CIVITA 2018, an agenda

CIVITA 2018 Agenda _2 ahldraws

CIVITA 2018

• To fully embrace the Renaissance wisdom, that to draw something is to fully understand it.
• Realize drawing connects us to our experience, with an intimacy not otherwise possible.
• Experience the inherent intimacy with drawing, because the materials are limited.
• One simply holds a pencil in one’s hand.
• The artist’s touch is elemental and we can see how much an artist can do with a pencil, a pen, a brush.
• Learn how distinctive each artist’s language of mark making can be.
• Learn about the ‘power of a place’ through drawing.

Abstract drawing is the practice in which one represents their work using emotive powers, allowing the artist to fall into a meditative zone, representing ideas of the ‘unseen’ from the representational works to the abstract; various tools are developed to further this creative process.

Representational (depictive) works: drawing what you see. Abstract (evocative) works: drawing what you don’t see; aspects of design, feelings and emotions.

+ So begins the investigation of ‘crossing over’ to the abstract.

In representational exercises we will use tools to describe the subject with line, texture, value, edges, shape, color; those elements seen within the subject. Then, in the abstract exercises, we will delve further into design notions and their relationships. We will investigate and probe design/felt concepts of movement, dominance, unity, variety, composition; those unseen within the subject. We may name work, which also conjures feelings and new emotions about the subject too.

These studies and design tools will aid you in the first steps of ‘crossing over’ to the evocative; mark-making about a place and time, aspects purely felt on a given subject.

Ready?

Day 1: the container

“Envision your day as a vessel and what you might put in it…poems, clouds, works of art, flavors, messages, discoveries, daydreams…”

7:30 – 9am: early morning: about space: charcoal works, in town sketching, Civita

9am – 12pm: collect. confirm, record: field trip to Bagnoregio, food + supplies: let’s shop.

2pm – 5pm: elements of design, all about media play

Day 2: taking chances

“Your job as an artist is to push craft to its limits without being trapped by it. The trap is perfection. I believe unless your work continually generates new and unresolved issues there is no reason for your next work to be any different from the last. If you really want to keep growing as an artist, you will take this to heart.”

“That which seems like a false step is just the next step.”

7:30 – 9:00AM: details: graphite works, in town sketching, Civita

9 – 12PM: about seeing

2 – 5PM: about composition, about color

eve: Group Dinner at Alma Civita

 Day 3: authenticity

“To transmit the spirit, there must be form. When the form, the mind and the hand are in total accord, each forgetting the other’s separate existence, then the spirit will reside in your work.”

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

7:30 – 9:00AM early morning: color: pastel works, in town sketching, Civita

9 – 12PM: landscape: color + value

2 – 5PM: an artistic tool box of media in landscape

Day 4: awareness: a field trip Orvieto

 “Oh, the places you shall go…”

early morning: field trip prep

am: force diagrams, sequence views, involvement: in town sketching

pm: lunch

Day 5: spirit

“Imagination is as far away as the next sound you hear.”

7:30 – 9:00AM: meditations, in town sketching, Civita

9 – 12PM: design and analysis; special projects

2 – 5PM: collections and critique