Figure Painting Study of the figure as a subject in painting through exercises in gesture, spatial location, and foreshortening. Life models are used, and each student also completes a full figure self-portrait. Watercolor Transparent and opaque watercolor techniques, including wash and dry brush, ink and watercolor, and intermixing with turpentine, charcoal, and pastel. Emphasis is on the development of skills and expressive use of the medium. Landscape Painting On-site painting from nature.
Students complete several sketches in any liquid medium from each field trip and keep a journal.
Group critiques and the study of master landscape painters are included. The use of still life as painting imagery is expanded through problems and pictorial content. Problems dealing with specific compositional devices and a brief history of the symbolic nature of objects add meaning beyond literal likeness. A study of historical context and development of subject matter as it relates to content from the hierarchy of early Christian and classical themes to the humanism of genre, still life, and landscape. Course includes a study of the changing role of thematic symbolism and examination of how the physical aspects of painting give expressive meaning and enhance understanding.