Our Advanced Studio II, Honors course is a hybrid of Digital and Fine Arts. Students are exposed to various styles, techniques and mediums giving them a wide range of artistic means. Our Fall Semester is primarily Digital Arts while the Spring focuses on more traditional arts like Sculpture, Drawing and Illustration. Throughout both semesters, challenged their drawing skills through various assignments and Visual Journals which spoke of their creative voices.
DIGITAL ARTS
VEGETABLE PORTRAITS AND CREATURES
The start of our journey in this course started our Mac Lab where students were introduced to Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Mix, a basic app which is similar to the full program. These photo-manipulation programs allowed the artists to redesign reality and trick the eye with visually altered images. Some of the first tools taught to them were basic editing tools, such as the Move, Marquees, Lassos and Wands. To practice them, they were asked to create a portrait, similar to Giuseppe Arcimboldo, using only fruits and vegetable images, This task may seem basic, but to join together the images together took time, patience and understanding of Photoshop.
FOUR SEASON COMPOSITES
For this project, students were introduced to the basic tools of Adobe: Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Mix. Through the use of Selection Tools, (such as Marquees, Lassos, and Wands), Clone Stamps and Transformations and Adjustments, students combined various images from ALL four Seasons, (Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn.), into one unified scene. The transitions of the seasons should appear nearly flawless to the viewer. Students were challenged to use these basic tools to create a complicated image with many imaginative possibilities.
MODERNIZING A CLASSIC
For this project, students chose one masterpiece from a classical era of art history. Some of the artists chosen were Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rapheal, Botticelli as well as a variety of others. Students challenged themselves in their second project through creative and critical thinking skills. Students had to make drastic changes to ‘MODERNIZE’ their paintings by adding in images from TODAY. Through various tools in Adobe: Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Mix, such as Selection Tools, Clone Stamp, Adjustments, Filters, Layers, Layer Masks, Layer Adjustments and various Transformations, students were able to adjust colors, textures and perspectives to trick the eye into believing the Master Painters originally added in these details.
SURREALISTIC DREAMS
For our next digital project, we delved into the realm of Surrealism and dreams. Surrealism is a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. These images were created in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Mix and utilized all our previous tools we have learned to create a seamless composite image.
TYPOGRAPHIC SELF PORTRAITS
In this collection of images, students were asked to take an expressionistic self portrait photograph. Then, they had to think of a word and/or phrase to describe themselves. These words and phrases would be used to make up the entirety of their self portraits to the point where they original photograph is no longer necessary. Through Adobe: Photoshop Mix, students learned to create layers of text through various merges, scale changes and font styles. In the end, layers of words, one on top of another, were used to create form, and three-dimensional visualization. This challenged the students’ creativity and observational skills.
FINE ARTS
Throughout the school year, the artists of Adv. Studio in Art Honors practice a variety of drawing techniques, such as working with value (shading) and color (mixing). They also practiced how to create strong compositions and how to develop creative ideas. Below are a series of drawing assignments and projects related to the more Fine Art and Design.
CONTRAST INITIALS
BASIC SHAPE STILL LIFE
CRAYON STILL LIFE DRAWING
SIGN LANGUAGE HAND DRAWINGS
CLASSICAL SELF PORTRAIT INTERPRETATIONS
CLOSE OBERSERVATION DRAWINGS IN COLOR
WINTER THEMED COLOR EXPLORATIONS
NYC WATER RESOURCE CONTEST
Our class participated in this annual contest and we have two winners, called Water Champions. They are Seunghwa Woo and Sophia Leslie. Congratulations to them and all the Advanced Studio in Art II students who participated! Some of the other participants work is shown below as well.
TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGNS: DESCRIPTIVE VISUAL WORDS AND MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES
VISUAL JOURNALS
Students were asked to research cultural idols and artifacts like an archaeologist would search out for. Based on their research, they created their own adventures and designed a mythological idol and/or artifact and to create their own unique version. Their drawings are done in a pen and ink process. Working with pen and ink can be time consuming and a lot of patience is required. Students first practiced with everyday pens to draw and shade with. This allowed them to get comfortable with the permanence of the medium. Then, through similar process they would with calligraphy pens and ink wells to create images full of shading and design work.
Afterwards, we took out drawings and brought them to life in clay! The students took the initiative at home to create a three dimensional, in the round version of their two dimensional drawing. The likenesses wonderfully resemble their drawings.