Intro to Visual Arts
Gain insight into the purpose and process of art-making
What makes a painting work? What inspires a sculptor to create? The visual arts are influenced by many factors, including the language of art and visual communication, historical and social forces, and the evolution of new modes of expression.
In this 3-lesson course, you'll develop an understanding of the visual arts by exploring your own artistic creativity. You'll explore paintings, sculptures, experimental pieces, and more, learning to critique their composition and decode their social or political purpose. You'll be introduced to the elements that make up a visual message and build a vocabulary of fundamental terms and compositional techniques.
Different media in art are explored, ranging from traditional media like portraiture to unconventional means of artistic expression such as game art and contemporary dance. In each exercise, you'll analyze art themes and create your own art pieces that demonstrate your grasp of the themes in the medium of your choice.
Talented contemporary artist Carolina Caycedo will guide you through essential visual arts theory, art samples, video clips, with the primary frame of reference defined by interviews and features of Latin American artists Raimond Chaves, Gilda Mantilla, and Federico Guzmán, as well as the author’s own work. You'll also receive personalized feedback on your art analyses and hands-on work.
Tuition: $200 US
Course Instructor(s):
Requirements:
- Computer with Internet connection (56 Kbps modem or faster).
- Basic supplies for an artistic medium of your choice (drawing, paint, video, digital imaging, and so on).
- A digital camera (or ability to digitize film photos) to present your artwork digitally.
Course Objectives:
- Identify the basic visual elements that form aesthetic experiences.
- Identify fundamental composition and visual communication techniques.
- Create art pieces that elicit emotion using specific composition techniques.
- Identify historical and social purposes of art including religious ceremonies and rituals, storytelling, describing events, creating beauty, generating emotion, recording data, and art as therapy.
- Identify historical and current uses of art as protest, propaganda, and commentary.
- Create a composition relating to specific purposes for creating artwork.
- Identify the relationship between the fine arts, visual arts, applied arts, and performance arts as components of the arts.
- Identify types and movements of interdisciplinary arts such as fluxus and contemporary dance.
- Identify trends in interdisciplinary practice such as fluxus and game modding.
- Create a personal definition of the arts.
- Create an interdisciplinary art piece demonstrating a specific theme.
Course Outline
LESSON 1 The Visual Alphabet
No matter the medium—paint, clay, photo, video, or beyond—the fine arts is based on a fundamental visual language. In the first lesson, you will be introduced to the foundations of fine art work including compositional and visual communication techniques. A wide range of essentials such as positive and negative space, balance and tension, and continuity and interruption are explored. In a feature interview, you'll be introduced to artist Raimond Chaves and his art and design techniques. In the exercise, you'll create your own art piece, in the medium of your choice, demonstrating emotional and compositional techniques.
LESSON 2 Historical and Social Function of Art
Some might say that all art is political in a way, reacting (or choosing not to react) to historical or social events. This lesson introduces classic and contemporary pieces created to illustrate, enhance, or protest historical, religious, and social events. You'll learn how art tells stories, records data, is used in rituals, makes social commentary, and even is used as therapy. In the exercise, you'll analyze common purposes for creating art and create a piece of your own in the medium of your choice.
LESSON 3 Art as an Expressive Medium
Fine arts are all about expression, but there's more to it than just drawing, painting, and sculpture. In Lesson Three, you'll compare and contrast the traditional fine arts with other categories of the arts, including visual, applied, and experimental. Interdisciplinary arts that include contemporary dance, fashion, and more are explored, as well as game art through a feature interview with controversial game artist Anne Marie Schleiner. To wrap up your introduction to the fine arts, you'll write your personal definition of the arts and create an interdisciplinary art piece.
Ciencia Fixion CD cover - Carolina Caycedo
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