Animal Body Project / Man and Nature                     Advanced Drawing Levels 1 and 2                     Aston

Some possible interpretations could include:

Affinities between humans and animals. Evolution. Life cycles. Man and nature. Themes of paradise in art. Primal energies. Dionysian tendencies in art. Plant and animal motif and the history of ornament. Natural history illustration; Microscopic worlds; Altered nature and the contemporary landscape; The animal in contemporary art or fashion design; Environmental issues and ecology in contemporary art.

 

Modern and ContemporaryArtists: Walton Ford, Terry Winters, Joseph Beuys, Andy Goldsworthy, Mark Dion, Sue Coe, Damien Hirst, Mel Chin, Patricia Johanson, Hans Haacke, Helen and Newton Harrison, Buster Simpson, Joseph Beuys, Ana Mendieta, Kiki Smith, Darren Waterston, Anselm Keifer, Georgia O’Keefe,  Eadweard Muybridge

Natural History painters and illustrators: Albrecht Durer, Leonardo Da Vinci, Jean-Paul Rubens, Eugene Delacroix, Maria-Sybilla Merian, James Audoban, Gutsave Courbet, Carl Bodmer, Jean-Baptiste Oudry. Edwin Landseer, Rosa Bonheur, George Stubbs, Ernst Haeckel, Karl Blossfeldt, Andreas Feininger,

Art Styles: Romanticism; Animal Style, Tribal Art, Japanese and Maori Tattoo designs; Paintings and drawings of the naturalists; The Cabinet of curiousities; History of pattern and ornament, Landscape painting and nature photography;

Reading: Nietzsche, from The Birth of Tragedy. Excerpt discussing Dionysian and Apollonian tendencies in the development of Western art.

Optional Projects for Beginning Students, Advanced Drawing, Level 1

1. A drawing of a plant or animal from observation. A series of sketches of live animals (3 weeks =18 hours)

2. Landscape drawings, sketches, or watercolors from observation on location (Plein Air, in the open air) 18 hours.