06 COLOR

The class of February 15th will be about colour and will be given by artist painter Piet Dieleman at his studio. The address is: Molenwater 125a 4331 SG Middelburg. Try to formulate your relationship to color, this can manifest itself in various media. Focus your research on the multiformity of the subject, try to develop and employ a manageable methodology . How do I make this process insightful, legible and thus visual?

Start a collection of colours, motivate your choices and ask yourself what is your relation- ship to your collection. How does colour function? How do you want to make use of colour? What is colour as a thought, how do you think colour, what is colour? What is the role of digital media in the experience of colour and what is its quality? A search for your preference for certain colours and forms, the base for development and perception.

For example:

• colour and fashion.
• colour and landscape.
• colour and food.
• colour and chemistry.
• colour and matter.
• colour and light.
• colour and arrangement / mapping. - color and emotion.
• colour and psychology.
• colour and signs.
• colour and the body.

07 DRAWING: POINT, LINE, SURFACE, COLOR AND COMPOSITION

Three exercises in which the findings of the lessons around drawing and color are combined.

A. Make color variations use the previous drawings of the boxes as a starting point

• choose colors randomly
• use strong colors
• use subtle colors like pastels for example
• use stark contrast
• use the one color but in different shades
• use one color, but for example different reds; from pink to dark red
• make a more expressionistic use of color
• work with a specific focus point in your drawing, one element which stands out - ...

B. For this second exercise we’ll make use of a given photograph, so we can focus more on the composition. Look for an interesting lay-out, structure, select specific forms, surfaces, small and or big forms, simplify certain parts of the image if necessary. Try to create ten- sion between forms and colors, background - foreground, the combination of line and surface.

C. Create your own composition, maybe a combination of several drawing you made for the previous exercises. Make it more complex, or try to us as minimal means as needed to create tension. Use only the margins of the paper, or is the left upper corner of the paper the focus point? Make you composition intuitively, maybe childlike, or mathematically? Make use of the associative quality of certain forms and colors.

08 OBJECT AND SUBJECT

Bring a red circle to class. You can make it yourself, or it can be a found object or image. There are no restrictions, everything is possible, but you have to know why you want to show it to other people.

09 REPORT / MAPPING

Make a comprehensive report of one of trips, visits, walks, events, or just an ordinary day from next week. A short documentary, map, list of for example a specific conversation, a movie, a walk in itself, its destination, the preparation for that trip, maybe you had to wait a long time somewhere. Think of an interesting concept to visualise this through drawings and texts, look for a unity in visual means, a stylisation, you don’t have to represent everything literally, make it more abstract if necessary. It can be poetic as well. Connect it with your mood, how you experienced it. Dimensions are free, it can be a small booklet, folded poster, an ordinary sheet of paper, big, small. Like the exercise from last lesson, but more elaborated, more complex.

• Do some research, look for artists who work in a similar way, who document their walks, life, surroundings.
• Look for maps, schematic representations of all kinds.

Cartography is the art and science of making maps. Humans have been creating maps since ancient times: The earliest map is thought to be a schematic of the night sky found in the caves of Lascaux, France, dating to 16,5000 BCE. While we often consider maps to be objective representations of physical space, they are laden with subjective views of the world. Additionally, maps change over time: borders and boundaries are constantly in flux, shifting along political lines and in response to changes in international relation- ships. Many artists have used maps to tell wide-ranging stories about conflict, migration, identity, and social, cultural or political networks.

1 Make a Mental Map A mental map* is a person’s internalized representation of the world, combining the objective knowledge of the world and an individual’s subjective perspective. Draw your city, town, or neighborhood according to you. What places do you visit often? How do you get there? Without looking at a map, draw and label places such as your school, stores you visit, routes you take frequently, your home and the homes of your friends, and other favorite landmarks. Compare your map with a partner’s. What kind of information did your partner include, and what does it reveal about him or her? Did you find anything surprising?

Mental map, Vera Verboom, 2017

2 Identity Mapping Create a map of your own identity using colored pencils and paper. Your map should en- compass aspects of your outer, physical world as well as your inner, psychological state of mind. Before drawing your map, brainstorm a list of words to include. Consider your ambitions, fears, and character traits as well as geographic places of interest. Then think about how to best visually represent these items, and incorporate this style into your map. What kind of geographic landmarks best represent the different aspects of your identity? See for example: Grayson Perry’s Map of an Englishman which could be interpreted as a representation of his identity and ideas.

Mapping Identity, Vera Verboom, 2017