Your assignment is to finish what we started in class. The final drawing should be in pencil or ink, on a 9 x 12" sheet of paper or later, margins optional. Please remember that the most important considerations for this assignment are your use of symbols to represent ideas and your composition of those symbols into a design that aids your expressive purpose. I will also collect your brainstorming sketches and three compositional thumbnails. .
I hope you understood the parameters of the assignment from class, but just in case you're confused I'll repeat them here:
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The title of this project is "beset by demons." Your drawing will depict an individual being attacked by problems. The individual will represent either you, a concept (for example, Nature, Technology, or the U.S.A.), or "everyman." The problems should be specific to that individual. For example, it might be you attacked by the problems you have as a student, it could be nature being attacked by environmental problems, or it could be an everyman being attacked by problems of contemporary life.
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The first step of the assignment is to choose a theme, both the individual being attacked and some of the problems attacking them. The next step is to brainstorm visual symbols that might be used to represent these problems. You will find that some problems lend themselves to representation better than others. For example, death is well-represented by a skeleton, but the national budget deficit is hard to embody in a particular symbol. You may even want to reconsider your choice of theme if the first one doesn't work out. Don't consider this a waste of time! It's all part of the learning process.
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The third step is to draw three different thumbnail sketches of how the individual and its problems might be composed in your final drawing. A thumbnail sketch may be anywhere from two to five inches on each side, the main consideration being whether you can get a good sense of how each arrangement will be experienced by the viewer. Consider grouping objects into larger shapes, the arrangement of positive and negative shapes in the composition, and whether you want to guide the eye around the image with directional lines. When you find a composition that satisfies you, make it into a simple 9 x 12" drawing.
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The final drawing may be entirely in pencil, with shading used to represent darks, although you may ink it if you prefer. The drawing doesn't need to include many details, but it should be clean.
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As our example in class demonstrated, your final drawing doesn't have to be profound. The most important consideration is whether you have succeeded in communicating the basic purpose of the image to the viewer: is the theme of the image reasonably clear? Can the viewer find the individual who is the subject of the piece, and identify the individual symbols that represent its problems? Does the composition feel purposeful?
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Have fun!
