1st painted portraits by my students

An AP teacher's website

Here's an AP teacher Ruth Wilson's website. She set up blog threads for each of her students' concentrations. (The concentration portion of the portfolio is a theme that students pursue through at least 12 pieces.) It'll be interesting to see how the consentrations develop.

Sketchbooks online

So I'm on a listserv for AP art teachers. And one of the teachers, Nicole Brisco, shared a long list of sketchbook websites. These are great. I love sketchbooks. So here are my favorites of what she mentioned, with a few strengths for each.

1. Wayne Jiang - Many layers of mixed media, Book 7 has a lot from life (love the peeled orange)
2. James Jean - Gorgeous (!) observational drawing that is loose and "panoramic" in composition. Travel sketchbooks. Beautiful line quality with value marks. Wow!
3. Tom Wood - Looks like the record and development of ideas, mixed media
4. Rebecca Bradley - Mixed media illustration book
5. John Copeland - There's a ton to see here. Very skilled observational drawing, with ink wash and paint layers. his out-of book work is great too.
6. Sabrina Ward Harrison - Multi-media illustration. nice layers
7. Danny Gregory - Here's a cool lil promo for a book re: sketchbooks, and I mentioned his site a few posts ago.

to blog or not to blog

I haven't updated for the past couple weeks for a couple reasons. I've been thinking through my purposes for blogging, and what the goal of this blog should be. I've also been considering a career change out of classroom teaching and into the role of Art Director. So my thoughts have been a little occupied.

I realize that my audience isn't very big, and I haven't really sought that out on purpose. I've been wanting to see if the links I offer and some light commentary could be helpful for others. Well I'm not convinced I'll stop entirely, but in case anybody is wondering, I may be even less frequent than before.

Anyways, I thought I'd keep you posted...

Everyday Matters

I have a list of art blogs on my favorites menu that I stop by periodically. Everyday Matters is among them. The author, Danny Gregory, does some great drawing and participates in those Sketchcrawls that I'm hoping to get to sometime. Also check out his Roman sketchbook.

This recent post, titled Conversion, reminds me how artists seem especially in tune with common grace and how few artists know genuine Christians (though this artist says he has religious friends).

Beautiful ball-point pen

Leah Hayes.com This illustrator uses beautiful hatching and cross hatching with ball point pens in those bound, non-spiral composition books, proving that good art can be made with simple tools.

Wishing you a...

Warm Regards,

Connie

Draw from Life Listmania

"What are her mutant powers?" was the opening question at a brainstorm meeting. We were to choose for each other.

A few friends declared mine as "drawing from life". Admittedly, I'm a bit of a nerd about it. Fortunately, this works out well for my high school seniors who need it at the moment more than other art skills.

So in similar format as before, here is my listmania list from Amazon for books re: Draw from life. (note my impressive qualifications: art teacher crazy about drawing)

1. Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson
Great seeing skills. Unique to other texts: learn "mapping”: how to draw values/shadows. (High school+, for those who want to draw from life)

2. Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters: 100 Great Drawings Analyzed, Figure Drawing Fundamentals Defined by Robert Beverly Hale
Excellent lessons that only the Masters can teach you. Some classical nudity. (for more serious & experienced students)

3. Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters by Robert Beverly Hale
Anatomy in non-dry presentation. Read his lectures, they are rich. Classical nudity included. (for serious & experienced students)

4. Sargent Portrait Drawings : 42 Works (Dover Art Library) by John Singer Sargent
Draw a little copy of these to learn how to draw portraits (costs less than a starbucks drink!)

5. The Art of Responsive Drawing (5th Edition) by Nathan Goldstein
Beautiful but expensive textbook

6. Art of Drawing by Bernard Chaet
Another beautiful textbook - find it used

Printmaking Link

If you've ever searched for something related to printmaking online, maybe you've bumped into this educational site, What is a Print? on printmaking by Moma (Museum of Modern Art).

It defines Lithography, Woodcut, Etching, and Screen print (where's Intaglio? That's always hard to explain.). There is animation showing a print being made for each (press start) and galleries of beautiful work for each.

Rembrandt 400

400 years after his birth, Amsterdam is throwing Rembrandt a party. Events will be held throughout the year. “All the Rembrandts” from the Rijksmuseum’s extensive collection will be exhibited through out the year: “All the Paintings” in Jan-Feb, and “All the Drawings” parts I & II in the summer and fall. There will also be a musical in the summer and various tours throughout the year.

And Caravaggio!! A combined Rembrandt-Caravaggio show will be at the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, February 24 through June 18. Wow! What a show!

