Course Offerings

BASIC DRAWING & COMPOSITION : WORKING FROM LIFE AND THE IMAGINATION

Miriam Lakes, Foreshortened Face, Charcoal
Miriam Lakes, Foreshortened Face, Charcoal

The goal of this class is to help you develop your drawing skills: the act of translating a three dimensional world to a two-dimensional surface. The course provides an introduction to the materials and basic techniques of drawing with emphasis on line, value, volume, perspective and composition. Additionally, it recognizes and develops the dual skills of drawing from life and from one’s own imagination. Students will be encouraged to develop a personal drawing style while building a visual and verbal vocabulary with which to evaluate and discuss art. Weekly topics will develop diverse subject matter and techniques. We will begin by working from our external environment (objects, still lives, landscape, figures and weather). Demonstrations and assignments will be accompanied by some slide lectures introducing students to a variety of artists and art historical periods. This class is all about PRACTICE, including both in-class work and outside assignments, and you will most benefit by dedicated, attentive drawing practice. This is the only way to learn to draw. The daily activity in your sketchbook, particularly with regard to the exercises assigned, is an extremely important aspect of the work you will be doing. This is the fertile ground from which you will derive many ideas for each of the five major assignments. The goal of this class is to stimulate both the technical and the poetic sides of the visual mind, to stimulate both cerebral hemispheres and connect the nerve synapses between the observed and the imagined world through the act of drawing. By working on some of our assignments in the studio, and some in the urban/local environment, students will see a context for drawing the figure, or any other subject matter, and will appreciate what it is like to get out into the world and interact with it, to apply what is done in the studio to life in the world outside of it. It is my hope that the students will find the act of drawing to be related in a significant way to the rest of their lives.

Anita Knowlton Cutout Drawing
Anita Knowlton Cutout Drawing Gustavo Delgado, Playing the Vintage XBox
Zareen Khan, Kicks and Books
Zareen Khan, Kicks and Books

PAINTING: WORKING FROM LIFE AND THE IMAGINATION

Thien An Ho, Portrait of Grandmother
Thien An Ho, Portrait of Grandmother

This class focuses on composition using pastels, acrylics, watercolor, stenciling and mixed media, and may include live models. Our facility is not set up to accommodate oil painting at this time, so there is an emphasis on acrylic painting. We also visit galleries, museums and public art sites to immerse ourselves in the visual and cultural languages of traditional and contemporary painting. Students complete six painting assignments over the course of the semester, all of which are designed to stimulate both your visual imagination and your technical ability in the use of marks, lines, shapes, color, value, texture and space, description and illustration.

Eva Suarez, Futile
Eva Suarez, Futile

Stacey Evansbabymike

FIGURE PAINTING IN CONTEXT: CREATING A NARRATIVE ART 119

Mercedes Sosa in progress
Detail, The Spiral Word, Pencil Drawing of Mercedes Sosa, in progress. Juana Alicia©2012

Course Summary The goal of Figure Painting in Context class is to help you develop your skills in painting the human figure: • through the use of art historical examples of its depiction in narrative painting (how the figure inhabits, influences and impacted by its cultural and physical environment) • through practice in interpreting gesture, composition, scale and color • through demonstration of perspective as applied to human anatomy, and basic rendering techniques with color, value (chiaroscuro) and the creation of a three-dimensional illusion using paint • demonstration of various water media, preparation of canvas and paper supports • through the development of a personal style and voice, using the discipline’s vocabulary and art historical references.       

The course provides an introduction to the materials and techniques of painting with watercolor, acrylic, gouache and mixed media. Additionally, it recognizes and develops the dual skills of painting from life and from one’s own imagination. Students will be encouraged to develop a personal painting style while building a visual and verbal vocabulary with which to evaluate and discuss art. Weekly topics will include both subject matter and techniques. Demonstrations and assignments will be accompanied by some slide lectures introducing students to a variety of artists and art historical periods.   MURAL DESIGN AND CREATION

Posters of Resistance: Visions of Peace and Justice, mural for Inkworks Press, BCC Mural Class, ©2010 BCC and Earth Island Institute. Directed by Juana Alicia Araiza.

FALL SEMESTER: This class will focus on murals within the context of the society that inspires them, provide different historical examples and approaches to their creation, and teach the techniques and methods for their design and creation. During the lecture sections of the class, we will explore the social and political movements that have been fomented by, or responded to by muralists, as well as how the mural has been appropriated or rejected by different elements of society. This course will view the history of the mural in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the lens of their cultural movements, which have been inextricable from the political struggles of these times. These include the Mexican roots of the modern mural movements (the historical movements which inspired Frida Kahlo, los tres grandes, Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, and pre-Columbian art). During the lab sections, we will work on the development of a design and its creation for a specific site. We will begin the production of piece at the end of the semester, and the final completion of the project will take place during the intersession immediately following the spring semester.

Preliminary Sketch for Downtown Berkeley Y Teen Center Mural

SPRING SEMESTER During the first two to three weeks of the semester, new students will join last semester’s students to complete the color rendering of the design created in the fall, and learn painting techniques in the BCC classroom studio. The rest of the semester will be devoted to the execution of the public mural on site, working on scaffoldings to prepare the wall/s, transfer the design, complete the cartoon and paint the mural. Other aspects of the work will include community education, outreach, fund raising, publicity, photo and/or video documentation and event coordination (inauguration planning). This is a collaborative project that requires a closely coordinated learning community of artists. In addition to academic credit, pay for qualifying youth is available through the City of Berkeley’s Youth Works Program. True Colors Mural Project Blog Site:http://truecolorsmuralproject.wordpress.com/