Colour Theory March 14, 2008

 

A color wheel or color circle is an organization of color hues around a circle, showing relationships between colors considered to be primary colors, secondary colors, complementary colors, etc

Primary Colours:the three basic colours (red, yellow and blue) that cannot be mixed from other colours but can be used to mix all the other hues
Secondary Colours: are a mixture of two primary colours

Complementary Colours:Two colours on opposite sides of the color wheel, which when placed next to each other make both appear brighter.

Analogous Colours: are a palette of compatible colour combinations that blend well together. They are neighbours on the colour wheel

Hue:is the name of a distinct color of the spectrum—red, green, yellow, orange, blue, and so on. It is the particular wavelength frequency

Tint: is the mixture of a colour with white

Shade: is a mixture of a colour and black

Colour theory Resource: http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

Class Activity:

1.)Students used primary colours to create a colour wheel that represented primary and secondary colours. Through this students tried mixing a varying hues of green, orange, purple, and brown.

2.)students explored the theme of nature by working with cool and warm colours

3.)Students used complimentary colours to create a dramatic painting, as well as created a monochromatic colour scheme using tints of colour

4.)students tried paint experiments: oil pastel picture + black paint; dab a picture with a sponge; dab wet paint off with a paper towel; scratch form through the wet paint

5.) Students used colour to create an illusion of distance painting.

These painting activities were a great introduction to any unit on painting, and could be used from late primary- high school.

Resources:

http://www.kinderart.com/painting/

Printmaking March 14, 2008

 Printmaking-the process of reproducing images on a flat surface; three types are relief block (linoleum, wood), intaglio (etching, engraving), and stencil (silkscreen).

 

Woodblock Print- John Cole

Relief:The basic principle of relief printing is to create an image on paper from the raised surface of the matrix. The artist draws onto a surface (the block or matrix) and then cuts away the areas that are not to form part of the image. These areas are the negative parts of the image, or the spaces around what we see generally consider to be the image. Thus the ink only reaches the areas the artist does not touch. The block is inked and a piece of paper laid over it. The artist then either rubs the paper using their hand or a hard, smooth object or runs it through a printing press. The image produced on the paper mirrors that on the block. Woodcuts and linocut are the most common examples of relief prints

William H. Dryden Jr.

Intaglio:Intaglio is the precise opposite of relief printmaking. In this process the artist carves the image onto the matrix and then rubs ink into these carved lines, making sure that the untouched areas are cleaned of ink. In the intaglio process the paper is previously soaked in water. When it is laid over the matrix and the squashed through the printing press, the soft paper is pushed into the grooves of the inked lines, thus transferring the image onto the paper. Many intaglio processes involve creating the grooves with acids that eat into a metal plate. Variations of the Intaglio technique include Engraving, Etching, Aquatint, Mezzotint and Aquatint.

 

NuongVan-Dinh Tran

Serigraphy: All serigraphic prints are based on the concept of stencil. The stencil technique uses a thin sheet of impenetrable, durable material with a design cut into it. This is placed over a receiving surface (paper, canvas, etc.). Thus the paint or dye applied over the surface of the stencil only reaches the receiving surface where the design has been cut away.

Drypoint Lithography- Bill Hosterman

Lithography:The concept of lithography is based on the mutual incompatibility of oil and water; the capacity of limestone to absorb and retain water and the disposition of oily substances to adhere to limestone. The highly polished nature of the surface is receptive to the oil that is spread over it. Senefelder discovered that by chemically treating the surface of limestone, and drawing onto it with a grease crayon, only the areas touched by the grease crayon would take the printing ink. Therefore, by drawing onto the treated stone in this way, inking it, covering it with a damp paper and running it through a printing press, the image is transferred exactly onto the paper

http://the-artists.org/search/prints-t.cfm

Class Activity:

Students were given  some etching tools, including burnishers and scrapers, as well as soft block tiles, cardboard, string, styrofoam, paint, rollers, and fabric. Students etched designs into blocks using the relief process as described above, and used a form of the intaglio process with the styrofoam pieces. Students also created prints by gluing string onto a piece of cardboard to form a design, then covering with paint and created prints this way.

Resources:

http://www.artshow.com/resources/printmaking.html

http://www.mmwindowtoart.com/graphics/corr.html

Children’s Resources:

http://www.kinderart.com/printmaking/print101.shtml

http://fun.familyeducation.com/painting/childrens-art-activities/32822.html

Arpilleras- Social Political Quilt Making March 14, 2008

Arpilleras

Arpilleras are three-dimensional appliqué textiles of Latin America. A contemporary craft, the first ones were made by the Mothers of the Disappeared in Chile to tell their stories and support their families.

In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a dramatic military coup against Chile’s democratically elected Marxist government. Many citizens were publically executed and   at least 3,000 Chilean citizens were murdered or disappeared and thousands more were imprisoned and tortured. Chilean woman brought international awareness to this torture through visual representation.

Textiles

A textile is a flexible material comprised of a network of natural or artificial fibers often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw wool fibers, linen, cotton, or other material on a spinning wheel to produce long strands known as yarn. Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or pressing fibers together

Class Activity

Students were given a large amount of scrap fabric, white sheet cut out, thread, needles, and glue. Each group of five students was encouraged to pick a theme, and to create Arpilleras representing that theme in some way. Some of the themes represented were climates, as shown by the desert climate in the picture above, Spring, and Ocean. This activity would not be suitable for younger grades due to the fine motor skills required to use the needle and thread, and would be more appropriate for upper intermediate students. This project can be adapted to any theme, from making political statements to representing a story, and it is this flexibility that makes this such a great project. My only apprehension about this project would be that students would require basic sewing skills to complete the project, so these skills would need to be taught before the project could commence.

