Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Abstract 1

Piet Mondrian, Still Life with Ginger Pot, 1911

Your next assignment (running for two consecutive weeks) will be to take an image through a series of stages from realistic, to stylized, or more organic to geometric. The image that you will be working with is one of the photographs that you took on the Ephesus trip.

The end product must convey a sense of visual balance with an area of emphasis (focal point). Emphasis can be achieved by effectively using colour, shape and line. To assist you in defining emphasis you will limit your palette to 3 colours. If you use a tint or a shade that counts as one of the colours.

You will complete three paintings:
  1. Realistic
  2. Less Realistic/Towards Abstract (figuring out the essential lines that you want to work with)
  3. Geometric/Abstract (choosing main shapes and lines to represent your image)

Piet Mondrian, Still Life with Ginger Pot, 1912

You will need:
  • Picture from Ephesus printed on A4 paper in colour
  • Development Sketchbook
  • Watercolour Paints

As background information and some inspiration we will be looking at Piet Mondrian's work.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Announcements Week 31 (27 Apr - 03 May, 2009)

Tuesday the Student-Led Conferences are happening make sure that you have your Dev Skbks for your Portfolios. There will be no access to the Art Room during the day on Tuesday.

Check out the Efes Blog that is developing. It has photographs with captions that the 8th Grade took as well as pictures they did not take...

Grade 6

Bring Socks...CLEAN socks :)

Grade 7
You will start designing your Haiku Prints this week.

Grade 8
The Efes Blog is looking beautiful so go and make sure that you check it out. We will be talking about printing a book in class...

This week you need to:

  1. Bring a photo to class from the Ephesus trip, one that you took
  2. Print it on regular bond paper at A4 size in colour.
You will be learning about how to abstract a picture à la Mondrian, more about that when I see you.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Announcements Week 30 (20-26 Apr. 2009)

Grade 6
Your Concrete Poems are looking amazing - this week you will be adding the finishing touches and putting them all up on display in time for the Student-Led Conferences.

Grade 7
Our week is being cut short, some of you will be revisiting the watercolours for your Haigas - you know who you are! :)
And some of you will be helping me with the Children's Day Celebration decorations

Grade 8
This week I am grading your Efes Albums on Facebook - If you have not created one yet and messaged me to go and get it off of your profile, you need to do that: YOUR GRADE IS DEPENDENT ON IT. Thanks guys...

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Haiku 2 - The Haiga


Continuing your exploration into how to illustrate your haiku poems that you wrote in English class, we are going to look at the idea of Haiga. You have just completed an "edit" series of your haiku which entailed creating three illustrations, one for each line of the poem, much like a comic strip. Now you are going to be challenged to consolidate your imagery into one evocative picture to represent the entire poem, first in the form of a Haiga and then later in the form of a print.

The characteristics of a haiga are: ink-brush or watercolor painting, a poem and calligraphy, usually all combined in an image that appears to be quite spontaneous and free flowing.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Photography 2


Now that you are back from Ephesus with mounds and mounds of images to sort through, your next assignment for Art is to choose three (3) of those images and create an album on Facebook where you will upload and store the pictures.

Here are the instructions:

  1. Look through all of your photographs
  2. Choose: a landscape, a portrait and a detail
  3. Rename the photo files using this format: yourname_portrait.jpg. Usually your image will be called something like: DSCF6616.JPG. You will need to click on the file until it is highlighted and then type in a new name, for example: lacoste_portrait.jpg. It is important that the file extention JPG is at the end
  4. Check your file names. You should have 3 images that are labelled like this: yourname_landscape.jpg, yourname_portrait.jpg & yourname_detail.jpg
  5. Create a new photo album in Facebook
  6. Label the album: Your Name Efes Photos (example: Lacoste Efes Photos)
  7. Upload the 3 pictures
  8. Save
When your Efes Facebook album is created we will use it for English and Art class. This is going to facilitate our ability to put together the Ephesus Book as well as use it for the Visual Blog that we are also going to make. Good luck! Come and see me or Ms. Helmer if you have any questions.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Announcements Week 29 (13-19 Apr. 2009)

Grade 6
You have started your Concrete Poems with your Project Planning Guide - this week you will all book appointments with me to talk about your ideas/concepts for your poems.

