Key Drawing Components

I really liked the project components that Ken Vieth covers in the third chapter of From Ordinary to Extraordinary. Drawing is probably the most important artistic skill taught in high schools, and students learn critical concepts from drawing like composition, value, visual weight, contrast, etc. that also apply to other media outside of “drawing”. As boring as having students do still-lifes may seem, it’s the best way to start learning these skills. I think focusing on making work that successfully demonstrates the student’s knowledge of basic skills, is going to produce more successful work. As nice as a photo-realistic image might be, understanding the visual elements of drawing that image is a more important than a good rendering. If as an educator you are always stressing these concepts, and persistently discussing the visual elements of all work produced in the art room, then students will really take those important skills to heart. To successful artists, skills like composition are second nature, and students should be developing that second nature so that they can draw quickly from those skills when making art later.

I really love the work of Zak Smith. His drawings hold a lot of energy and tension, and the emotion given from the textures of his lines really emphasize the atmosphere. A lot of his work wouldn’t be appropriate for students, but his ambition is extrodinary. If you’re familiar with Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, then you probably understand how notoriously complex the text is. In one project, Smith created 760 separate illustrations that represented each page of the text. It’s such a beautiful and deep project that I really appreciate. But what I appreciate more is that Smith has nearly all of these pages on his website. (FYI, lots of NSFW material throughout his site)

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/page%20index.htm