Class started with a review of ABSTRACT vs. REALISTIC, LINE and COLOR, before moving onto SHAPE.
Shape breaks down into two main categories, GEOMETRIC and ORGANIC. Simply put, geometric shapes have straight lines and organic shapes have curved lines. Of course, the fabulous CIRCLE falls into the geometric category making a major exception, which is annoying, but ultimately helping to prepare the class for their future endeavors in reading English, a language with rules, fraught with “exceptions.” Similarly, natural things can always be thought of as organic shapes because nature doesn’t make straight lines…except for CRYSTALS, oy. Anyway, they got the idea.
I showed the artists, some of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series and Joan Miro’s paintings as examples of these distinctions in shape. Then we went at it using stencils, colored pencils and markers with SHAPE on the mind.
