AVI1O - Blissymbols!!

One of our important areas of study in Grade 9 art is to be able to "...apply elements and principles of design to create art that communicate ideas and information."   Today we focused on Blissymbols.

Yesterday, we had a presentation on inclusion.  Our guest speaker communicated to us that he learned to use Blissymbols as a vital way to communicate.  If you had no other means of communication, then an international means of communicating through symbols might change your life!

To make our classroom more inclusive, we worked to create small placards that communicate the utility of everyday objects in our environment.

AVI10 - Reaction to Art

As part of the Grade 9 art program, it is important to be able to identify and describe your reaction to a variety of work.  Today we viewed and discussed the following pieces, sharing our reactions as a group and building upon what each other noted.

We discussed Henry Jones Thaddeus' "The Wounded Poacher".

Initially, the reactions varied from boredom to mild curiosity.  Then we discussed the many elements of the painting one must note to better understand it.  We have a poacher...in the eyes of the law, a criminal.  He is wounded.  On the floor, you see the rabbits he has risked his life to acquire to feed his family.  The home is somewhat rudimentary: the table is mended, a spoon hangs on the wall, simple vegetables are strewn about, etc.  Our perception changed from that of boredom to empathy.  One student noted that it reminded her of Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes", seen here:

Holofernes was an Assyrian General who was intending to destroy Judith's home and village.  Judith beats him to the punch, so to speak.  In both paintings, the female subject is cast in an angelic light.  In both paintings, the male subject might be a hero or a criminal, depending on your perspective.  We marvelled at Caravaggio's transition between values and his astute use of space.  We zoomed in on Judith's expression: elements of curiosity, disgust, surprise, and resolution are found in her face.

We also measured our initial reaction to the following works.  What are your reactions as you view them for what may be the first time?

Kara Walker's "Gone".

Paul Peel's "After the Bath".

Sofonisba Anguissola's "Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola".

AVI2O: Careers in the Arts!

AVI2O: Careers in the Arts Assignment

Step One:  Partner Up!!

Step Two: Know Your Role!!  In this assignment, you will be creating a dialogue between an interviewer and an interviewee.  Are you likely to study business or perhaps own your own business in the future?  You might like the opportunity to conduct an interview.  Are you thinking of a career in the arts?  Here is your opportunity to hone your interview skills.

Step Three:  Choose the Career in the Arts!!  Thinking of being a graphic designer?  Or perhaps a 3D animator?  Research the various opportunities that the arts provide for a creative soul like yourself.  Choose a job that interests you.

Step Four: Create your Dialogue!!  Start with a T-Chart.  On one side, write down important questions and concerns that an employer would want to address to ensure that they choose the right employee for their establishment.  On the other side, write down the important skills and attributes that a good employee should have, especially as it relates to the career that you chose.  Now string this all together into an interview dialogue…a skit of sorts.  

Step Five: Performance!!  Just like Step 7 of the Creative Process (Presenting), we need to see what you have put together.  

Tips for Success

Research your career and how interviews are conducted.  Where does one go to school for this career?  What are the specific areas of study?  Where might you have gained experience to help you in your interview?  If you are the interviewer, what are the most important traits, skills, and experience that you are looking for in an employee?  Remember, this employee might be with you for a long time…you want to ask the right questions to make sure they have what it takes!!

Level 4 Checklist

- Students demonstrate that they have integrated original thinking with existing knowledge: Creativity!!

- The roles are clearly identified 

- The dialogue follows a well-researched interview format 

- The interviewer asks questions that are clear and specific to the position applied for

- The questions posed demonstrate a thorough understanding of the specific career

- The questions posed are purposeful and analytical

- The answers provided by the interviewee demonstrate a thorough understanding of the specific career

- Students demonstrate that they have shared responsibility in pursuit of a common objective: Collaboration!

- A minimum of 10 job-specific questions are constructed 

Sample Careers in the Visual Arts (to help you if you're stuck!)

- tattoo artist

- architect

- cake decorator

- scenic designer

- forensic artist

- toy designer

- art therapist

- textile designer

- animator

- museum curator

- art teacher 

AVI1O - Making Inferences and the Function of Art

In today's class, we collaborated in groups of two or three. One of our curricular goals is to identify the functions of various types of art work in past and present societies.  We examined art from our own country taken from World War One (Remembrance Day is just around the corner).  Each group was assigned a poster that was used for a specific purpose during the war.  Here are the questions that you were asked:

1) Identify the function of the art in the poster you were given.

