3rd grade - A bowl called 'Seppo'

Today in class we learned about a special bowl known as 'Seppo'. It was created by a Raku master named Hon'ami Koetsu in the early 1600's in Japan. It is a ceremonial tea bowl.

Raku is a form of pottery that focuses on the unique aspects and natural imperfections found in hand built and wood fired pottery. It ties in with the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is the art of finding beauty in imperfection. The concept includes the idea that hand built pottery cannot be replicated because each piece has unique imperfections. This makes each piece profoundly valuable since cannot be recreated exactly and it is irreplaceable.

There is a story I told the students about this particular bowl that is absolutely thrilling! Rather than re-tell it here, ask your student to tell you the story of the 13 year war that was fought for this bowl! At the end of the war, it was broken, then repaired using gold! Part of the concept of wabi-sabi is repair, don't replace. The addition of the gold repair increases the value rather than decreases it!

Look for an upcoming post about our third grade clay project! No, we are not doing Raku. We are hand building clay cups!

The Google Art Project

Here is a great new art resource!!!  The Art Project, powered by Google, is a single source for touring 17 of the world's museums!  You can tour galleries and take close up looks at individual artworks. 

Click HERE and check it out!

Kandinsky: Inspired by Music

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian born artist who lived from 1866 to 1944.  He was an abstract painter.  That means that he wasn't worried about making things look real to life in his paintings.  At one point in his artistic career, he decided to paint 10 "compositions", or music set to paint.  As he listened to the music, it inspired the lines, shapes, and colors he chose in each piece.  The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Writing that "music is the ultimate teacher," Kandinsky embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions. The first three survive only in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend, Gabriele Münter. While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly of Composition II), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in the confiscation of Kandinsky's first three Compositions. They were displayed in the State-sponsored exhibit "Degenerate Art" then destroyed along with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists.

While some of his artwork did not survive the Nazis, he did!

Here are some of the "Compositions" that did survive.

Composition #4

Composition #5

Composition #6

Composition #7

 

 Composition # 8

 

 Composition #9

 

Composition #10

1st grade - Starry Night

Today we looked at an artwork by Vincent Van Gogh called The Starry Night and learned a little about Mr. Van Gogh's life. Make sure you tell your mom and dad all about what you learned! Moms and Dads, we learned about his life, not his death.

This is a quick reminder to try to stay up until just after dark tonight (it gets dark at about 8:00 p.m. right now) and go outside with your parents to look at your night sky! Look carefully at all the details you see because tomorrow we will be drawing our own night skies! Once the drawing is done, we will be using oil pastels to paint it in Mr. van Gogh's painting style!

6th grade - Self portraits and the Durer grid

Albrecht Durer was an artist during the Northern Renaissance. He came up with a grid system for accurately re-creating an image. His grid was built out of wood and wire so that he could stand it up between himself and the object he intended to draw. He then created a grid on his canvas to match the grid on the table.

Here is what his grid looked like...


In class, we are using the grid system to transfer a photo of ourselves onto the drawing paper. The image has a grid labelled with numbers and letters. The drawing paper has a matching grid. We are also drawing the image UPSIDE DOWN! This allows the brain to focus on the lines and shapes instead of on the fact that it is an image of a person.

The example below demonstrates with a line drawing of a bunny.

This project will take 1 1/2 to 2 weeks to complete!  Next, we paint it!

Famous artworks that use One Point Perspective

The Last Supper

(Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy (1498), by Leonardo da Vinci).

Can you find the vanishing point?  It is right behind Jesus' head.  Leonardo designed the painting so that every line in it leads your eye to the most important person in the picture.

Here is some art history 'gossip' for you!  Leonardo da Vinci as more than just a painter.  He was a scientist, a mathematician, a scholar, and an inventor!  He was always full of some new idea.  He decided to play around with inventing a new method of painting frescoes (paintings on a plaster wall).  He used this new idea to paint The Last Supper.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a good idea after all and the painting started to flake off the wall after only a few years!  The people who hired him were really mad!

The photo above is actually a cleaned up version of the painting.  Here is what it looked like before repairs were done.

*****

The School of Athens

Artist Raphael

Year 1509–1510

Type Fresco

Dimensions 500 cm × 770 cm (200 in × 300 in)

Location Apostolic Palace, Rome, Vatican City

Here is some more Art History 'gossip'.  Raphael was very popular with the social crowd.  He always dressed very well and wore expensive colognes.  He went to all the parties!

