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origami now this is a second time we've
done this homework assignment the reason
why we're doing it a second time is that
the first time that we did it first
thing we really got caught up in making
the origami and then being clever with
the origami by using different papers
and and different things and oftentimes
when I give out homework assignments
that's kind of what i do i say go home
and paint bubble wrap and people go
bubble wrap and go yeah paint bubble
wrap and you go well why would I want to
go paint bubble wrap and I go I don't
know what just give it a try the reason
why I give you a strange thing like
bubble wrap is that in your head bubble
wrap could never ever ever be a thing
you'd ever paint and in my classes the
main thing is is that we don't paint
things so if I tell you we're going to
go paint a dead fish do you think the
last thing I want to see on a plate is a
dead fish on on the wall why do I ask
you to do these things is because I
really want you to get in your head to
get away from the significance of the
objects themselves a still life for the
most part is a stage and anything you
put into that stage it blocks the light
or causes an effect or does something to
that space that's interesting if not you
move the things around till something
happens now when we did the origami last
time everybody got really busy making
origami and I heard for all of my
classes not just this class but it is
always so hard to make I had to watch
the YouTube videos over and over and
over again I had to stop and go and stop
and go can do you know is why do you
make us do and I said well you know and
eventually if people got around doing it
so yeah you learn how to do origami how
cool most of you probably would have
never done origami in your life and now
you know how to do origami you have a
check for origami a lot of you went and
got really expensive papers and
beautiful you know and decided to do not
just the cranes but also to do frogs and
two laps them if you go on the line
you'll see some gorgeous origami stuff
but the paintings that I got back we're
paintings of origami now why did I
choose origami to begin with did I want
you to do a painting of a paper crane
know what I love about or doing the
origami is as a painting project is that
it is a complex set of lights and
shadows in fact when we really look at
origami it really is just a folded piece
of paper we fold a piece of paper to
mimic something that we feel as humans
looks like a crane but it's not a crane
it's a folded sheet of paper now I could
have said go home and do a paper
airplane you could have folded a paper
airplane and I probably would have ended
up getting a bunch of homework
assignments that look like folders
airplanes do I want you to paint the
folded airplane know what I'm interested
in is a subject that has shadows and
lights of central focal point planes how
do you work on plane so what I do is I
decided I'm going to do this homework
assignment again with all what we're
going to use is white paper in a white
background and what I was looking for is
not just one origami crane beautifully
lit I've said pile them all together and
by piling them all together hopefully
the viewer is totally unaware that their
even origami they should look like an
abstract of triangles and rectangles and
things like that and cast shadows and
the viewers should look at it for a good
20 or 30 seconds ago oh my god there's
our art the origami cranes all piled up
in a bowl that's what I'm looking for
but it origami by itself is an answer
shape form and how you paint that
license shadows is what I was looking
for totally removing yourself from doing
the shape of an origami so I'm trying to
disengage your relationship objects as
opposed to light and shadow now Judy is
working on a still life and she's asking
me questions about the foreground and
she wants to put and ultimately I'm not
really that concerned about all that
what I want to do is see where the
placement of things are then I want to
see the light headed and now I want you
to light hit it in such a way that I go
wow look how cool the shadows that cat
if the shadows are more interesting the
lighting effect is more interesting it
doesn't really matter what the objects
are this is this so what were you
thinking black right down in here the
two beaks come up here come up here
thank you yeah oh I see so you wanted to
get the two cranes that the shadow of
these two cranes kissing that is cute
one of my favorite things when i'm
setting up a still life is to get a like
if you have a handle of a cup or a
handle of a pot to have the light hit
that and then cause a cast shadow here
what we have is we have the two cranes
here and then the two of them kissing
that's
yeah that's good the issue is is that I
don't really sense because when I asked
you so is your central focal point how
many of you actually saw that as a
shadow here did do when we put this up
if you go oh my God look at those
shadows look at this institution because
so it's a hard sell okay okay what could
you have done it better because the idea
is perfect cast shadows ideally what I
would love to have seen is just light
hitting the plane and the cast shadows
of these shapes going in different
directions the cash out of the the neck
of the crane here on top of this here
you've got a nice cash out of here
highlights I think that you you did get
the idea that I'm looking for you did
get the idea because you're trying to
find something that's more interesting
but in order for that to be probably the
center focal point i would probably
first thing suggest that you bring all
of the lighting down to that point okay
so you're really going to need to close
down the focus of the viewers so that
the viewer itself now is much more
focused in this area and you see even by
getting rid of all that we've really
even got the cast shadow here it really
stands out a lot better but i still am
not quite sold on this now normally when
you have shadows the shadows seem at
times wider than the objects that
they're they're shadowing from and so if
you have a skinny neck on that crane it
probably would be a little bit larger as
it got down here plus also you've got
multicolored shadows tend to be pretty
much one plane one color one value and
you don't have a shadow within a shadow
and so we have the shadow the this makes
sense when you look at you have the
darker value going to a lighter value
that reads really well this here I would
have probably done you notice how to
large those that
I probably would have done bigger shapes
down in here and probably even brought
more highlight in here making sure that
these shapes because you've got a little
bit of a more brown and those those
colors as opposed to more blue in here
probably have the consistent color of
this through there keeping it clean and
then I probably would have really
brought some highlight on the bird's
head because the cream heads are kind of
they feel like they're not shadow and if
you're trying to get a bright you know
something that's hard like that it
requires a much brighter light so the
brighter the light the heart of the
shadow so like this this light throws a
really hard shadow with a hard edge a