And get this. Have you ever heard of Rembrandt referred to as Jewish? A show will be dedicated to this debate, put on by the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam. Interesting.

The Rembrandt 400 website has research tools re: Rembrandt’s life and times and corresponding 2006 events.

I’m thinking Holland sounds mighty inviting in the new year.

500 bad drawings

“You’ve got at least 500 bad drawings in you. Get them out as soon as possible.”

I’ve leaned on this quote often as I’ve taught AP art to high school seniors for the past year and a half. The students who have embraced this idea of inevitable failure are the ones who have learned the most in the long run.

Recently I was in a conference with student and parent when a sports analogy seemed to help. When learning to play basketball, it surely takes many, many shots to improve free-throw shots. The player realizes this and isn’t fazed by it. The missed shots aren’t failures. They’re expected in order to improve.

But when it comes to artwork, “talented” students expect to make beautiful drawings at every attempt. Repeated bad drawing can paralyze some students. Perfectionism or a strong desire for the approval of others can further cause discouragement and some students even give up. (Something I can relate to. Mine comes in the form of avoiding certain media.)

If the artist is a Christian, the fact that this is rooted in sin isn’t entirely bad news. Sin can be repented of. Our savior has died for sins. We can receive his forgiveness and ask him for help to avoid sinning in the future. And we can live in the promise that we are not in bondage to sin.

So there is freedom to make awkward drawings and paintings! Since we’re just humans and students, we shouldn’t be surprised at our own weaknesses. Let’s embrace our humble abilities and make those 500 drawings with abandon!

3-D snowflake

Why wait for a snow day? Create and Rotate a 3-D snowflake! (and then ask your students to figure out HOW)

Incredible Art Department

Judy Decker runs the Incredible Art Department, an extensive resourse of teacher contributed lesson plans and ideas. With varying degrees of sophistication, the scores of lessons are a great place to brainstorm and adapt suggestions to meet your own classroom personality and needs.

2 Art Teacher blogs

I just discovered artjunction.org, "the art teacher's guide to the internet". This post is helpful, the author links to online school galleries that show student work.

The Carrot Revolution, (referencing a Cezanne quote) is another art teacher resource, whose aim seems to be linking to inspiring ideas.

Simple Shapes combine to make Complex Shapes

The musty smell of old library books in the humid heat of Houston summers almost nauseated me as a kid. But it didn't keep me from hauling a tall pile of books home from the public library. Ed Emberley books were probably some of my favorites. What a delight to discover that he is still publishing books and children are still learning to draw from these simple instructional texts.

Ed Emberley teaches drawing in a squential and very logical approach. A bottom row explains the simple marks or shapes that you, the artist, will add. The top row shows the growing combination of shapes that are creating some fun charcater, vehicle, or other complex drawing that most children would shy away from attempting because of the complexity.

Last week I adapted his instructions to draw a locomotive with my third graders and a swamp creature with my fourth graders. They loved it and seemed surprised that they could accomplish such complex drawings one simple shape at a time.

first pic

Can I really add photos here? Oh the possibilities!

Well here are my AP students earlier this month on our annual DC field trip to National Gallery. This is at the Cathedral gardens where we ate our Jumbo-pizza lunch. We call this the "band shot".

Links

Some inspiring links:

• I like Keri Smith's series: Morning Collages, Plywood Series and Fun with Stickers.
• MoMa's "Destination Modern Art". a site for kids from The Museum on Modern Art. I stumbled on it through the illustrator's webpage. He (Brian Biggs) makes pretty great illustrations.
• Invisible Man is a blog of some working artists sharing as they go. Nice work, and I like the community idea.
• I want to do one of these: Sketchcrawl: Draw all day as you travel throughout a city.

German Collages

Drawn led me to these collages at Reflektorium. Check out the portfolios of the two artists on the right.

The Met

Oh how I love a good museum website. No surprise, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is superior, too, in it’s website. A few highlights:

• The Art History Timeline. Each time period includes a side bar of links to a good many special exhibitions from the Met. A pull down bar also give the option of “Related Timeline Content”. This can entertain a curious mind for hours! Oh, and it’s a good resource for students too.
• Cleanest, easiest to use museum website I have yet to find.
• Educators may use unaltered images for FREE, without even asking permission! (think power point!) Most museums require an email and permission to be granted first. See Terms of Conditions for details.
• This Romaire Beardon special exhibition.
• Gotta visit Juan de Pareja.
• Fairfield Porter is hard to find online.

Aaron Jasinski Portfolio

Wow! His navigation is super cool- pick a color!

One of my early favorite Drawn finds.