guest blogger: Grace

I like to sketch scenes from the Lord of the Rings, and from the movie Twilight, because I likke fantasy, and I enjoy challenging myself by attempting to recreate the aura of magic and mystery that surrounds many of these fictional characters. I also enjoy writing quotes from the books/movies that I think represent the scene best. I think that the hardest part of sketching is shading things in just the right way, to create shadow and depth.

Ceramic Houses with Attitude

The ceramic classes are pooling all they have learned on working with slabs into making houses with attitude. They created templates or patterns for their houses, putting these paper houses together before creating their final piece. Some of their houses slant, some have curved windows and doors, some are shaped as fish or train cars. But all of them have a non-traditional way of looking at living spaces. Each house is decorated with incised designs and painted with underglazes for a detailed watercolor look, or traditional glazes for a bold glassy finish.

Colors and photo mosaics

This site is great. It grabs images from their data base that matches the colors you pick. So you end up with an assortment of phots and illustrations that all match one color. Lots of fun. You've got to try this.
labs.ideeinc.com/multicolour

Art is more than just making Stuff.....

There is more to making Art than just making stuff.

Go to: http://www.ahsd25.k12.il.us/~TriciaFuglestad/VisualArt/page14/page15/page26/page26.html

to see how Tricia Fuglestand and her art classes talk about ARTICULATION!
The words to their song say it all:

"There's more to making art than just pleasing your eyes
here is the place whre we learn skills for our lives
stratagise, compromise, plan and visualize
integrate, concentrate, learn to relate
exposed to cultures and eras in history
we're trained to be thinkers with visual literacy
we fine tune our motor skills while growing in self-esteme
we follow directions and understand sequencing
in ART."

Composition

Composition is how you lay out the images you put on the paper. How do you design your art? Do you make your image big, or tiny? Do you put it in the middle of the page or going off the edge of the page? Do you make everything similar or emphasis one part or create variety throughout? Here are a few simple considerations when looking at composition.


Balance is the consideration of visual weight and importance. It is a way to compare the right and left side of a composition.

The brown butterfly above by itself is essentially symmetrical. Both sides are similar in visual weight and almost mirrored. Because symmetrical balance often looks more stiff and formal, sometimes it is called formal balance.

Asymmetrical balance is more interesting. The black butterfly above has sides that are similar in visual weight but not mirrored. It is more casual, dynamic, and relaxed feeling so it is often called informal balance.

Variety - You create variety when elements are changed. Repeating a similar shape but changing the size can give variety and unity at the same time. Keeping the same size, but changing the color can also give variety and unity at the same time. In visual composition, there are many ways you can change something while simultaneously keeping it the same.

Depth - Effects of depth and space projecting toward the viewer add interest. Linear perspective in the real world makes things look smaller in the distance. Some artists try to avoid depth by making large things duller and small things brighter, and so on, to make the objects contradict realism. Many artists don't believe in realism even though they could do it if they wanted to. It seems too boring to them. Realism wouldn't be art for some artists.

Repetition - Some ways to use Repetition of the Visual Elements are size variation, color saturation and overlapping.

6th Grade Art Studio: Day of the Dead

Students are working on creating tinfoil armatures with lightbulb heads. What better way to start their own skeleton sculptures. Day of the Dead is a Mexican celebration of family and ancestors. Families create shrines to those who have died and honor their memories with ceremonies and picnics on the last day of Oct. through Nov. 2nd. Throughout Mexico and the southwest America, we can find skeleton sculptures that celebrate this holiday. Skeletons range from brides and grooms to rock bands, farmers to investment bankers and dancers to drag racers. Whatever you could do in real life, these skeletons do in their own magical worlds. Students are creating poses and making gesture drawings of those action poses, then recreating those positions in sculpture form.

Values- 7th Grade Still Life Project

Value drawings show depth by showing light and shadows on an object. You can use many different marks to do this, but the three most popular ones are smudging or tonal values, crosshatching and linear values. No matter what style of art you prefer to draw in, all three use lights and darks to show that edges are round, sink in or push up and what is in front vrs. what is behind.

Using Line to Create Moods

Vertical images make us think of organized strength, like a soldier or an orderly bookshelf. Horizontal images make us feel peaceful and restful. Diagonal images create energy and action. How you choose to lay out your composition makes a difference in how others percieve it. It is important to think about what you want the viewer to come away with after experiencing your artwork.

