February 2025
WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS
Week 1 [02/02/25- 02/08/25]
In St. Augustine
Still working on collages after taking Peggi’s Wild Kingdom class
Week 2 [02/09/25- 02/15/25]
Traveled back to Fairhope, and decided to function out of FH and manage the Knoxville building remotely — adjusting to new routines this week
Signed up for Ian Roberts’s Mastering Composition 6 week class
Completed “baseline assessment” drawing for MC
Practicing drawing value shapes
Consistently watching Peggi’s Patreon videos for inspiration/ to reinforce light & shadow on the form
Week 3 [02/16/25- 02/22/25]
Practicing value shapes and Peggi’s drawing exercises
“Just fill pages with stuff!!” -PKR :)
Feeling a little aimless as I wait for Ian’s class to start (lessons drop and first live call on Feb. 22)
Mastering Composition class started and I’m excited to tackle the first week’s lessons!
Excited to combine some things I’ve learned from Peggi with the MC exercises to make them a little more exciting and portable - like practicing making mark in a zine/ concertina
Week 4 [02/23/25- 03/01/25]
Officially started Mastering Composition [MC]
Really excited to see how the structure of this course gives me a solid foundation to layer learnings from Sandi and Peggi on top of.
Trying to really stay focused and extract the full value and lessons from MC.
Building up my nerve to start posting work for critique next week within the MC community
1 SKILL I’M WORKING ON
Making smooth, controlled, even marks that create the illusion of mass
2 THINGS I LEARNED
In the Mastering Composition intro, Ian put words to different drawing styles (like Academic vs. value-mass drawings) and explained why you might choose one over the other. It was really helpful to put language to this idea… It helps me combat my tendency to compare and feel like I should be doing things the same way somebody else is doing them… but we might be trying to go different places, so we might need to take different routes!
Ties in with what Peggi says - “There’s more than one way to make it to the mountaintop.”
Ian also explained subject-driven vs design-driven drawings/ paintings. I’ve heard Peggi and others allude to this, but I didn’t exactly know what they meant. But I’m really excited about how I can apply Ian’s value-mass approach to think more about design and composition.
3 FAVORITE PICS
Baseline drawing for Mastering Composition
MC Wk 1 - Concertina practicing values masses
MC Wk 1 - Coltrane exercise (it’s amazing how hard it is to keep your marks from being distracting!)
