Student Project Spotlight: Fie

Thursday, May 19, 2016

To continue to encourage and inspire my Skillshare students completing our 2 week MoDeRn ArT Challenge, I wanted to provide another outstanding class project example.

Fie (short for Sofie) is a bioinformatics PhD student who creates things and takes classes on Skillshare to unwind in her free time.  

Fie is enrolled in my Kandinsky course.  Students in the workshop come from either this or my Mondrian "Abstract Art with a Twist" series of courses.  

A Dabble in the Abstract: Fie's project

Fie completed several small paintings for this class (pictured above).

Fie researched several abstract artists, including Kandinsky.  She started her project with some pencil sketches (above).  Peace, Improvisation, and Spring were the motivational words behind her project.

Next, Fie worked on moving from sketch to paintings on paper.  She eventually decided on a vertical format and a heavier paper for her final paintings.


One aspect (out of many!) that I appreciate about Fie's process was that she took some very "busy" reference works like these below, and broke them down into bite-sized, understandable elements.

This helped her to organize her thought process and proceed with success through her project.  It also added value to her education by allowing her to re-trace the steps of abstract artists and eventually, to add her own style to these works.

Her ability to break down the complex into the most important and basic elements helped all class members understand the impact of color combinations and the significance of the shapes.

Fie's multiple paintings also improved her familiarity with abstract art.  One thing that helps me overcome my fear of not creating a great painting is this -- you cannot ever achieve quality with first achieving quantity.  The more you paint, the more you grow as an artist.
Here is a bonus that Fie shared with the class:  Fie usually creates representational sketches. Here is a sketch with several of her doodles over some watercolor "blobs."  She painted the non-representational water splotches first and then imagined the characters inside of them.  What an excellent, imaginative exercise to boost creativity!


Special thanks to Fie for allowing us to view her project behind the scenes!

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