7th Grade Drawing-Contour and Values

Students are looking at drawing with contour lines and values.
The assignment is:
1. To use the viewfinder to create an interesting composition in contour lines.
2. To create a mood for the composition by using horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines to move the eye and create a specific kind of energy in the drawing.
3. To use thick and thin lines to show shadows and value with the width and darkness of the lines
4. To use 3 shades of values in their drawings: can be linear, crosshatching or smudging.

6th grade: Making Tools and Paints

What options did cave artists have to make art? They probably started by picking up a stone or rock that looked like something else. Maybe the marks in the rock looked like a face, or the stick looked like an animal. But what if they wanted to make their own images of animals? Students looked at what they could use to make their own marks. They experimented with sticks and combs, styrofoam and feathers to make a variety of marks on paper. What made the best textures? What looked more like fur? What made the best lines?
They looked at what could be used to make paint. How would you make things stick to the walls. Students experimented with Carbohydrates and sugars (flour and corn syrup), Protiens (egg yolks and milk) and fats (lard) to see what mixture would make the best paints. Each has an advantage, and a disability when it comes to drawing. Students made their own choices on which they liked best, then learned how egg tempera and milk tempera were popular art materials for hundreds of years.

8th grade Clay

Eighth grade students are exploring slabs and texture. They have created relief sculptures (flat on one side with many layers of depth) using incised (cut into) and raised relief(images that stick out)for designs. Students are now decorating slabs with surface design, creating textures with stamps, cloth, printmaking plates and clay tools to make fascinating surfaces on the outside of their cups. They are practicing their technical skills at connecting clay with adding handles and seams.

Sixth Grade Cave Art

Do walls talk? If they did, what would they tell us? Who built them? Why? Can you imagine a world without walls? Talking walls, based on the book of the same name by Margy Burns Knight , is a project that introduces children to cave art and a variety of cultures by looking at important walls from around the world.

Sixth grade students will be looking at wall art through a variety of books and videos and discussing theories of why people think these drawings exist. Students are experimenting with making drawing tools and paints like prehistoric artists, and will be creating their own "rock" walls by covering ceiling board with plaster.
We will look at the compositions of cave artists and talk about elements of art that these ancient artists used. They will design compositions on their own walls,using specific elements and principles of art. Students will seal their walls with a varnish, so that the art wouldn't crack and fall off the plaster, as did much of the ancient work in the Lascoux caves.

Observation Drawings 7th Grade

Predicting vrs. Observing


By the time they get to middle school, kids know a lot. Their minds are constantly filling with information. In order to move to the next thing quickly, they learn to predict. What is the teacher really looking for? What is going to happen next? What is the story trying to tell us? Their minds are dealing with facts and figures and calculating what the next question will be.
But this makes learning to draw difficult. The mind, in its hurry to move on to the next lesson, tries to anticipate what you are seeing. If you look at a vase, your mind registers that it is a vase and drops in a symbol of a vase in your mind's eye. But in art, we can't work with just symbols. Sometimes we need to draw a specific vase, this one right before you. We need to rely on observational skills to get that right.

One of the lessons we try to teach students is to observe. In order to do that, they need to look carefully at details, slow down their thinking (so the symbols don't replace what they are looking at) and draw slowly. We teach them to move their hand in sync with their eye, following the outline of an image as a contour line drawing. By learning to observe, students not only become better drawers, but they learn to notice more, to see what others are doing and feeling and to be better witnesses when the need arises.

Welcome to the New Year- First Units

Sixth and Seventh grade will start the year with learning about the language of art. It is very difficult to talk about art, when you don't have the right words. By learning the elements of art (the tools you use to draw with) and the principles of art (how we put those down on the paper to get people to see what we want them to), we have a better way to talk about the art we look at and make.

Clay students are reviewing the basic vocabulary of clay, and learning to recycle clay that has dried out. Soon they will be working on their first extended project.

Art Studio 7 is begining a project on Super Hero Vegetables and Fruits. They will be creating giant paper mache sculptures to hang in the cafe.

Art Studio 6 is beginning a poster series, creating "READ" posters for the library.

Art Studio 8 is working on a classroom mural of elements and principles of art, and beginning their individualized contracted projects.

New! Art Club!

New at Parker. The Parker Art Club!
Mondays: 2:30-3:30

Do you want more art time? Do you need a place to do projects for other classes? Do you want to enter the scholastic art contest, but don't know what to do? Do you want to experiment with different media, outside of the regular curriculum?

Come to the new Art Club on Monday afternoons in room 202. We're here for you!

Welcome Back!