2) Identify at least two elements of design/principles of art in the poster and explain how it was used.

3) Explain your personal interpretation of the poster.  What can you infer from what you see?

Here are examples of the posters that we used:

Wednesday Oct 22, 2014: Literacy Day Activity! AVI10 and AVI2O

1) What is the best title for this picture?

Follow the Leader
A Halloween Parade
The March of the Panda Bears
Walking into A Ghost Story


2) What probably won't happen next?

the children will make a jack-o-lantern
the children will follow the panda bear to a secret place
the children will get very scared
the spooky fog will grow thicker


3) What is not a supporting detail in this picture?

the children are in costumes
the panda bear is at the front of the line
the leaves are orange
it is Halloween


4) Which word best reflects the main idea of this picture?

trust
adventure
Halloween
fog


5) What can you not infer from this picture?

the panda bear knows where he is going
the children are afraid
the parents are worried about the children
the children don't know where they are going


6) Who is the main character in this picture?

the boy dressed as a monster
the panda bear in the robe
the girl in the white dress
the boy in the pirate-owl costume

Taken from http://literacyhead.com/lessons/practice-tests/1688-standardized-reading-test-strategy-practice-practice-test-12

All Grades!! - Rhythm Review

Visual Rhythm 
• Visual Rhythm is a Principle of Art.
• Visual Rhythm is rhythm you receive through your eyes rather than your ears.
• Visual Rhythm is created by repeated positive shapes separated by negative spaces.
• Visual Rhythm is all around us.


FIVE TYPES OF RHYTHM 
• Regular
• Alternating
• Random
• Flowing
• Progressive

Regular Rhythm 
• Regular Rhythms and patterns have identical motifs or visual beats.
• They have an equal amount of space between motifs.
• Parking spaces are laid out in a regular rhythm.
• Bricks on a wall form a regular rhythm.

Alternating Rhythm
• Alternating rhythm and pattern can be achieved by changing motifs at regular intervals.
• Think of the black and white squares on a chess board.
• Here the elephants alternate color and direction.

Random Rhythm 
• The motif is repeated in no apparent order.
• You can not predict exactly where the next motif will be.
• Splashes of paint on a wall would create a random rhythm.

Flowing Rhythm 
• Flowing rhythms are created by repeating wavy lines and curved shapes.

Progressive Rhythm 
• In progressive rhythm there is a change in motif or visual beat each time it is repeated.

AVI1O Perspective

Perspective


Perspective is a method of representing subjects (and the individual parts of subjects) in a drawing, in such a way that they seem to recede into distant space, and appear smaller the farther they are away from you. When you are drawing trees and flowers, minor errors in perspective tend to be negligible. However, most human-made objects, people, and animals need to be drawn with proper perspective in order to appear believable and proportionately correct. Proportion is the relationship in size of one component of a drawing to another or others.




YOUR EYE LEVEL IS ON THE HORIZON
In art, a horizon line is a horizontal line (usually invisible in real life) sometimes referred to as eye level, that divides your line of vision when you look straight ahead. Objects below this line are below your eye level, and objects above it are above your eye level. Remember, your eye level and the horizon line, are one and the same. Look straight ahead (rather than up or down), and the horizon line is directly in front of you. Wherever you go, from the top of the highest mountain, to the lowest valley, your eye level always stays with you. The easiest way to identify the location of the horizon line in an actual scene is to visually mark it with your eye level. Try to find the horizon line in this example:

In the example below, notice how every line that travels away from your view travels to the view point (VP). See how perspective shapes the buildings, or how the buildings form perspective.

AVI1O - Elements of Art and Principles of Design

I realized that I had not created a blog that detailed each of these elements and principles that we focus on in Grade 9.  You are asked to build a definition of each from the glossary in ArtTalk, our text for this course.  Here they are:

Elements of Art 
Basic visual symbols in the language of art:

• Line
• Shape 
• Form 
• Space
• Colour
• Value
• Texture

Principles of Design
Rules that govern how artists organize the elements of art:

• Rhythm
• Movement 
• Balance
• Proportion
• Variety
• Emphasis
• Harmony
• Unity

Literacy Day, Picassofied!!!

Both the Grade Nine and Ten classes participated in a literacy day activity.  It's one of my favourites. It went like this:

The students were placed in four different groups. Each group was given one marker colour. Each group started out with a 18 x 24" sheet that had one of the following quotes on it from Picasso (all new from when we did this last year):

"Painting is a blind man's profession.  He paints not what he sees but what he feels, what he tells himself about, what he has seen."