Grade 7
Your Basho Haiku illustrations were quite wonderful and so this week
you will start working on your own poems.

Grade 8
Back from Ephesus, we will be talking about how to develop and plan for your book.

Haiku 1

our bowed heads reflect
on spirals; brittle bodies,
floating question marks

Simon Clarke on Flickr

As a collaboration with Mr. Kattsir's English class the Grade 7 is exploring how to illustrate Haiku poems. Things we talked about this week in class were:

A haiku is a form of poetry that is usually about nature and emotion, it originated in Japan, it can be somewhat open-ended and it does not need to rhyme. I told you the story about Sergei Eisenstein (Russian filmmaker) who was inspired by the haiku to develop montage (editing) in film. Based on this idea I gave you the following poem by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694):

An old pond!
A frog jumps in -
The sound of water

I then asked you to draw 3 frames in your Development Sketchbooks and to create an illustration for each line of the haiku. Almost like a comic strip, you illustrated the poem and told the story without words. Your drawings had to be black-line only, no shading, no colouring, just varieties of line. The second haiku that you drew was also by Basho:

In all the rains of May
There is one thing nor hidden -
The bridge at Seta Bay

Concrete Poetry 1


The Good, The Bad, The 6th Grade
A compilation of original poems that will be displayed around the Middle School...

Inspired by Technically It's Not My Fault by John Grandits

This past week we completed two lessons around the idea of Poetry, specifically the poems that you wrote for Ms. Kemp in English class. Here is the basic idea: You have each written a series of poems. Based on the idea of a Concrete Poem, in art class you are going to develop a way to present your poem on the object that it is written about. For example: if you wrote about the toilet...well, somehow you are going to use the bathroom to present your poem. Or if you wrote about a door, you are going to wrap/cover the door so that you can write your poem all over it.

In class we talked about Concrete Poetry and gave it some definitions of our own:

  • It is a kind of poem that does not need rhyme
  • It takes the shape of what it is
  • It tells a story
  • It can be about anything
To plan and figure out how to present your Concrete Poem you are going to be working independently in a Studio style, following the Stages listed below. You will also be booking an appointment with me so that I can help you develop your idea and give you some tips about how to go about it.

Stage 1: Project Description
(Development Sketchbook)
  1. What type of Poem are you dealing with?
  2. What is the title of your Poem (this will also become the title of your Project Description)
  3. Write the Poem
  4. Write and description for your intended Art Piece
  5. Create a Dimension Chart - measure the size of the actual object you will be using and then scale the objects dimensions for your Scale Model
  6. Materials List
Stage 2: Illustration (Draw in your Development Sketchbook)

Stage 3: Scale Model (Make in Class)

Stage 4: Final Piece (Make in Class)

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Announcements Week 28 (06-12 April, 2009)

Sorry that I am late posting this - Last night was the Art Show and as you know, we have been busy getting everything ready. Thank you to all the students you mounted, tagged and tabbed all their own work over the past two weeks. The halls look amazing and I think that you should be very proud of your work.

This week in Art:

Grade 6
We are starting Concrete Poetry in collaboration with Ms. Kemp's English class I will be helping you create your displays for your poems. Come with ideas and be ready to do some creative problem solving.

Grade 7
Also together with English class (Mr. Kattsir's classes) we will be creating prints to illustrate your Haiku poems that you have written. I will be talking to you in class about Haiga.

Grade 8
The Grade 8 departed for Ephesus this morning (boy, are the halls ever going to be quiet!) and they should be thinking hard about photography.