It's so good to see you all again.
We are looking forward to a wonderful year of creativity, time to find out who we are and how to express ourselves to the world. Sixth grade will be examinging art cultures from around the world, and looking at how we express our culture and ourselves through art. Seventh grade will be looking at how art is a reaction to literature and society around us by examining American artists and art styles in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ceramics will be examining the techniques of hand clay building, as well as learning to express our thoughts and feelings through the medium of clay. Again, welcome! We love our subject, and hope you will love it as much as we do.

Final Project- grade 7

the 7th grade is working with clay, converting what they know about proportions and faces into 3D. They are to imagine they are casting directors, producing a new movie. What will it be? A comedy, a tragedy, a romantic comedy, a hero adventure?
They must figure out what assumptions people make about these type of characters so that they can cast an actor for the part. How do we think someone evil looks? Or someone funny? By using what they know about proportions,beauty thorugh the ages and styles of art, they will adapt a face design to clay. Students will create characters that will play the main part in their movies. It is up to them to create a character that the audience will instantly react to.

Open House This Thursday- May 15th

Open House is Thursday Night. Come see artwork from the entire year decorating the school. We have artwork everywhere. This is our opportunity to have a school wide art show. Come see what's new!

Arts Fest 2008

What a wonderful showing at the artsfest 2008. Hundreds of pictures and sculptures lined the walls and panels from one side of Main St. to the other at the High School. We were able to show all the fine work from Parker Middle School as well as track what some of our best artists were now doing in High School. As a viewer, it was fantastic to see the level and quality of the work these students produce. As an art teacher, it was a thrill to see what the other art teachers were doing in town. We shared ideas and built on lessons already produced. It was such a joy to spend time among all this work. And the music! How awesome to have a jazz ensemble playing while you look at art. The programs from elementary through High School were superb. We really appreciated all the rehersal work that students did to put on such fine performances.
For another look at the day, see the Superintendent's Blog http://superintendentblog.blogspot.com/ for a great understanding of why the arts are important in all our lives.

***ART SHOW ****ART SHOW***ART SHOW***

The district wide art show will be held at the high school on April 30th from 5-8, May 1st from 5-8 and May 2nd from 5-9.

Hope you can all make it.

Art from Elementary through High School will be on display.

Rather than give everyone notices about what artwork is in the show, we will try to get in as many art pieces as possible. Please check this out. With the art show on for three evenings, we should be able to have everyone attend.

Report Cards

Report cards are out. Don't forget to look on edline to see your grades.

My it's been a long time....

Time is just flying by.... What has been happening in class?

6th grade is working on Egyptian parodies ( mimicing the style of an artist or culture to make a joke) by putting a modern subject in an Egyptian setting. Egyptians had very strict rules of art, which is why we can recognise the art so readily as Egyptian. They must choose five of the ten rules we studied in class, to make their parodies . It's interesting to see what they find funny.

7th grade is working on proportions of the face in self-portraits. They took a test to see what style of art their own art preferences was closest to, and are creating self-portraits in that particular style of art. Some styles, like surrealism, may only show a small portion of their face and use symbols to tell the rest of the story. But all of them will reflect some statement or aspect about themselves. Students are choosing from Realism, Impressionism, NeoClassicism, Romanticism, Cubism, Post-Impresssionism, Expressionism and Surrealism.

Sculpture Classes are working on paper mache sculptures. By building an armature first, they give substance to the sculpture that will hold up the flimsy paper mache. By layering it many times, they give strength to their sculptures. They are working with action in their projects, as action gives interest to a sculpture and makes us look a bit longer to figure out what is happening.

ABC 6th grade have finished self-portrait pencil drawings and are working on learning to weave.

ABC 7th grade have finished their drawings and paintings and are reading to start individual contracted projects, in preparation for next year's independence in art.

ABC 8th grade continue to work on individual projects, but are also doing some group work with two wall murals going up in the art wing and repainting a display table for the art show, as well as several of the table legs on the desks in the art room. All of this work will stay at the school.

Guest Blogger:Sabrina

I really enjoy doing art. At school it is my favorie special(subject) to do. In art class I enjoy drawing and doing free art. When we do free art I like to draw and make things. I thought making clay pots was really nice. After we made them they were put in the kiln and we glazed the peices. Also I thought narrative art was really fun.

Guest Blogger: Sara

What we are doing in art right now is finishing up working on clay. When we paint it we use this stuff called glaze. It is the same thing as paint almost but when we put it on our sculputers the color that comes out is different than how it will look when we are done. It is really fun. We jusst finished our Mesopotamia unit and we are about to go on to Egypt. It shuld be fun!

