landscaping with jamey.

This week I wanted the 2nd graders to gain a bit more practice creating 3d space in a drawing. They did a great job with last week's Lisa Congdon's icebergs, so I thought it would be interesting if they applied the same set of skills to a landscape instead of a seascape.

I decided to share the work of Washington D.C. based illustrator Jamey Christoph with my classes. Looking at his landscapes was perfect practice for students to identify overlapping, value changes, size changes, and vertical placement in art.

Jamey has a somewhat retro style. Some elements are simplified and others are exaggerated. His work reminds me of some of the settings used in the old Looney Tunes cartoons, I'm thinking of the roadrunner landscapes and bugs bunny/ elmer fudd showdown spaces in particular. I love his color palette too, often muted throughout an image with a burst of color here or there.

I decided to focus on the landscape below. I liked how the trees in the front went from top to bottom and overlapped everything else. This was a lot different than the space of Lisa's icebergs, which, while close, still seemed out of arms' reach.

I asked students to draw as lightly as they could, so the viewer wouldn't be able to see many outlines. Students worked from the front of the image to the back, deciding tree placement, direction of the path, what their bushes looked like, and where those bushes would go.

Next, they used colorsticks to add color value to the drawing. Students made the front dark by pressing hard, and with each layer I asked them to press more softly, so those parts would be lighter and look farther away. The sky color was up to them, the only thing I asked was that they attempt to make the sky darker at the top and lighter by the ground. Students used both the tip of the colorstick to add color, as well as the side to fill in larger areas.

The final step was to go back to the front and add shadows to the big trees and to add plant life along the bottom edge of the paper. This pushed the value contrast in the drawing a bit more, and provided some more interaction between that first layer and the field beyond it.

The 2nd graders are getting the hang of this whole 3d space thing. Next time I see them I'll see how they do with paint to create similar effects:)

we're back!

Wow! We just returned from our 4 week spring break today. I really didn't think I could not post for so long, but I "surprised" myself. Off and running with the 2nd and 5th grade classes for the next 4 weeks.

One of the 2nd grade standards focuses on creating 3d space through overlapping, vertical placement, and size change. I throw value change into the mix as well. I found the work of illustrator Dante Terzigni through Pikaland and thought his work could work well introducing students to these concepts while offering an image that made them think, "Why did he (Dante) do that?" They're always wondering why I do things:)

I gathered some info off his website to share with students before digging into the hands on project. One tidbit was that he graduated from college in 2003, the same year that many of our 2nd graders were born. I talked about how he drew on paper for planning his ideas, but used a drawing tablet plugged into a computer to create his final illustrations.

When looking at some examples of his work, students were able to tell me that his shapes looked flat and kind of different, even though the shapes were based on real things. We also found out that even though his individual shapes looked flat, Dante created depth by changing the size, placement, and value of those shapes.

For the project, I decided to focus on an image of his called Flower Factory. Students identified the elements used to create 3d space in the image and then I asked them why Dante might have made the image. Many answers centered on him using his imagination. A few went further and addressed the need to make things look nicer, or to protect ourselves from the bad smoke that would come out of a factory. 

The students approached the project as a collage. They built the 2 layer city first, and then added stems and leaves, followed by the flower tops. I demonstrated where to start the layers of the city, but also stressed the desire for their concepts to look different than mine.

Some of the cityscapes look more natural than I was expecting, but they still demonstrate the necessary elements of 3d space that were required.

Some students in each class did not finish, so I will give them a few more minutes next week. These students that already finished can add some subtle pattern elements with pencil and crayon, so that their images have a bit of the variety in texture that makes Dante's designs visually richer.

ode to birdie.

Shortly after coming on full time at Zamorano, I discovered an art blog called dear ada. It provided me so much inspiration because it's author, birdie, posted about so much cool visual work from all over the world.  As I began to focus more on living artists, her blog provided a wealth of visual artists that I could tap into and create projects from for my students. Her lists of favorite sites and other blogs was another springboard into the works of even more artists who were out there making art, writing about it, or both. When I began this blog over the summer, birdie stopped writing her blog to focus on making her own work. Go birdie! She has continued posting about works on tumblr, but in a much more brief format. (I still love to see what she is digging though.)

So, as I was finishing with my kinders today and thinking about how I wasn't sold on my original idea of modifying that lesson for the 3rd graders that were coming in to my class in 20 minutes I decided to check her tumblr posts. Denied! Tumblr comes up as a social networking site at school and it was blocked. I went to her old blog and there, in her last post were images that birdie had done. Perfect. I'd do a project based birdie's work. So fitting. So overdue. A visual thank you to someone that had inspired my instruction for so long.

The first few lessons I did with the 3rd graders focused on using geometric shapes. Birdie's work was a great intro to different types of natural shapes in art. One of the main standards for 3rd graders is creating 3d space through color value, overlapping, and size change. Birdie's work has 2 out of 3, and my students have worked with size change enough to incorporate it on their own. I have only done this with 2 classes so far, but I'm looking forward to doing it with the other 8 3rd grade classes.

One of the things I love about this project is  the variety of natural shapes the students are coming up with. I have a couple plants in the room and drawings on the board, so they can sample from those sources or come up with their own concepts. I plan on changing up color schemes with each of the classes so we can have unity in subject, but some necessary variety when they get displayed at our end of the year Celebration of Art.

Thanks again, birdie.

action! implied, that is.

I wish I had more of these to post. The 3rd and 4th grade kids have done a really great job with this one throughout the years.

Creating movement in flat, still artwork has been explored heavily since the invention of photography and motion pictures (which are just many, many flat, still images being shown in a very rapid sequence).

Artists have implied motion in art in a variety of ways- blurring of detail, using multiple frames, repetition of lines and shapes, overlapping, directional lines, and changes in value.

This painting by Giacomo Balla demonstrates a number of these elements. There is a repetition of the moving body parts and shapes. There is a lot of overlapping. I point out to the students that you can make something look fast by repeating it many times, or slow by repeating it only a few times. Students identify what is the fastest thing and slowest thing in the painting. 

There is a change in value throughout the moving parts. Particularly in the woman's lead foot. You can see how the value is dark at one end of the repetition and light on the other end. This implies a beginning of the action and an end to it. Past and present.

Another example of these elements is Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. Repetition. Check. Overlapping. Check. Value change? Check. Even though this is a more abstract example, there is obvious implied motion in the painting.

When students do their images showing motion they must repeat a shape at least 3 times and use at least 3 steps of color value change. The subject matter is up to them. I show them examples I have done, but I emphasize the importance of applying these elements in an original way. I have students brainstorm and write a short list of things that could move and then make small sketches of 2 of those ideas. They then pick the best one to execute on watercolor paper.

Students have used watercolors to complete this project. By the time they do this project with me they have already created tints with colored pencils and crayons, so it gives them practice in creating tints by adding more water to a color to make it lighter and lighter.