Catie Beth Russo
Teaching portfolio
(under construction)
Foundations of Art
Foundations of Art is a course designed to provide an introduction to a variety of 2D, 3D, and digital media as well as allow young artists to engage in multiple ways in which artists can think and make. Every semester it seems I swap out units of instruction, here are samples from several years.
Chance Encounters
*adapted from Anne Cremeans
Students are introduced to the spectrum of making: representational-abstract-non-objective. They work in a group with 5 master artworks to determine where they fell on the spectrum, and some pose questions (such as an abstract photograph by Maholy-Nagy) which is arguably the most realistic since it is directly from life. So how much is a camera like a paintbrush? how is it different? Students learn about the subjectivity of art making.
Students are asked to trace something from each master artwork onto acetate to create their own new abstract work of art. All masterworks should be found somewhere in the final composition.
Macro Colored
Pencil Study
Continuing with abstraction, students are asked to use a keyhole template to create abstraction via cropping of a photograph in a magazine, to then apply colored pencil techniques to a scaled up drawn version. Students use scumbling, varied pencil pressure, overlapping color, and faded value for depth.
Parts to Whole
Collage
Collage is essentially taking parts of existing imagery, and combining them to make a new whole. Students are asked to look at the potential of parts for creating hybrid, anthropomorphized, characters as well as imagined settings for focal points to exist in. We also analyze the power of negative space by learning how to window cut with an exacto knife, and consider spatial composition with a black background.
Self Portrait Unit
Students are walked through a demo on how to recognize proportion and draw facial features from a generic standpoint to then apply to a specific study of their own face. For example, every nose has a ball on the end, but does yours have any shading directly above it? Does the ball tilt down? Not sure? Look a little from the side in your mirror. Can you see your nostrils in the mirror? If so, are they more of a circle, triangle, an ellipse?
Tertiary Paintings
Working with radial symmetry, students create a one of a kind design from cut paper, that is flipped and repeated four times. Students then review primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Painting goals are: accurately mixing all 6 tertiary colors with a primary palette, painting in the lines with the right size flat brush, and applying multiple layers of paint for nice flat blocked color. Students have the option to elaborate with markers afterward.
Digital Vanitas
Students learn how to make a digital collage by studying the history and art of a vanitas still life. Keeping with tradition, all students must have a skull of their choosing and two other classic vanitas symbols, but also include two of their own symbols that represent fleeting life, the passage of time, their own philosophies of life and death.
3D Printmaking
Students create a collagraph plate out of recyclable and reusable materials to then press into a slab of clay, with the end goal of create a flower vase. This unit covers surface relief, slab construction with score and slip, and painting considerations for finishing touches.
