Maritime Art Club!

In our first class, we drew our shoes with the 'blocked' pen, trusting that the pen would trace around the shoe as we slowly observed the outline and shapes. (Poke your pen through a card, set it on your paper, look down at your shoe and draw!) The exercise was to make us draw what we see, not what we think we see. The results are always very lively. Then, on folded papers, we played the old surrealist parlor game, "Exquisite Corpse (cadavers exquis.)" To play, write a phrase or draw on paper which is folded into sections so that the next person continuing the sentence or drawing cannot see what has been done before. One nonsensical phrase that resulted from a game the Surrealists played was “Le cadaver exquis boira le vin nouveau” (“The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”) The game was named after this phrase. Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s in France, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings which feature surprise and unexpected juxtapositions.

It is overwhelming to look at something and wonder how to begin. Contour drawings make you draw the outside shape. By doing them, you are not drawing a "shell" or "branch", but the contour of this shape. You are training yourself to see and feel forms. We have very three very talented artists' exercises here: Alhassan made a lot of contour drawings. Abstract shapes are best for this exercise, so we bend wire, and give them to someone else to draw.  He bent this wire to make Joey's name! so I asked him to draw the wire upside down. It looks like a very good drawing to me: Christian brought in a beautiful portfolio, strong rich works. He did not like the wooden fish contour which he did with the blocked view, but I like it very much. It is very fluid and loose. His contours of the branch are proportionally good. And he knows a lot of very good riddles. Joey also brought in good works. His contour drawings are strong : As always, Tuesdays from 3:30pm to 5:30pm are classes in the MAST center. Hanging up will be samples of artworks to inspire you. Views of NYHarbor, the nature of the harbor, or the people and views of the maritime industry are what we will focus on in this club. Displayed are the drawings of ships in NYHarbor by John Noble, the marine workers of Maturin Meheut, industrial doodles of Saul Steinberg, the free type prints of Sister Mary Corita, marine life illustrations of Gessner and Haeckel, and yarn weavings and rope work. Feel free to bring in things that inspire you, that you would like to show and talk about. This week: group drawing on a BIG SCALE: the T-2 tanker!

The T2 tankers were oil tankers built around 1938 - 1945. Originally built to transport oil around NYHarbor and beyond, they were used to supply fuel for US forces fighting wars in Europe and the Pacific. Many remained in service for decades after the war. This exercise is to learn how to enlarge an image using a grid. A grid was drawn over the image of the T2 tanker, you each had to pick one box to enlarge and draw on your paper using paintbrush and tusche ink. Everyone tried to pick a different box to enlarge.The results are beautiful! Playing with the ink was fun, too. Tusche is a very strong ink, and I was super happy everything was as neat and clean as it was. We did not finish the whole ship, but what was complete looks great when assembled back together.

Thank you, and very good work: Aidan, Alhassan, Amalia, Ante, Bri, Bryan, Cyd, Eric, Jenay, Joanna, Kaila, Kimberly, Kimiko, Liam, Maraya, Steve, and William