Fine Art (MFA)

Represent the human figure in pictorial space based on your observations and your study of the human form. You'll gain skills in proportional accuracy, foreshortening, and form and cast shadows to achieve convincing three-dimensional form of the figure.

Demonstrate your understanding of perspective, proportion, gesture, and foreshortening. You'll learn to depict objects, architecture, and figures using line, tone, and begin modeling.

Fine tune your fine art figure painting skills. Learn the basics and expand your personal style by experimenting with composition, color theory, form, and structure.

Refine your approach and response to natural and man-made environments. You'll paint landscapes from locations and photographic references in studio. (This course is cross-listed with FA 328.)

Develop your paint handling skills in value and color as you explore different organizational and compositional approaches to painting still life arrangements.

Know the painting process. Using various brushes, painting mediums, and surfaces, you'll create simple compositions that explore monochromatic and limited pallet color schemes, demonstrate value and value relationships, and inform painting approaches like realism and impressionism.

Understand the skeletal and muscular systems of the human body. You'll investigate the complexities of the human form to enhance your figurative drawing skills.

Apply classical drawing principles to render a 3D form. You'll dive deep into the five-value system of tonal rendering, composition, value pattern, variation of form, cast shadow edges, and light and shadow relationships.

Get an education in color. You'll enhance your capacity to make informed color choices in your artwork by studying scientific research (theory) and through a series of hands-on projects (practice) designed to help you personalize color.

As an MFA student, you'll refine your thesis concept and prepare works to include in your midpoint review. Once you finalize a thesis concept, you will write content and prepare work for individualized instruction and critique. As an MA student, you'll prepare for your final portfolio presentation by completing three focused works in a single genre of painting. You will also compose an artist statement, a letter to a gallery, and a professional cover letter supporting your work. MA Students will complete three works focused on a specific concept in a single genre of painting. Students will compose a written artist statement to support these works, a letter to a gallery to introduce their body of work, and a professional cover letter for presentation in job applications.

You'll develop personal interpretations of the human form.

Gain essential mold making and casting skills. You'll practice single-piece, simple two-piece, complex three-or-more-piece rigid molds, and rubber mold making techniques. Plus, you'll learn slip cast, hollow, and solid casting techniques. (This course is cross-listed with FASCU 233.)

Clay is an expressive medium. Using various sculptural techniques, you'll gain a variety of painterly and contemporary low fire abilities. (This course is cross-listed with FASCU 231.)

Create sculptures that represent unique and personal interpretations of the human form. You'll work representationally and expressively to develop formal head and figure techniques. (This course will be cross-listed with FASCU 334.)

Learn skeletal construction and musculature by sculpting an anatomical representation of the human body with the skin removed. Using plasteline figures, you'll explore morphology, structural concepts, and rhythmic proportion. (This course is cross-listed with FASCU 270.)