Drawing 101 Projects (Fall 2006)

Since my training in high school wasn't very thorough, I sought out additional instruction in college and took a drawing class from Prof. Read Baldwin, who remains one of my favorite professors of all time (even though, like most Kenyon grads, my list of favorite professors is pretty long).  Read taught me a lot of the shading and perspective tricks that I hadn't previously learned, and he remains the master of constructive criticism.  He could essentially tell me to start over, but he'd do it in a way that still made me feel like a master artist.

Our first project was a still-life of objects with personal significance to us.  The Easter Island bobblehead is something I keep on my desk at all times, and it symbolizes a commitment to rock solid beliefs that are simultaneously flexible (not to mention whimsical).  The jar of seasoning on the right symbolizes . . . well, it symbolizes my commitment to delicious food.  Nothing too profound there.  Lastly, the Magic 8 Ball in the middle was something that I just thought was fun, but can you imagine my frustration when I realized that I was supposed to capture the still-life exactly as I saw it?  That meant trying to capture every detail of the reflections in its surface.

For one of our assignments, we had to do a self-portrait, and I decided to go a little whimsical with it.  I'm sure that the "I Want You" parody means something, but I've never decided exactly what.  I was playing a lot with American flags at this point, and they've found their way into a lot of my projects.  I think I was going through an anti-corporate phase or something.

My final project for the course, this piece was pretty much just a love letter to graffiti.  Using spraypaint and charcoal as my main media, this piece is five feet tall and about six and a half feet wide.


I'm actually still digging around my computer trying to find my other projects from this class, but I think these three speak to my improvement as an artist and to Read's proficiency as a teacher.