Do you need hands to paint? Not when you have toes...

Here Phil uses jeans to paint on, and toes to paint with. Don't let limitations stop you from making art. Anything is possible.

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1897311

OK, Phil's videos are great. Candy art for valentines day!

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&gid=106835&vid=1872362&b=1

Phil Hanson- watch how he makes his art

This artist makes art that is conceptual. You need to think about it to understand what he is trying to get across. You can see it on two levels. One is just the picture or portrait that he is drawing. The other is to look at what he is working with for materials. Why did he choose those materials and not others? Who is this person, and how do the materials relate to who that person is and what they do in their lives? Each is carefully selected to make a point.
For ex. Mother Teresa is often refered to as a light in the dark, one who is beautiful and gentle and kind in her work with the homeless and the sick. He makes her portrait out of dandelions which are yellow and could mean light, are beautiful to look at and what could be more gentle than a flower. Compare that to the portrait of a fire fighter, burned into wood that is constructed to look like the framework of a house or the picture of a homeless man painted by walking all over the picture, his feet leaving the paint that creates the portrait.

Scroll down each picture to see what he was trying to say about each piece of art, and to see the video of how it was made.

http://philinthecircle.com/daudi.html

Miss Ropple's Identity class from last term

The kiln is fixed. Your clay is fired. Please come after school and finish your projects.

New Term Sculpture Students

Please bring in a metal coat hanger and a knee-high nylon stocking for a future project.

Last Term Clay Students

Your clay has been fired. Please see Mrs. Davis about staying after (or some other arrangement) to glaze your work!

McDonald's French Fry Paintings

Ever wonder how much oil there is in McDonald's French Fries? Here's a video that shows an artist using french fries to blend his drawings and create values in his art.

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1790948

More Choices for 7th graders

"I dreamed that I was Flying" is the theme of the 7th grade expressionist paintings. Students have been studying moods, color and painting techniques for the past few weeks. Now they need to make their choices for their Expressionist paintings.

They must choose:

What expression of flying do you want to portray?

What mood do you want to show?

What color scheme will best show that mood?

What type of line quality will express that mood the best?

Students will be working with tempera paint, concentrating on mixing the exact colors they feel will express their painting and using the best brush for the line quality they wish to express it with.

It's all about Choices!

I often ask my students to brainstorm before a project. There are so many things they can create, but they first need to think of them. I find that most students go with the first idea that comes to their minds. And that idea is often one that they've seen before or is a classic symbol of what I've asked them to think about, like love = hearts. But by brainstorming as a class, we make a list of hundreds of variations on an idea and this gives the students choices.

For instance, the 7th grade is now doing paintings on the theme: I dreamed that I could fly. What does flying mean? Most often I get responses such as birds, airplanes, wings and spaceships. But with group brainstorming, we came up with kites, being shot from a cannon, jet packs, red bull has wings, floating like a snowflake, meditative flying, flying on a magic carpet, flying in a dream, air balloons, aliens, flying high as a mood, swimming as flying through water, flying on rollar skates or ice skates, flying into someone, flying as a butterfly or a dragonfly or a fly....

By looking beyond your first idea, artists can find new meanings in old themes, expand on a personal interest, look for double meanings in a word or image, surprise the viewer, give a subject more complication and delight the viewer with new interpretations. Making good art is all about choices. Taking the time to make those choices makes all the difference in your art.

Lines in Art

Did you know that lines in art can make you feel a certain way? Artists know this, and choose their lines carefully. Vertical lines are very orderly and rule based. They make you feel safe and organized. Horizontal lines are quiet and peaceful. They make you feel calm and sleepy. Diagonal lines are active lines. They show excitement and draw your eye right to them.

Mondrian was very concerned with how his lines were used. In this picture, Rhythm of Lines, he uses vertical and horizontal lines to create peaceful harmony in his picture. Your eyes follow the lines up and down and back and forth across the picture as if you were following roads through a city.

Because there are no major surprises, the regular patterns it creates are pleasing. How would it be different if one of the lines suddenly bent? Would it draw your eye to it? Would it interupt the pattern of following the lines around the artwork? How would it be different if there were no horizontals at all? No verticals?

Lines do make a difference.

Message from Ms. Ropple

It seems I have too much technology to play with these days and find that I am posting the same information in several places -- on the ParkerArt web pages, Edline, and PTO Newsletter, and here. For the remainder of the year, info will be organized a bit differently. Current project descriptions and homework deadlines will be posted under the Assignments section of students' Edline class pages to keep parents informed of what's going on. Photos will be added to the ParkerArt class pages and lined to edline as often as possible.