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." (Think about our visual journal work here!)

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."


The students had to analyze as a group what they thought Picasso was implying in his quotes. When time was up, each quote was moved to a different group and the students could then comment on the original quote or the thoughts that the other members had written down. By building upon what the others had written, they could follow the trail of thought that their classmates left for them, while pondering the original quote in their own way. Here is the result:

We then had a great discussion as a group as to the meaning of these quotes and their implication in our society. We also focussed on the importance of implicit vs explicit questioning on the upcoming literacy test. This was one of the most fun and interactive classes we have had this term. Way to go 9s and10s!

AVI1O Curricular Question of the Day!

As we explore the elements and principles of design (on the wordwall), I ask you how you can employ them to create art that expresses feelings, or communicates emotions, to an audience. With that in mind, we will answer the following questions:

“What do you associate with the colour red? How would these associations influence your use of red in a self-portrait? How might other people’s associations with the colour affect their perception of your portrait?”

Here's a great example of what I am talking about, taken from http://www.soularbliss.com/:

or perhaps this use of red, taken from etsy:

Cross-class collaboration!

Here we have a collaboration that occurred between two different grades.  Grade 10 art student Shawn K. drew this soft pastel piece.

Then Jack D., a grade 11 student, took a photo of the original and manipulated it with photo imaging software to arrive at the following:

Generally, collaboration can be defined as "sharing responsibility in pursuit of a common objective."  Though Shawn didn't know his work would end up in a collaboration, the common objective of an interesting piece of work was arrived at.  Good work!

Literacy Activity!

Tomorrow is Literacy Day.  Our challenge in the Arts department is to engage our learners in the understanding of "dialogue".  So, here is our task (I will distribute paper copies in class):

AVI3M - Drawing Unit Continued: An Analysis of M. C. Escher

For today's class, we will move out of the studio an into the seminar room.  We will view the following documentary on M.C. Escher:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4VAxilTRGs

Your task in this class will be to create questions for your peers about the information contained in this documentary.  Your questions cannot be yes/no questions as you are seeking to actively engage your classmates and test their understanding of this unique individual, a pioneer of mathematical art.

Some of you might find his work particularly engaging, especially if you have an inclination toward mathematics, geometry in particular.  Others, who find Op Art interesting, will see how Escher would weave optical illusions into his work.  Some students will see how his early desire to sketch insects and forms from nature built into masterly work involving these themes and shapes.

Regardless, his work was genius and we will all be richer for having investigated it!

AVI3M - Take Me Outside!

For the Grade 11 portion of Take Me Outside day (takemeoutside.ca), there were three tasks that the students could choose from:

1) From our curriculum, "How might you combine alternative and traditional media to create a collage?"

2) From our Elements of Design, what examples of Texture could you find/create using conté and an 18 x 24 piece of paper?

3) Using your device, compose and capture photographs outside that you will manipulate using imaging software (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.)

Here are the students in action!

AVI1O - Take Me Outside!

Continuing with our Take Me Outside day (takemeoutside.ca)....our Grade 9 class was given a project that explains how Positive and Negative Space can be replicated.

Our task was to find items from nature that have a very specific Shape.  You may remember that Shape is one of our Elements of Design from our word wall.

The students then traced or drew the different items on one sheet....

When then cut out these shapes from one side....

And then inverted them into the negative space on the other side.....

Thus, we created both positive and negative space.....

AVI20 - Take Me Outside!

Did you know that Canadian youth are spending in excess of 8 hours a day in front of screens!  I invite you to check out www.takemeoutside.ca.  It is a website that encourages students and educators of students to spend more time in Canada's beautiful outdoors.  In support of Take Me Outside...I wore my t-shirt today...

From the site:

The message on this shirt originated in a teacher's college class at Queen's University in the 2008 cohort. While out on a trip one day, the class ran into an elementary student and after a brief conversation, a teacher candidate responded to the student, saying"You should just ask your teacher to take you outside!"

So guess what we did today!  We went outside.  We gathered leaves to practice replicating three-dimensional forms in two-dimensions.  This is phase one of a three-phase project:  Summer/Autumn/Winter leaves.  It is a symbolic progression that appears in art and literature...a progression of time that is a metaphor for our lives.

Here are some examples from phase one!

