School's out for summer! Well, actually only until June 8, when we'll be back for the ever-so-popular summer session. Except of course, for those of us going on exciting vacations (like Ellen) or engulfed in busy season at work (like Steve).
But we know why you're really here today. It's to see some "bad art." As you recall, we were all supposed to consciously paint a bad painting. Most of us chose to do portraits, figuring that would be easy to mess up. Some of us (Greeta, Mark, Tony and Alan) got a head start by using bad paper—or even the cardboard from the back of the pad. We tried all kinds of tricks—Elaine T painted with her left hand, Sara worked quickly and without enough paint, Ken used clashing colors and Elaine O tried a plethora of new tools and materials.
Still, as you might have guessed, we all failed! None of the "bad art" was truly bad enough. Everyone liked some or all of each of the paintings. For many of us, it was freeing to not be invested in the outcome and we got some very good results. And we all learned a valuable lesson—it's not easy to deliberately make bad art! You'll see what we mean below as we begin with what some of our artists think is the "bad" stuff (don't worry, we'll alert you when we move to good art). And we start with three life paintings of our own teacher wearing an actual work of art—a Koos dress!
And now we move on to the good stuff. (We felt compelled to tell you since the ones above aren't bad at all, are they?) But here's where we really tried. We begin with a good cat (in every sense of the word). We see Ken entering a new phase—watch for the Rothko series!—and continue through vodka, vacations and vegetation before moving on to lots of wonderful people and finishing with an unfinished sketch by Mark.
One final lesson can be learned from Susan's definition of a bad painting: It may look okay, but if it doesn't capture the artist's vision or feeling, it's a bad painting.
See you on June 8. Meanwhile, happy painting!
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