Art Studio 6 Update

The last few weeks we have been making quilts. We've made collages with fabric and sew it to a backing. It is really fun. A lot of us learned how to sew. I can't wait to finish the quilt.

JS

Narrative Art: Art that tells a story

The sixth graders are working on NARRATIVE ART, art that tells a story. How do you tell a story without words? We need to consider the same things that a story does. Who is the main character? How do we know that? Where are they? Who is the antagonist? How do we know that? What is the action happening in the story? What do you think is going to happen next? How can you tell that?

Reading a picture is called VISUAL LITERACY. The artist must leave enough clues in the picture so that the reader can figure out the story. If he artist isn't clear on what is happening and in what order, the reader will be unclear as well.

Look at this picture of the three little pigs. How do we know the pigs are the main characters. See how they are right in the center of the picture? They are painted a bright color and they are walking, so they have an action to them that draws your eye to that spot. Where are they? We can see trees and grass and a river and a bridge, so we conclude that they are walking through the countryside. Who is the antagonist? The wolf. How do we know? He seems to be hiding behind a tree. What is he doing? He is trying to get some food. How is that going. Poorly. He must be the bad guy because the worms are cutting his fishing line and the fish are hopping out of the frying pan. What is the action here? He is looking at the pigs and licking his chops. We assume since he is hungry, that he sees the pigs as a much better and bigger meal than the tiny fish trying to hop out of his pan.

All this information is in the picture. What can you do to make your pictures read like a story?

A new kind of illustrated novel: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is a new kind of novel, at least one I haven't seen before. The author/illustrator writes and draws this book as the mood strikes him (at least that is what I've been told) so that when he thinks it is more appropriate to show a scene in images, he draws the story and when he thinks it is more appropriate to use words, he writes it. Thus the book starts with 21 double spreads of the most stunning pencil illustrations, then breaks into words as the story continues. Throughout the book we see movie stills, pencil illustrations and photos in black and white, making this a 524 page book that you can easily read in an afternoon.

I find this book fascinating as I am teaching narrative art (art that tells a story) and visual literacy (reading a painting) in my classroom right now. Here is an example of "reading" a picture in a more literal way. Not only can we read the clues that an artist puts into his/her work, but we can read the story as it continues through each picture and see the subtle changes as the action/plot changes. I find this type of novel very exciting!

Graphic Novels- American Born Chinese

Graphic novels aren't new. They'be been around for over 25 years. But they've been primarily in the sci-fi adult world. Now graphic novels have reached down to the young adult and middle grade crowds, giving them age appropriate books with a stunning visual compliment.

Graphic novels aren't exactly comics or novels, though they do tell an entire novel in a comic form. Pictures and text are so related, that people used to just reading have to slow down with graphic novels, in order to get all the infomation in the pictures as well as the words.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen is a story in three parts. The first part relates a Chinese traditional story about the king of the monkeys wanting to be other than who he really is. The second section is about a Chinese-American boy trying to fit into an all white suburbian school. And the third section ties the first two story threads together with the theme of fitting into your own skin and accepting and liking who you are.

Through the illustrations we see the emotions of the characters, the changes in how they are thinking and their reactions to situations, all without words. Through the words, we understand the plot, the themes and details of the story.
Graphic novels aren't for everyone. But they are a quick read with all the joys of reading a traditional novel, in less time.

Guest Blogger: Arianna

What I like most about art is drawing. My whole family thinks I'm a fantastic drawer. My mother even wants me to make her a book of all my drawings that I can think of. I also like clay , model making, and every kind of art especially drawing.That is what I like about art.

Guest Blogger: Travis

Chrismas Tree

In art class the best days are when you can make what ever you want. Today I made a chrimas tree. My tree has two ornamants. One is fancy, and one is not. Those are the best days in art.

Happy 2008!

I love new years. It's like a new beginning to get something right. It's a chance to do over what didn't go right before. The new year gives me energy to try new things and finish all the old things that I had put aside. This year my goal is to make more projects for myself. I always make things to give away as gifts. But I've got a large piece of rock in my office just waiting to be carved, and a square of clay under my desk that is dying to be pulled out and shaped. Take time to make something for yourself. Something not for an assignment, or a gift, or from a kit. Make something from the heart. Believe me, you'll be thankful later. It feels so good to make something just for yourself.