What I Want to be When I Grow Up...

So, what do you want to be when you grow up?

I'm still trying to answer that question. Don't get me wrong; I love be an educator. I love the Luther College Upward Bound program, and I'm not looking to leave it any time soon.

One of my long time dreams is become an animator. I mean, can't you imagine a Castle Zierath animated series? Or Greek myths? Or Norse myths? I start really thinking about that when I thought Upward Bound was going to be closing down, so, with the encouragement of my lovely wife, I applied to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online.

I thought maybe people might be interested in my experiences with the Art Institute Online. I thought I'd share some of my work that I've been doing over the last several months.

The first two classes were Art History and Study Skills. I did produce a fair number of Power Point presentations on Art History, and I'm willing to share those, but for now I'll skip them. If you want to see them, just tell me. Study Skills...well...It was all sorts of information that I have been teaching students for the past decade. I did very well in those classes.

My third class was Perspective. Over the next little bit, I'm going to be sharing the pictures I drew for this class, followed by Drawing and then The Human Form. I'll do some commentary
on each of the pictures.

The first idea we had to work on was One Point Perspective. That means that there is one vanishing point on the horizon. If you take a look at my blocks here to the left, you can see how all the depth lines lead back to that one point. It is overall a pretty simple concept, but it's an important starting point.

My next assignment was a 'real life area' one point perspective drawing. I started by choosing my study, looking in at Kath's computer. This became much more difficult than I thought it would. As you can see, the room has a slanted ceiling, and I had some severe problems with the cylindrical shape of the stool. I worked for a while on it, and then decided I needed to try a different picture.

I went down to the living room and decided to do our north wall with the bookcases and window. All in all, I was pleased with how it turned out.

As I look back at these, I can see how far I've come since I did them. You will be able to see noticeable improvement as I go along.

See you soon.