Michelangelo (the painter and sculptor) lived at the same time and in the same place.  He was not popular with the social crowd.  He was invited to the parties, but he chose not to go.  Instead, he liked to stay up all night carving on marble sculptures.  He would strap a candle to his forhead (so the light wouldn't throw a shadow on his work), which would drip wax into his hair.  Then the marble dust would settle into the wax.  He would be all stinky, sweaty, and dirty in the morning wondering around town.

Raphael and Michelangelo DID NOT like each other!  Raphael painted Michelangelo into his painting, The School of Athens.  Can you find him?  Hint, he looks very grumpy.  Yes!  He is at the bottom, sitting on the steps.

*****

A Woman Drinking with Two Men

by Pieter de Hooch

c . 1658

Oil on canvas, 73,7 x 64,6
National Gallery, London
Look at the tiles in the floor!  And the rafters in the ceiling.  And the window.  There are lots of things in this painting that use one point perspective!

Investigation has shown that de Hooch first drew the one-point perspective scheme and then added the figures. At an early stage, a man appeared to the left of the female servant. De Hooch later painted him out, but his outline has become visible as the upper paint layers have become more transparent over time.

Op Art

The term OP ART is a shortening of a style of art known as Optical Illusion Art.  The definition of Op Art (according to Art Lex) is;

A twentieth century art movement and style in which artists sought to create an impression of movement on the picture surface by means of optical illusion. It is derived from, and is also known as Optical Art and Perceptual Abstraction. 

 Op art falls into two main categories.  The first is ABSTRACT and the other is PERCEPTUAL.

ABSTRACT OP ART

Abstract means an image that does not look like a real world object or image.  For instance, it does not look like a house, a tree, or a person.  Instead, the image is comprised of shapes, lines, and colors.

Blue-Black

Victor Vasarely (French, born Hungary, 1908-1997) was an abstract Op artist.

Blue/Red

1983

Victor Vasarely

Intake

Bridget Riley (British, 1931-)

 

Cataract


 Bridget Riley

Perceptual Op Art

This refers to art that shows some impossibility in perception.  The most famous artist in this category is Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972).

 

Relativity

This is only one of his many Op art works.  I would encourage you to explore the world of Escher by clicking on this link to  The Official M.C. Escher Web Site.  You can also find the link in one of the lists in the right column.

Notice that you can perceive (see) a seeming impossibility.  People going up and down stairs from different perspectives.  This would be impossible on earth due to the force of gravity.

1st grade - Mondrian paintings

The first grade classes learned a little about the painter, Piet Mondrian. They learned that he lived during both WWI and WWII. During WWII, he lived in Paris, but decided to move to London to escape from the battle. Then, when London was no longer safe, he moved to New York, where he lived for the rest of his life.

His paintings are fun because they are easy for first grade students to understand. Lines and primary colors! This group of paintings was done by Mrs. Cowley's class. They placed masking tape onto black paper, then painted with tempera paint. Once the paint was dry, they removed the masking tape to reveal black lines! Very fun!

Here are a few examples of Mondrian style paintings from Mrs. Penrod's and Mrs. Richins' classes. In these classes, we used a white paper as the background. Then the students used a pencil and ruler to plan out the lines, tempera paint for the primary colors only, then black crayons and markers to darken the pencil lines. The effect is slightly different, but the end result is still beautiful!

1st grade - Starry Night

After visiting the Museum of Modern Art's online children's museum and learning about Vincent van Gogh and his painting, The Starry Night, the first grade students made their own Night paintings. I asked them to observe the night where they live and it just so happens that there was a storm that night. Some of our paintings turned into "Stormy Nights" instead of "Starry Nights". I try to encourage the students to draw from their own memories, like Mr. van Gogh did, so that every painting will look different from all the rest.

These paintings are done in oil pastel, which the students found to be extremely fun to use.

6th grade - Tessellation

Sixth grade is working on the concept of Tessellation. A tessellation is a pattern that interlocks in some way. The patterns we are doing are not true tessellations, but are extremely fun, just the same!

Each student received a planning paper to design four different patters. Using a ruler, marks are placed on all four sides of each 3"X3" square on the planning paper. A design is created in the square that only touches the sides at the designated spots. After tracing one of the patterns onto a separate 3"X3" paper, the student then tests the pattern to see if all sides match up. If all went well, the student can then trace the pattern again on 8 more squares.

As you can see by the images at the top, rotating the squares in various formations will result in many different overall patterns.

Escher and Tessellation

The most famous artist who did tessellation was M. C. Escher. Here are some examples of tessellation done by Escher.

Islamic Mosaics

Islamic Mosaics is another connection to this assignment. In the Islamic culture, images of people are forbidden. Instead, beautifully scripted sayings are interspersed with mosaic tessellations as decorations in homes, shops, and mosques. Below are some examples.