I love Joe Denaro's class. He encourages us to be free and loose and inventive. He loves fashion and attitude and emphasizes knowing trends. I get a certain relaxed high in his class. It's a great way to end the week.
Bil Donovan's class is very different. We are learning concept, composition, value studies, etc. I feel like I am really learning how to improve the things I struggled with in my first year. We're getting assignments and have to come up with finished illustrations complete with smart composition, concept, and rendering. In this piece I had to illustrate for a review of a ballet where the dancers were becoming a little too flirty with the audience as opposed to graceful and poised.
Bil Donovan also recently released a new book on fashion illustration. My very cool anatomy professor, Karen Santry, raves about it every week. She told us it took him eleven years to write. Anyway...I accidentally found the book wandering uptown one day...and I bought it!
Textile design is very time consuming because it requires perfect technical skill. For our first project we are designing a print of an everyday object. I chose an ipod. I had to draw each one a about three million times with a ruler to get it "perfect" enough. My professor tells me this project is the tightest, most "perfect" painting we will have to do. I hope so. My A.D.D. cannot handle this very well...especially at night. Anyway, it is a work in progress and I hope it turns out nicely. Our next project is floral prints. I'm very excited to do that. It sounds like it will be more artistic and organic. To prepare, I will have to start collecting bulb catalogues, books on flowers, and gardening magazines for references, sketchings, and even just learning the anatomy of a flower.