Resources

textile crafts

Wool Works – information about knitting, spinning, dyeing

The tatting and lacemaking page – links to related sites

Phiala’s string pages – tablet weaving, medieval braids and other historical techniques

The Costume Page – over a thousand links to fascinating range of pages on costume and much else besides. Don’t miss this one.

Accents – a wearable arts page – techniques, projects, books

Shisha mirror embroidery

The Last Invasion Tapestry in English and Welsh – description and images of the beautiful, 30.4 metre (100 foot) long tapestry embroidered for the 200th aniversary of the 1797 invasion near Fishguard

Needlepoint from About.com – needlepoint news, projects, resources – building a ‘community of stitchers’

Embroidery – images and text from the current issue, both contemporary and historical embroidery.

How To – techniques for embroidery, sewing and crochet from the Coats Crafts UK web site

Quilting with Children – many projects, techniques and resources

children’s sites

Quilts, quilters, quilting and patchwork in fiction – quilts in fiction for children and young adults

EAC Youth Embroiderers – colourful, exciting site from the Canadian youth embroidery organisation

Young Yarn User – creative, fun things to do with yarn and fibre

Helen Belkin Art Gallery March 7, 2008

 Visual Reflection of Helen Belkin Art Gallery Experience

My visual reflection speaks to my reaction of the contemporary art featured at the exhibit. To me the pieces spoke reality, and portrayed the issues that are eminent in our world today. The pieces made me question, think, and wonder about our ‘exponential future.’

Exponential Future

Tim Lee, Alex Morrison, Isabelle Pauwels, Kevin Schmidt, Mark Soo, Corin Sworn, Althea Thauberger, Elizabeth Zvonar

Exponential Futurefeatures eight young Vancouver artists. The exhibition opens a window on the vitality of contemporary art in this city. Vancouver artists continue to be better known in the U.S. and Europe than they are in their own city. Curators Juan Gaitán and Scott Watson chose artists working in different media whose work involved a wide range of issues to give an overview of the new artistic thinking of our time and place. The curators were interested in works that engaged the complex reality of urban life at the beginning of the twenty-first century. None of the work has been shown in Vancouver before and much of it is being made for the Belkin Gallery exhibition- taken from Moris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery website http://belkin.ubc.ca/current/

Plaster March 7, 2008

 

 Plaster

Plaster of Paris, or simply plaster, is a type of building material based on calcium sulphate hemihydrate. Plaster is similar to motar or cement. Like those materials plaster starts as a dry powder that is mixed with water to form a paste which liberates heat and then hardens. Unlike motar and cement, plaster remains quite soft after drying, and can be easily manipulated with metal tools or even sandpaper.

 

Class Activity- Students began by cutting sheets of plaster into strips. Next students dipped the pieces of plaster in water and wrapped them around their fingers to make a mold. Students were then able to add extra features onto the mold, to make an animals, puppet, etc. This plaster finger mold activity would be especially suitable for primary grades as it is easy to follow.

Resources:

http://www.fresnofamily.com/activities/hands.htm

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/plaster/

http://www.kid-at-art.com/htdoc/lesson36.html

Resources February 14, 2008

Elementary Art Lesson Plans

http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/elem/elemlessons.html

Art Teaching Ideas

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/art/contents.htm

Water colour butterfly lesson

http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Arts/Visual_Arts/ARA0025.html

A Snowy Day art lesson

http://accessarts.org/ArtKids/Crafts/lessonsnow.html

Access Arts Network

http://accessarts.org/ArtKids/Crafts/

Alphabet Soup-Art ideas for Young Children

http://www.alphabet-soup.net/dir7/art.html

Art Lessons-from holidays, to muliticultural projects

http://www.artmuseums.com/

Seasonal Art Activites

http://www.kinderart.com/seasons/

Primary Art Lessons to Help Teach Colour Theory

http://www.adrianbruce.com/art/index.htm

Learn to Draw for Kids- step by step instructions of how to draw animals

http://www.billybear4kids.com/Learn2Draw/Learn2Draw.html

Art Attack

http://www.hitentertainment.com/artattack/menu_artattacks.html

Movement February 14, 2008

Movement

 is the suggestion or illusion of motion in a painting, sculpture, or design. For example, circles going diagonally up and down from right to left could show that the design moves up and to the right or down and to the left

Pattern February 14, 2008

 

Pattern

is simply keeping your design in a certain format. For example, you could plan to have wavey lines all around your design as a pattern, but then you must continue those wavey lines throughout the design for good patterns. It wouldn’t look good if suddenly you stopped all the wavey lines and drew a picture of a dog

Balance February 14, 2008

Balance

means keeping your design like a pattern. A balanced pattern would be if you had a border on your pattern in black. Unbalanced would be if approximately one-third of the border was orange and the other two-thirds in pink. To keep your design balanced, make your measurements as accurate as possible. Keeping your design symmetric is a good technique for good balance, but not necessarily the best for all types of designs

Colour February 14, 2008

Colour

refers to specific hues and has 3 properties, Chroma, Intensity and Value.  The color wheel is a way of showing the chromatic scale in a circle using all the colors made with the primary triad.  Complimentary pairs can produce dull and neutral color.  Black and white can be added to produce tints (add white), shades (add black) and tones (add gray).