Lesson 8: Subject Matter: Ideas!
IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY
ART KNOWLEDGE: All Art Comes from Ideas
Visual Artists express ideas through forms and images Subject matter  (images) can be made in countless different ways.
You can portray or use as a subject real places, people, or things; remembered persons, places and things; or
imagined persons, places and things. You can also make up a story and tell it with your pictures.
There are many choices about media and technique. These forms can be represented in 2 dimensional picture space or
3-dimensional representation. HERE ARE 3 HELPFUL LESSON LINKS:
Link 1: Getting Started,  Link 2: Develop Your Art Idea Link 3: How to begin a Picture

Here are two Picasso pictures, 1uses flat, 2 dimensional areas. The other 3 dimensional space. Two pictures by Yves Tanguy show 3 dimensional representation of fantasy forms.

SOURCES OF IMAGES FOR PICTURES
Beginning artists have choices for finding subject matter.
The first is to observe from actual subjects that we see, either from life or from pictures, the second choice is to  imagine the objects. Subject matter  that can be observed will give us the easiest and clearest images to be copied because we can learn about specific form color and detail by looking closely and drawing what we see. With imagination, unless we have a very good knowledge of some form, we will probably get results that are not too realistic. (realism matches nature or reality). With fantasy or imaginary subjects we can symbolize the objects that we draw and produce our own version of reality. For example a horse or a dragon when not drawn from a real picture or model becomes a symbol of a horse or a dragon.

SOME PICTURES TELL STORIES
Pictures that children like often tell a story. There is a theme or a subject about something that is happening. These kinds of pictures are easy to draw and paint. What is the story about? Who or what is the main characters of the story? What is the setting for the story?
Some Story Telling Ideas:
ACTIVITY 1: Select one of the stories below and draw the story as a composition Use the whole picture frame.
"The Terrible Flood", "When We Built the Tree House", "When We Camped at the Lake", "A Very Dangerous Adventure", "Little Sleepy Head", "When we Discovered the Hidden Treasure", "The Friendly Giant", "The Magic Mirror", "The Mermaid and the Whale". Your own

Many picture compositions show subject in some kind of environment (where subject lives)
ACTIVITY 2: Draw one of the subjects from column 1 with some normal environment (column 2)
ACTIVITY 3: Draw one of the subjects from column 1 with an environment from column 2 or 3, not the normal one.

HINTS FOR BETTER PICTURES - COMPOSITION:
Positioning the parts of your picture: Make some of the forms more important than others. These can be emphasized by making them larger than the others or so they stand out from the other forms in other ways. (Darker or lighter than others, etc.
HINT:  For better compositions repeat some of the forms to create pattern or rhythms. (Trees repeated create a rhythm, or clouds repeated create a rhythm. etc.

HINTS FOR BETTER PICTURES - USE  SKILLS YOU HAVE BEEN PRACTICING:
1. E-Z drawing, lightly drawn at first to allow for changes without erasing. (Lesson 1)
2. Breaking up the picture space into numerous zones of interest. (Lesson 5)
3. Use 3D modeling or shading techniques to add mass or weight to the objects.  (Lesson 3)

Places to see the work of great artists.

Where to find Pinkmeister's art resource web sites:
On these web sites you will find dozens of art and design lessons.
http://www.friendlyarts.net/Asdo/
- - or - -
http://www.friendlyarts.net/Wheaton/