Enjoy your Winter Art Example

 

This picture is by the American engravers, lithographers,  and printers,  Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) and James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). Have you ever seen art like this print,  that shows old-fashioned America? Chances are it was a Currier & Ives print!

The Art Elements "Line" and "Value" in black and white art

Welcome back!

Today we are going to look at two of the Elements of Art. They are line and value.  It is easy to tell them apart when you are working in color...and not as easy in some black and white art.

Cat and Bird by Paul Klee
1928; Oil and ink on canvas, 38 x 53 cm;
Museum of Modern Art, New York
http://www.moma.org

Composition VIII by Wassily Kandinsky
1923; Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm; 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 
http://www.ibiblio.org



Above, you can see thick and thin straight and curving lines in black. There are also gray curved lines and shapes. On the right, the flowing lines around the cat change colors as they travel around the objects.
Value, or the lightness and darkness of colors, is easy to spot. See the different tones of brown in the cat? Those are values of brown. Kandinsky uses values of several colors. See if you can find light and medium blue, red and pink, and different values of purple in the picture above.

(Extra credit! Which painting is abstract? Answer at the end of this post!)

Sometimes in black and white art, it is more confusing to tell line and value apart. In these two examples, lines are also used to create value.
The lines in the puffin's feathers are close together on his back, and farther apart near his eye. In true black and white art, your eye mixes the black of the ink and the white of the paper together to make the gray values. Lines (or dots, in the case of the rocks and beak) that are packed together densely appear darker. Pixelation works the same way. Varying the spacing allows for a full range of gray. The dots make broken lines on the rocks as well.

Puffin by Robin-Jo Norris
1996; Ink on Illustration Board; 60 x 80 cm;
Collection of the artist.

The drawing of my cat Maxwell uses the same idea. However, this drawing is on rough, bumpy paper. If I covered  more bumps inside the lines of the cat's stripes, the darker the value appeared. Graphite means it is drawn in pencil, so really it is all values of gray. I hope I have cleared up this subject!

  

               Maxwell Kitty by Robin-Jo Norris
                     2008; Graphite on paper; 28 x 40 cm.;
            Collection of the artist.



*********The answer is: They are both abstract. Cat and Bird is an example of abstract representational art. "Representational" means that something recognizable is being shown by the artist.  Composition VIII is called non-objective or non-representational abstract art. " Non" means no, so this is art with no recognizable objects.

If you got this right, come in and tell me. It is worth 2 Extra Credit points!

Active Notebooks and Cultural Rubrics

Hi readers!

An active notebook is sort of like a scrap book. We will be placing all of our notes, examples, vocabulary, and other things in the notebooks, like a regular notebook. The difference is that an active notebook is nicer to look at :-) because it involves art!

On every "Notes" page will include the name of the culture, the time the art was made, the name of the style, an example, and any vocabulary you didn't understand. You will underline or hi-lite important information. You will notice that the underlined parts tell you:

• How the art was made
• What the artists used 
• Why the art was made
• and the traditional colors

These are things that really count in art history. We will be comparing these things all year with each culture. 

Other things that can go in an active worksheet are rubrics and hang-outs, especially with information that might be handy on a test. Our first one looks like this:

and as you can see, it is a graphic organizer that lets you see at a glance how Vincent Van Gogh compares to Australian Aboriginal artists.
I think it will be more fun to make our notebooks this way. What do you think?

The First Project of the New School Year

Hi Everyone and Welcome Back! I hope you all have your sketchbooks ready for a new year of drawing :-)

I've decided on a new goal this year: Posting a new artist, a picture of his/her face, and a work of art that we should all know. This first entry is poor, sad Vincent. He was born in the Netherlands in 1853, and died in France in 1890. Vincent was inspired mostly by nature, though he also painted many self-portraits. His work is characterised by bright colors and bold, swirling brushstrokes. Vincent is considered a Post-Impressionist painter...that means he came after Impressionism, with its soft colors and blurry images.

Have you guessed who he is?

Follow this link to see the answer, plus a self-portrait and a famous example!


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tXpHTHt4-MipGw4hEBQ06Of6kcbKenvp-eA5w_c23GQ/edit?
usp=sharing

Were you right? Let me know!

Mural Project 2013

Nola's Dog House

We call this "The Owl Tree"...you will see why

Tucker's Island Lighthouse

Some of my talented 6th grade students are hard at work on a new mural project. One section of the hallway is being converted into a waiting room for the Child Study Team. Our theme here is "Nola's Back Yard". Nola is the school's Therapy Dog, and the subject of several books by her owner,  Mrs. Rice.

You can see here how we taped out the project before painting.






Here the girls are beginning the careful task of outlining and shading leaves.











This section of the wall is inspired by the famous New Jersey artist, Cathleen Englesen. We are depicting the old Tucker's Island Lighthouse. Holgate will be painting behind it, and Great Bay in the foreground.

Building Castles

When you build something, the first steps are to learn about the architectural requirements of the type of building you are making. We learned that castles need walls,  a keep,and some sort of entrance. We learned about watchtowers and moats, too. Next, our groups created a blueprint such a the one above.

Building the Keep

Walls and a freestanding Watchtower

Here you can see the outlines of a castle complex. 

Busily at work!

Our last step was to try to build the project using recycled objects!