Visual Arts Course Descriptions
Division 1 Courses
Introduction to Ceramics for Heroes and Villains (HUM)
Working with clay can be both predictable and unpredictable. What methods are best for getting to know its characteristics, constraints, and limits? How can you use what you’ve learned to plan and create a Greek-style pot that illustrates your origin myth? (required for all Div. 1 during Term 1 in odd years)
Two-Dimensional Art Foundations
A survey of commonly used materials, skills, and concepts that encourage students to begin to develop their own styles and voices (required for all Div. 1 students on even years during Term 1 or Term 2)
Designing and Drawing the Theatrical Backdrop of Your Life
Do you ever wish you were somewhere else? Do you ever wish you were someone or something else? We all have hopes and dreams for travel, activities, and identities. In this class, we will learn about linear perspective, come up with some cool options for different locations, and create a dynamic and detailed backdrop for your current, future, or imagined life!
Two-Dimensional Materials and Methods continued
Be honest:what did you feel was missing from your 2D Foundations class last term? What did you love and what would you like to build on? How can you bring more choice and originality to those emerging skills?
Observational Drawing
Do you strive for realism in your sketchbook? Is formal instruction in drawing and painting necessary for contemporary visual art? How can technical skills and consistent observational practice support your abilities to express chosen concepts? Can we sometimes do it just for fun?
Faces, Spaces, and Places
What rules and techniques can we learn for accurately showing scale, proportion, and perspective in the things we look at most often? Whether we are looking closely at someone’s face in front of us, the view of the Citgo sign from the highway, or the inside of our living rooms, we know what we expect to see. But do we know how to draw it so that others believe our view?
Portraiture and Identity
What does it mean to make a self-portrait? How can you communicate a sense of personal identity through visual art? How does the approach change when you are portraying someone else?
Sculpture
What qualifies as sculpture? Do all components have to be original? How will an understanding of human sculptural creation from ancient to contemporary times influence your own work?
Telling Stories through Art
How can we communicate a concept, experience, or point of view through graphic novels, comics, and other forms of narrative illustration? What ideas contribute to the development of characters and stories?
Prints and Stamps
How does working in multiples, series, and repetition change the way we approach our art? How can these characteristics support the concept we mean to communicate?
Art with Natural Materials
No promises, but one of the most famous examples of public Earth Art was a giant snowball filled with various natural and man-made debris. What kind of work is created when artists work nearly exclusively with materials found in nature? Within this range of materials, what qualifies as art vs. craft vs. hobby? How does this change our interpretation of the meaning?
Portraits of People and Pets
Portraiture can be technical and realistic, expressive and caricatured, or maybe many things at once! We’ll approach drawings of faces and animals with an understanding of how to capture naturalism, while still exploring the ways artists develop their own techniques in order to create individualized styles.
Collage
Collage is a pretty broad medium. What counts as collage? What materials can be used? Can it be three-dimensional? After looking at how contemporary collage artists explore issues such as identity and story, we will take inspiration from our own memories and experiences to craft our own.
Drawing from Nature
There is a long tradition of landscape drawing and still lifes of flowers and fruit. These subjects provide endless possibilities for study and reinterpretation, which makes it hard to know where to start! In order to practice intensive observation and reproduce small details, we will bring the focus to a micro level. Using a variety of drawing exercises and techniques, we will look closely at leaves and vines, single flowers, and even individual buds and blossoms.
Division 3 and Division 4 Courses
Introduction to Ceramics
How can we incorporate our own style and interests while balancing emerging understanding of technical processes in clay? How will you approach form versus function in your pottery?
Intermediate Ceramics
After learning the basics, how can you design your own projects that demonstrate both technical success and original invention?
Advanced Ceramics
Using what you’ve learned in two or more terms of Ceramics, what kinds of deeper learning do you want to pursue with clay? What has hooked you in the past and what fascinates you about the future?
Watercolor Painting
Painting with watercolor is an accessible process, but to really get the most out of your work, it takes time and space to learn techniques and best practices. Working from observation, students will explore pacing, sequence, and how to accomplish a variety of effects. Students will work from images and ideas to create compelling and expressive paintings!
Watercolor and Batik
With the goal of working with resist processes, students will initially work with watercolor paint to understand how to plan an image. When ready to delve further into batik, we will study the origins and traditions of batik practices around the world. Using hot wax and fabric dyes, students will design a painting on fabric that takes advanhs-tage of the resist approach.
Sewing and Fibers
Where can we find personal creativity and invention in traditional handicrafts? Do sewing, embroidery, knitting, and other utilitarian endeavors lend themselves to non-functional art? Where do you see your work going in these and other techniques? Do you prefer form or function?
Sculpture
What qualifies as sculpture? Do all components have to be original? How will an understanding of human sculptural creation from ancient to contemporary times influence your own work?
Printmaking and Textile Design
There are so many rich traditions of textile design that give us the incredible variety we see every day. We will learn and experiment with both pattern-making -- including tessellated blocks -- and the technical production process before designing intentional, colorful prints on paper and fabric.
Embroidery and Beyond
For students who already enjoy embroidery or have been curious about giving it a try. This class will help students get started or boost creativity and practice from existing skills. New students will learn the basics and complete inspiring projects, while returning students will experiment with more complicated techniques, improving their details, and incorporating unconventional approaches and materials into their work.
Introduction to Adobe Illustrator and Beyond
How can we use the computer as a tool to help both our skills in and understanding of design and illustration processes?
Collage
Collage is a pretty broad medium. It can be an accessible way to approach ideas and concepts, allowing you to filter and organize images and techniques within a constrained space. Using inspiration from modern and contemporary works, we will look at how artists explore issues such as identity and story, and how scale and material affect these messages.
Observational Drawing and the Artistic Practice
Love to draw but never have enough time to dedicate to it? Do you wish you had more confidence with your skills or experience with more materials? To help build your understanding and develop technique, we’ll use our observational abilities to address challenges like proportion and foreshortening, depth and dimension, and visual accuracy. This will be a life-drawing-based class, but you are welcome to bring more imaginative or invented qualities into that framework.
Figure Drawing
While there can be a lot of rules and guidelines to learning to draw formal portraits and figures, there is also so much to explore expressively. We will look at how artists from the Renaissance through Contemporary translate faces and bodies, learn and practice scale and structure, and find our own narratives through representation.
Drawing, Painting, and Collage
Using individual media as a starting point, what kinds of traditional and unconventional effects can we achieve in order to develop an individualized style of 2D design and execution.
Portraiture and Identity
What does it mean to make a self-portrait? How can you communicate a sense of personal identity through visual art? How does the approach change when you are portraying someone else?
Mixed Media
Where do art and craft intersect? Do they? How can we think beyond traditional drawing and painting to create works that reflect our diverse and resource-filled environment?
Contemporary Narrative
How do contemporary artists, animators, and writers communicate a concept, experience, or point of view through graphic novels, comics, and other forms of narrative illustration? What creative methods feel most natural for you to communicate your own original ideas or stories?
Studio Projects
For advanced students, what final skills, materials, and themes do you want to pursue before graduation? This is an opportunity to design your own objectives.