CLASS DEMONSTRATION

In the fall I start out my advanced students working on a variety of graphite pencil and charcoal pieces.  My second year students are required to create a drawing which incorporates hands.  This year I decided to demo using an antique quilt top and photographed my hands appearing to piece the quilt together.

This quilt is very sentimental to me.  It was created by my grandmother using remnants from my grandfather's shirts.  I usually have it stretched on a frame and hanging in a guest bedroom since it is small and never was finished.  I also love the fact that it was created over a hundred years ago while my grandparents were still living in a dugout on our family farm.  To make it even better is the fact that I was told the quilt pattern of eight pointed stars is often referred to as "Road to Oklahoma."

This is the early stages of my demonstration.  I am trying to impress upon my students the importance of microscopic details and strong contrast with a variety of values.  The challenge for me in this piece so far is creating the drape and perspective of the star patterns and replicating the patterns on the fabrics my grandmother used.  I am "embellishing" and changing a few of the patterns to add more variety and that helps me instruct my students to change their pieces and not rely totally on the reality of their resources.  I love drawing and all art for that reason - you can change whatever you want, however you want.

I am trying to work from upper left across my piece.  I like to demonstrate this approach to my students to try and prevent smearing pencil marks as you reach across the paper.

As in all demonstration pieces, I don't know if I'll complete this or not but right now it's a lot of fun to work on.