"Building Space" a Generation at a Time and Theme Song

I love to teach.  My students range in age from single digits, to teens, to octogenarians.  I teach middle school math and painting, and sometimes they coincide as in the one art class I hold each week.  This term, the 7th/8th graders are making books from one large piece of paper.  They are designing 12 frames, including a title and ending page, and telling the story without words, only pictures.  We will eventually cut and fold the large paper to make the books. 

When I was a child, I sat riveted in front of the television humming the Star Trek theme song, and "whooshing" with the Enterprise as it "whooshed" past us in space.  Space... my students and I consider space:

During our last class before the winter break, my art students saw the first quick sketch above left on my whiteboard with a dog, ball, house, car and tree. I asked which of the objects was closest, and the students eventually realized that they didn't know (you can see we began by voting).  We talked about how to make depth, space, distance in their drawings by: 

- putting things behind other things   

- placing closer objects closest to the bottom of the surface

- adding less detail to the farthest objects

- making objects smaller as they recede  

The second drawing above aligns the 5 objects showing my students how to put some objects behind, the ball now being closest.  Everyone got the idea right away. In the third drawing, I showed how to pull and push to create a tangible space in the middle of their pictures.
Next is a painting by one of my adult painting students.  With color, we added the ideas of softer edges farther away, and atmospheric perspective along with the ideas listed above.
 
The last image is an Aldro Hibbard painting I saw in his retrospective at the Rockport Art Association in the fall... beautiful design, leading the eye around and into the space in front of the shaded men in the foreground.  The arrangement of light and shadow and the placement of the white figure looking slightly downward build a sense of curiosity and then hubbub about the street market.

Building distance, designing the picture space, pushing, pulling, shapes, shapes, shapes - across the generations.  So much thinking, so much fun. 

Here's to lots more in 2013.  Happy New Year, all.  Thank you for sharing some time here with me.
                           




Promised theme song, click here: Space, the Final Frontier                                                                                                                        

"Evening Tide" oil painting 9 x 12 and goats

 Manana is the small island across from Monhegan which creates the sheltered harbor out here, 10 miles from the mainland.  Manana is visible from most vantage points on the west side of Monhegan.  Its lovely curves and angles have been painted by generations of artists including Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, Aldro Hibbard.  

I love watching the shadows appear on Manana midday, then creep down the sides, the ratio of light and shadow shifting as the afternoon progresses, until Manana is completely in shadow and the sun eventually sets behind it. "Evening Tide" was painted from Fish Beach late in the afternoon.  I was painting with my friend Marianne Buckley Curran, which is always a joy.

While I was painting, I looked up and saw the Manana goats aligned on Manana's peak.  The goats are a relatively recent addition to the tiny island.  I had a flashback to childhood when Johanna Spyri described Heidi sneaking soft rolls into her pinafore in Dusseldorf to save for Grandfather on the mountain...  what a great afternoon.