soft light would give you a more
effusive if you would have done this
bigger and business brighter up in here
had a little harder edge so it almost
looks like a spotlight you probably
could have gotten away with it but you
get like 10 kudos today because you did
come up with something different then
the origami folded paper so you did
really really excellent and plus I think
it's really a cool painting even without
that there's something about that whole
white on white on white that's really
cool when I was in the Academy of Art
before I got thrown out of the Academy
of Art I was in a drawing class and I
was in the Academy of Art I had already
been teaching for a few years down here
and I was in the Academy of Art because
I wanted to see how they were teaching
because I wanted to be a better teacher
that was really the reason why I was
there because in the 80s everybody was
throwing paint and running through it
and calling it self expression so I had
a teacher that was beginning drawing
class and the entire semester he would
get big sheets of paper and we had to
draw broccoli on it and we always had to
start off with a number 1 h and then
3h and then one be four and we had to
work our pencils up and you can imagine
at 24 18 x 24 sheet of paper and it and
all it could be was broccoli every week
it was broccoli and we had to blow the
broccoli up to touch all three sides of
all four sides and I was that you can
imagine six week for that well we didn't
have to eat it but that's all we did and
so at the end of that we were doing a
critique and he turned to me and he says
so Stefan what do you think about these
grinds up here and I said oh this was
such a waste of time I said this is a
beginning drawing class and if I were to
go work for pip remember back then pip
was before kinkos and now they're the
tip was the big if I would go get a job
at Pitt and I came from the Academy of
Art and they threw down a photo of
portion said here draw this I should
know how to draw that I said this is a
beginning drawing class and I don't know
I've done the whole semester and I don't
know any more about drawing than I did
all we did was broccoli well in the
following week the Dean came in and said
we don't critique our teachers bye-bye
so so so the thing that I got from that
though I did learn something that
compositions are good when they go out
of the out of the frame so a lot of the
artists that you like and admire like
Schmidt door or FL if you notice their
compositions kind of kind of hit the
edges and fall out even the brushstrokes
admire yet so that you'd have something
leaning towards the side or down below
kind of touched you bring it up like
this could have been and when soon as
this touches this and as soon as a
shadow would touch this then you would
have a shape and if she had something in
here you have another shape and then the
relationship of these shapes to one
another starts becoming the abstract
that people are looking forward to
actually put realism on top and now I
don't have a really great love of that
track guard but actually all realism is
based in abstract if you can look at
your shapes and forms and abstract and
have no relationship to the object
itself it's just purely an abstract and
you can see it that way then you can
actually move those shapes around to get
a real good composition but in order to
do that you almost have to isolate the
shapes in form so in the 70s you used to
see a lot of artists that's all they
would do as triangles and circles and
squares and they would put them all over
the paper and call that art it was real
popular for a while and basically that's
what realism does too when we look at it
as something realistic the composition
is based on size relationships form
relationships and how they balance each
other out so first thing you'd want to
look for is making sure you don't have
two of the exact same shapes throughout
and then you want to make sure that some
shapes are smaller some are bigger and
that the arrangement of that some
triangles two squares if you can even
look at a landscape and you can break it
down to really simple block form you can
arrange those forms to create a better a
better composition but when you sit an
object in the middle like this what
happens is that you might have a
composition with this but this
composition has nothing to do with the
outside edge and so we have to ask
yourself whenever we're doing a painting
is that how is the spatial relationship
of the object that we're painting how it
relates to the outside edge itself and
in this particular case it doesn't is
this just the background with a thing in
it now that you could have also thought
it through a little bit and even if you
had a let's say cloth towel and the
cloth towel had folds in it how those
folds cut to the ends would have made a
big difference to also if you have a
cloth towel or other pieces of papers
that you could have been laid down on
here to create you have I magnets that
would have
incorporated the outside of the painting
with the insides opinion the whole idea
is to create this whole surface as a
painting not just the surface with a
painting in it so something you might
want to consider all the time when
you're doing these homework assignments
did you just learn something you so much
to think about that's why we bring these
up using you should have something going
out of your painting because it takes
your house but there's way to control
that too so let's just say you had a
couple of sheets of folded paper and you
want wanted to just lay them in or a
stack of paper that you're folding the
origami on top of it and you had like
the stack of paper and there or even one
sheet or even over here the same thing
maybe just one sheet of paper Glen like
this only did it does give us the edge
and that could be a problem Deborah line
leading out but that's where all the
other techniques come in so one thing
that you would do is you would have the
same temperature of the two objects the
two pieces of paper almost identical
very little temperature change very
little value change very little color
change and then you can soften the line
given the illusion that it goes out
there you don't have to have a hard line
and that keeps the viewer in if you've
got a line that goes this way why not
lay another sheet of paper this way
cause the viewer to go out and bring you
up to the top so you can lead the view
all around so there's other ways of
handling those lines leading you out I
remember these are just suggestions but
we get a lot of homework assignments
where we get this now your central focal
point is where
this is right in here yeah and why is
that your central focal point yeah the
lightest light here and if you notice
the dark right here that's your darkest
dark whenever you bring the dark is dark
in the darkness is the light it's light
especially when they're over each other
close to each other that's true
brilliance okay that doesn't happen in
all the paintings here are you purposely
did that bees become kind of so
secondary and the painting comes
together right here remember what I said
the main focal point should be about the
size of a silver dollar and that's what
we have here excellent very very well
done
you