Painting/Drawing
The faculty are dedicated to giving our students solid, fundamental training in drawing with rigorous year-long First-Year Studio course sequences. The two-dimensional classes focus on the development of representational accuracy, linear perspective and expressive qualities of line, while exploring conceptual ideas in drawing. As the year progresses, studio problems expand to include a careful study of chiaroscuro, of understanding form and space through the visual element of value, and an in-depth study of color theory. Problems are both design-oriented and representation in value.
The First-Year Studio Visual Language lecture course initiates students to the many facets of art, focusing primarily on the last hundred years. Still images and films supplemented by dialogue acquaint students with traditional forms, processes and contemporary aesthetics. Students become familiar with the language of the field.
With a basic yet thorough vocabulary as groundwork, our students are prepared for a disciplined and expanding series of course offerings. The faculty are artists professionally engaged in diverse and broad-based interests including representational, abstract and post-modern styles. Classes include sequences of painting, drawing, figure structure, figure painting, murals, and printmaking.
The facilities include five large, high-ceilinged studios with tall windows that let in or control north light. As a student, you use still-life and life model sets with directional lighting and life-size skeletal/anatomical forms. Frames and stretchers are easily constructed in the woodshop using the table, radial arm and miter saws, and pneumatic staple guns. Adjacent to the 2D studios, the Owen Reading Room has many visual resources that help you realize the subtleties of two-dimensional form.
Emphasis Area Requirements and Four-Year Plan
- Painting/Drawing major and plan