Final thoughts from Arrowmont

Just one final note from Arrowmont... Here is a picture of the class holding those great ceramic heads I was drawing. (Except, of course for Debbie, that's her real head...)

Also, I had intended to venture out into beautiful downtown Gatlinburg and make some sketches for the blog of this very unique mountain town, but it was quite a busy workshop and I never got the chance. So here is a photo of some awesome rhinestone cowboy boots on display in one of the shops along the main street. I think this image says all you really need to know about wonderful wacky Gatlinburg.

"Large Drawings: Image and Text", some final student work

Here are some photos taken on the last day of our Arrowmont workshop. Most of this work isn't completely finished, but is certainly well along the way, and was all done, start to finish, in just five days of studio time. I think all of the students on the class did an amazing job, testing the boundaries of what big, mixed media drawings can be, and how important it is as an artist to break out of your comfort zone and take creative risks. Each artists name is listed above their photo.

Natalie Strum

Debra Kern

Rowena MacLeod

Karin Huettemann

Debbie Rule

Ian Ballantyne

Some more images from a week in Tennessee

 Here are few more images of my class at work at Arrowmont last week:

And here are a few more images of the larger drawing of the ceramic heads that I was working on. All the work at this point is still in graphite, with graphite powder and a lot of erasing using my electric eraser. I will continue to work on this for quite a few months once I return to the McColl Center in Charlotte...

Working on Big Drawings at Arrowmont...

So here are a few views of a large drawing I have been working on with my students at Arrowmont this week.
This first layer is just graphite drawing, no gesso washes or mixed media added at this point.

The heads that I am drawing here are all from the Arrowmont ceramic sculpture collection. Every clay instructor donates a bisque-fired piece to the collection at the end of their class, so there were quite a few great figurative pieces to chose from. I'm not sure which artists made these wonderful pieces, but as soon as I find out their names, I will post them here on the blog...

That's Robbie, a student form the printmaking workshop at Arrowmont, standing next to the drawing to give a sense of scale.

And here is a photo of the actual heads I was working with...

Welcome to Arrowmont!!

As promised, I am spending this week at the wonderful Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Here are a few introductry photos from my class. "Large Drawings: Image and Text":

More images are on the way as the class progresses through the week...

Here are a few additional images from our warm-up, Round-a-bout exercises from the first day of class: