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Class in the Spotlight
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Drawing classes donate project to SCAD
 Photo by Dennis Burnett Students in foundation studies professor Jesse Payne’s (second from left) Drawing II courses created a black-and-white rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” which they donated to SCAD April 26. By Monique Bos Published: Friday, May 4, 2007 On April 26, students in Savannah College of Art and Design foundation studies professor Jesse Payne’s Drawing II courses met at Wallin Hall, 312 E. 37th St., to donate a collaborative project to the Savannah College of Art and Design. The piece is a 9-foot-by-16.5-foot rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper,” drawn in charcoal and composed of 45 squares. At the beginning of the quarter, Payne divided the painting into grids and gave each student in his three Drawing II courses a 1-inch-by-1-inch grid. He didn’t tell them where the pieces came from; as far as the students knew, they simply were an abstract mix of shapes, colors and textures. For their assignments, students had to reproduce their squares, focusing on value, visual texture and composition. “This process improves their powers of observation as well as their sensibilities to subtle ranges of value and texture,” he said. “They’re really forced to focus on something and observe closely.” Payne ultimately had them enlarge the scale of their pieces, developing them into black-and-white charcoal drawings on 22-by-22-inch sheets of drawing paper. Then he had students in each of the three classes put their drawings together, and to their surprise, each class’ work depicted a third of da Vinci’s painting. “At first when I was doing it, it didn’t look like anything,” said student Taylor Saya, whose square featured part of the table. “I didn’t know it was going to synthesize with everyone else’s work.” The students weren’t finished with the project yet, however. As a class, they had to work together to develop the whole section, redoing the squares so that values and textures matched, and making sure the pieces fit together in a visually coherent way, both up and down and from left to right. “One of the main things I really like about this project is that it starts out as an individual assignment, and then halfway through the quarter, they bring their drawings to class and put their section together,” said Payne. “At that point, it turns from an individual project into a collaboration.” He said he encouraged the students to develop their own ways of collaborating. “I really gave very little instruction on how to work together as a group,” he explained. “I think it’s valuable for them to find their own way. They have to establish who’s right and who’s wrong, what’s accurate. They have to do everything again from square one.” “We matched values in class, and it was difficult to decide who was right,” said Anna Chandler. Nonetheless, transforming 15 separate drawings into a unified section of the painting proved to be a positive experience. “Before we did this, I didn’t like group projects,” said Maia Oprea. “I didn’t actually know at first it was going to be a group project, but the whole experience was really astonishing. I learned so, so much.” “It’s the beauty of collaboration,” said Adam Mendel. “Even as much work as you put into your drawing, it’s still only a piece of the puzzle. We were all getting into each other’s drawings, working on the picture as a whole … Nobody had any problem with others going onto their work and drawing or erasing or making it match the adjacent squares. It’s a good lesson to learn early in foundation studies, because a lot of us will have to work collaboratively no matter what our majors are.” Learning to share ownership of their work is one of the lessons Payne hoped the students would learn. “You had to give up your work to the whole class,” he said. “That’s a real value in a collaborative project. Your work is no longer only yours.” What students in each section of the course still didn’t know, however, was that two other classes were completing the other sections of the painting. They didn’t get to see the work in its entirety until Payne pinned it up in Wallin Hall April 26. “I realized only a couple of hours ago that we are 45 [people], not 15,” said Oprea. “When the classes’ work came together and we could see exactly what it was, it was pretty exciting,” said Saya. “All the hard work paid off!” “It’s a really great experience to see what 45 different people can come together to do,” Mendel agreed. Although the three sections form a cohesive whole, the separate classes’ work still is distinct. “You can see the three classes so easily,” said McNeill. “One is super textured, the middle one is almost like watercolor, and the other one is so smooth. I like that you can tell that everyone was influenced by everyone else in their classes.” Chandler said, “It’s interesting how everyone took different approaches, but it still came together, and the pieces look great together.” The project not only taught the students drawing skills, but it also engendered new appreciation for da Vinci’s techniques. “Each individual square works as a composition on its own,” said Mendel. “It shows the compositional mastery Leonardo had; you can cut up the pieces of the painting and they still work.” The idea for the project evolved out of an in-class exercise, Payne said. “This started out as a project I did years ago on the first day of class,” he explained. “I wanted students to start working on the first day, rather than just going over the syllabus. I’d cut up a magazine image — a flower or a bird or something — and distribute a little section of that photo to various students. I’d have them reproduce the value and texture of that swatch on a larger scale.” When the students were finished, he’d put all the pieces together. “To their surprise, their drawings formed a whole when I put them up on the wall together,” he said. He developed that idea into a larger assignment. During Winter quarter, Payne had his Color Theory students reproduce swatches from “The Scream” by Edvard Munch as color collages. Payne and the students were pleased with the final result, but he also felt a sense of disappointment. “Once the students put the work into these projects, the only time it came together was when I posted all the drawings up in class. Then the piece was dismantled again,” he said. “I wanted to find a way to keep this piece together as a whole, and I thought, ‘What better way than to donate it to the college?’” Not only does donating the entire project preserve the whole work, but Payne hopes it also teaches students another valuable lesson. “I want to instill in my classes early on an idea of donating artwork to corporations and nonprofits for the greater good,” he said. “Hopefully, in the future, they’ll get into the habit of donating artwork to auctions and benefits to help raise money for specific needs.”  |
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