Treasure Chest: Tips for Improving Your Paintings
“Alien Gate”
Watercolor crayon on paper
9″ x 12″
© 2009 Marilyn Fenn
Treasure Chest
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.
I also recommend that you view the post from the organizer of this project, Seth Apter, on his blog The Altered Page. It’s a gorgeous, compelling and inspiring piece.
You can link to all participating artists from the Treasure Chest post on Seth’s blog.
Finally, the piece above is a brand new work from my new series, Paintings from the Hot, Hot Summer of 2009. So here’s my Buried Treasure:
Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.
Ten Free Online Artist Portfolio Sites
Are you an artist with a body of work you’re ready to display online, but you’re not yet ready to make the financial commitment for a custom-designed website? Or are you looking at increasing your online presence as an artist in addition to your custom artist’s website?
Over the next ten days weeks I will be reviewing ten online artist portfolio sites where you can show your work. I have had portfolios on four of these sites for some time, and I will be signing up the remainder over the course of this review period; I’ll let you know how it goes.
RIP: Ray Yoshida, Painter and Teacher
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 very nearly speechless. So, let me just quote from the NYT article:
“He was very important to a lot of people there,” said Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and a student of Mr. Yoshida in the mid-1970s in that school’s master of fine arts program. “As a teacher he was mysterious and witty. The mystery would draw you in, and then he would say something funny but with an edge that would make you think — kind of like his paintings.”
Archive of Notes from Art School
Sketch of cells
Colored pencil
6″ x 6″
© c. 2004-5 Marilyn Fenn
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 the beginning of when I started my first art blog, with a range (so far) from 3/20/05 – 4/20/05.
If I find more, I’ll add them on with back dates in 2005 as well.
*Note: referring to ArtNotes, which has been compiled in with my first ArtBlog, which together have now been combined with my website.
The Essence Lies in the Visual Meaning
Copy After Leonora Carrington’s “Juan Soriano de Lacandón,” 1964
at the Art Institute of Chicago
Pencil
7″ x 5″
© 1991 Marilyn Fenn
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 work lies in its visual meaning.
Creating Movement Through Color
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
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
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.
How to Build a Stretcher (Strainer)
- 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.
Drawing vs. Painting: More Artists to Look 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:
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