For now, here is a real life extension of this project: The TMO challenge!!

http://www.takemeoutside.ca/challenge

AVI2O - Peer feedback

Today, we will take a pause and have our fellow classmates offer their insight on each other's art work.  For this exercise, refer to the word wall.  These elements of design are critical to the success of our creations.  Try to identify these elements in each other's work: note where it was effective and the effect it created.  Note where various elements might have been employed and what the result might have been.  If you are unsure of what some of the elements mean, refer to the glossary in Arttalk, our text for this course.

As you progress, as yourself these questions:

Was the feedback given to you by your fellow classmates helpful?  Why or why not?  Did this feedback effect the final outcome of your project.

A final thought:

Check out this example of Vasilis Magoulis' work entitled "Love Tree".

Ask yourself what the artist did to create Balance in such a dynamic piece...

AVI3M - Curricular Spotlight: Communicating Specific Emotion to an Audience

As a homework assignment, google images from "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi.  Then consider the following question:
"How did Marjane Satrapi use black and white drawings to enhance the emotional aspects of her autobiographical graphic novel?

We will continue this discussion on Monday.  To ensure success, I offer the following excerpt from Satrapi's work:

Literacy Day Activity - Visual Journal

For today's literacy activity, we will begin a new project...a visual journal entry.

From "Psychology Today", :

"Visual journals are essentially "art diaries." They often contain both images [usually drawings] and words. Like an actual diary, their contents may be rough drafts that may later become finished artworks. And like an actual diary, they are meant to document day-to-day experiences, activities, and emotions and are often autobiographical in nature. Although they are defined as an art form, visual journals have been used for centuries as records of ideas and imagination. Da Vinci's drawing journals of flying machines and physicist Stephen Hawking's diagrams of the space-time continuum are just a couple of well-known examples.

Most art therapists recommend visual journaling as a way of exploring feelings and experiences over time. In fact, the importance of noting how artistic expressions change from week to week and month to month is one of the basic tenets of art therapy; a single image or art work is, in reality, just a snapshot of the moment. As you continue to create via a journal, your own visual language naturally emerges and evolves over time. There are some indications that drawing in a visual journal, even for a few minutes a day, has some health benefits, too. According to Elizabeth Warson, professor at George Washington University’s art therapy program, the regular practice of creating via an art journal can reduce your heart rate, increase serotonin flow and immune cells, and decrease stressresponses. These findings complement previous well-known studies byJames Pennebaker on the benefits of writing about distressful experiences and the physiological changes that journaling can bring about in the long term."

Given the importance of recording your thoughts and feelings in a visual medium, we will build visual journaling into literacy activities.  I want to start with a theme, and then expand upon it.  When trying to come up with a theme, think of something someone has said to you that you thought was important.  Or picture a motivational expression that stuck with you.  For the example I created for you, I pictured the Smokejumper's Creed: "Will do today what others won't; will do tomorrow what others can't".  I then created the following Visual Journal entry:

AVI1O - Question to ponder today...

Here is the question that served as the basis for our classroom discussion today:

"What evidence will I find in your portfolio that shows that experimentation and/or revision changed your original idea?"

Here are some of the solutions we came up with:

- evidence of eraser marks
- evidence of experimenting with different materials and media
- rough drafts and sketches
- written evidence of ideas
- any accompanying evidence that shows revision or experimentation
- a journal/sketchbook accompanies completed work

Great discussion!

AVI1O - Assignment #2 "Contour Line Drawing"

Our second assignment focuses on Contour Lines.

"A contour is the line which defines a form or edge - an outline. Contour drawing is the place where most beginners start, following the visible edges of a shape. The contour describes the outermost edges of a form, as well as dramatic changes of plane within the form.

'Blind contour drawing' is when contour drawing is done without looking at the paper.

Contours in map making track across a surface linking points of the same height, so are very different in appearance and purpose to the contours referred to in visual art. This type of cartographic contour has more in common with an artist's 'cross contours', which are drawn to describe imaginary lines that cut across the form."

- Source: http://drawsketch.about.com/od/drawingglossary/g/contour.htm

In the following example, a captivating rendering of my boot, I focused my lines on the contours of the boot, the stitch work, and various leather components that comprise the boot's structure.  I chose not to focus on my eye's perception of the reflection of light and values, instead reproducing the lines that I saw.

Here is another example from the internet:

Using a familiar item, such as your shoes or some object from the classroom, attempt to create your own contour line drawing!