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#1 Interpreting Local Color > Local Value

In this project, you will be inspired by some of the work created by artists and designers from the Surrealist and Dada movements of the early 20th c.  

Materials:
Magazine images are your fodder for material that are to be arranged into three separate collages in your sketchbooks that are incongruent in the subject matter.   Strive for excellent composition in each.

Rules:

i. Making use of found images from magazines, on the web, etc.,  you will make use of a large image to be used for the background of a collage.  

The minimum edge on any side needs to be 7" or larger. 

Make sure you look for images that have a variety of values in them, and areas where you can experiment with a variety of interpretive mark-making practices.  
Repeat this for each collage. 

ii. You may "scale" up on the copier machine if necessary.

iii. Through found materials look for objects that are incongruent with one and other, however, remain similar in shape. 
 i.e. a hamburger - the surface of the moon - and eyeball from a Great Horned owl.  
You may remove these images from their context or not. 
For instance, the eyeball of the Great Horned Owl does not need to be separated from its face but left uncut.  
The composition will look more complex should you not remove the shaped items from their original context. 

iv. Create three separate piles of your found images.  Triangles, squares, circles, biomorphic shapes.

Dada artist, 
The collage work Hannah Höch, a German Dada artist
1889 - 1978

The collage work of Joseph Cornell
He was an American artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers of 
assemblage and collage.
He was heavily Influenced by the Surrealists
1903 -1972
Making the collage, remember
i. Using found papers, find a textural background.  
This can simply be a tactile surface and not have any representational objects within it.  

ii. Find 3 other forms that illustrate a variety of value and cut away from their backgrounds.  Arrange these objects as if they are floating in a Surrealist* space. Remember to activate negative space into a visually interesting composition. Do not allow your shapes visual weight to be placed at the bottom of your composition. Once satisfied, glue your shapes down. 
Joseph Cornell collage
*Surrealism  = a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind by the irrational juxtaposition of objects.
The drawing's image window (scale) = is the size of your initial collage (or may be doubled) 

ii. Float an image rectangle on Bristol paper or Watercolor paper allowing for an outside border, or gutter to be added to your overall composition.

iii. Transfer contour edges of the shapes in your collage onto your drawing paper.  Once statisfied, begin with the background, interpret the local color into local value with your  graphite/pencils.  

iv. Continue to work forward, background through foreground so that you see and interpret your values correctly

v. Remember, that the magazines have a poor print quality allowing very little value difference between objects sometimes.  Thus, you must use your own knowledge and artistic license to make these "corrections" to produce a visually stunning piece. 

drawing, made up of lighter values and black for punctuation.

Student Collages







Drawing #2 of 2 Local Value
Using your collage as subject
Create a drawing that illustrates the values in the collage accurately. 

i.  In your second image window, you will be making your second drawing that will try to imitate the values in your collage.  You may take a quality copy of your collage to send it into a grayscale.  







Materials: Drawing paper, 6h, 4h, 4b, and 6b pencils
Drawing size (scale) = the size of your collage

i. Float an image window of the same scale as your collage onto the drawing paper.  
> Remember the way in which we mathematically "float" to create an image window symmetrically balanced on the vertical and horizontal edges.  

ii.  Chose only the first last value tint steps from your scale closest to the white.  The values in a high keyed drawing are extremely light in their value range.

iii.  "Punctuate" detail into the drawing by adding a very little bit of tonal values.

iv. Complete the graphite drawing to exaggerate the high-value ranges of your collage. 

v. Again, you may use a viewfinder, you may take only a portion of the overall collage and "crop" an area that will be the inspiration of this drawing.

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