My first weeks in art school

I promised you some pictures of how things roll at my school, so here it comes :)

These are my classmates standing around a table with all of our color studies. We had to mix gouache paint and make an interior or exterior scene that fades into grey as it deepens. The scene had to be built up out of little sections which could be either squares, circles or other shapes. Using black paint wasn't allowed, warm saturated colors had to be close while cool diluted colors fill the 'far away' part of the scene.

See all the easels? Those are for sketching models. All of us had to play model a couple of times and we had a nude pregnant model one time. I'd love to show some of those big sketches to you t0o, but I can't photograph them properly. Mental note: must ask someone with more photography knowledge once.

Here are the color studies. How cool are they together huh?

This is one of mine. It works quite well, but I have a better one which has way more sections and appears a lot deeper. Still, I like the color scheme of this one.

Here is another one I started. I experimented with shapes, but it didn't work out like I wanted it too, so I didn't finish this one.

Here is an example of two girls in my class posing for the rest of us. They had drapes wrapped around them and stood on chairs. The effect was great, but the pleads were hard to sketch. Consider the fact that we had only 10 minutes to sketch both girls!

Here are two pages with little sketches I made of Saphira lying on the couch. She kept twisting and turning to get in the comfiest/cutest position to sleep. Perfect model :)

This is one of my classmates working (with me) on a group project. Most students are new to this city, so our teacher thought it would be a nice idea to make models of it. So we decided to show the green areas in every neighbourhood. It took a lot of drawing, cutting and pasting to get the neighbourhoods in the right place. And then it took even more work to get all the green on it properly.

Eventually though it turned out pretty cool. The grey are industrial zones and the green paper dots are all the parks, woods and other public natural places. My neigbourhood is the one below the big green square. That's the big park, which is lovely in all seasons because of it's victorian, classy character.

There was also a group who did 'old streets in Groningen'. They drew lines with yarn and needles that indicated all the original and still existing streets in the old center of our city. Some date back to the middle ages!

And this is my setup for last monday when we had to present everything to our teachers. On the left is my friend setting up her stuff and to her right is all my work. On the wall are the big sketches I mentioned earlier plus a self potrait and poster with things we learned on the computer (Vector Works, Photoshop and InDesign). On the table is my sketchbook, a collage I made of doors, my laptop and some other collected things.

I'm happy to say I got good grades and passed all classes :)

One grade still has to come though, but I'm pretty sure that'll be a high grade, because I already spoke to the teacher and he said he was enthousiastic about my assignment. He gave us themes to find pictures of (5 of design you like/dislike, 10 of things you find interesting that week, 5 magical items in art history and 5 magical items of your own life). At the end we had to bundle the pictures, but not make a straightforward book. We also had to incorporate one of Ittens' color contrasts (click for info).

I made a little clip to show my visual essay since it works best if you're able to see it fold.The text is in Dutch, but I think you'll do fine without it ;)

Well that's it, until next time!