Jin Sha, “Salute to Masters: Conversation with Grant Wood” (2014), ink and color pigment on silk
The Young Artists Studio Bridge Program has been up and running for about 5 weeks now! Our team consists of Erica Gonzalez and Ben Rabinoff. We are two Art Education students at Metropolitan State University of Denver. We have been crafting lessons for each session which meets once a week on Thursday at the Center for Visual Arts. These lessons have been built on building skills, teaching about new materials and studio practice. The apprentices have been working in their sketchbooks to develop skills that are centered around the current exhibition at the CVA (Center for Visual Arts), A New Fine Line. Our goal is to introduce our young apprentices to the work on display at CVA and to foster their experience with this artwork through the development of their own artwork.
A New Fine Line is a collection of artists who are employing what is called the Gongbi style of ink painting. This style dates back to early Chinese dynasty’s but the contemporary artists who are a part of The New Fine Line are using this style to create contemporary and dynamic work.
We have chosen to build our lesson’s around the idea of using watercolor, ink, drawings, and various techniques with all of the materials to allow students to create their own contemporary work.
Here are some images of the work we have done so far!
Erica and I meet to plan each lesson and review what we did last time in the studio. Here we are examining print outs of Gongbi Paintings and working to craft a lesson that engages the apprentices with this artwork.
Here is one of our apprentices learning to draw a lion’s head with colored pencil and painting it with watercolor. We were exploring how to use colored pencils as resists when used with watercolor.
Here is another apprentice drawing a dolphin and coloring it in with colored pencil. This apprentice eventually created an amazing background underwater using watercolor techniques.
This apprentice decided to take a similar approach to his peer, drawing a dolphin and painting the environment around it.
This apprentice was given two challenges which were to use a wet on wet technique when painting his dinosaur and to give the dinosaur an environment or background.
You can also see the templates that apprentices used to draw from. These templates help to build confidence in ability as well as serving as great practice for learning their own style and approach to drawing and painting.
Check back in soon to get an update on what we are working on!
