
Oil on Canvas
59½ x 71½”
1961
Class notes from Drawing the Figure in Space with Elizabeth Rupprecht, SAIC, 1991
Purpose: to create form; to find an equivalent for life.
Check out Frank Stella’s “Working Spaces.” Exploring another area of cubism.
Cut up something and rearrange it within a grid. Implied floorplane.
Look at Hoffman’s [...]

Painting by Paul Cezanne
Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair
aka “Hortense Fiquet in a Striped Skirt”
oil on canvas
1877-78
Class notes from Drawing the Figure in Space class taught by Elizabeth Rupprecht, SAIC, 1991
Look at Paul Klee’s “The Thinking Eye.”
Look at “Point and Line to Plane” – Kandinsky.
When drawing the figure in space, use empathy – project yourself [...]

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.

Painting by Marilyn Fenn
Still Life with Orange and Teapot
Oil on Canvas Board
11″x14″
1992
Class notes, SAIC, 1991

More transparent colors recede; more opaque colors come forward.
Unify the painting by using the same yellow, orange, etc.
Gray colors by using their complements.
Work all over, 3-4 tones (light, medium, dark, etc.) for each area –> work other colors from painting into [...]

Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn
“Reclining Lion”
pen and paint brush
ca. 1650
Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.
Make a list of verbs and adjectives about your own work.
When struggling with a work, isolate parts of it and do lots of sketches to come up with a better composition.
What [...]

Painting by George Tooker
Waiting Room
Egg Tempura on Gesso Panel
24″x30″
See more of George Tooker’s work.
Class notes, SAIC, 1991.

Picture: Cover of Phillip Garner’s “Better Living Catalog”
I found some of my notebooks of notes from art school (mostly from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1990-92; perhaps a few from prior part-time classes at Austin Community College, 1985-89); I thought I’d type ‘em up for posterity.
First: Look for Phillip Garner’s “Better Living [...]