Directing your own ideas:

We are at a point of the year, when you get to direct your own learning. particularly in relation to upcoming PBL.

Last week you were asked to come up with a brainstorm on "what do you care about?"

It is a crazy, broad, open question...

Artists always have a message. Sometimes the message is boring to you, but to someone else. sometimes it is too intense for you, but not for someone else. sometimes you just like it or you don't.

Art is like having a conversation with your own head. You think, you discuss, you answer back, you agree or disagree or slightly one or the other. You can be moved by Art, but you don't need to tell anyone why, so it's a private conversation.

It is a very brave thing for an artist to put their side of the conversation out there for you to be with. you wont necessarily 'get' it all. That is ok, the artist will never get your response, unless you directly go and tell them!

 We start with the WHY.

Why do you want to make Art?

Painters in 9mn

Paint technique:

End of Woodcut Printmaking

Expectations are:

3 good copy prints of your block
2 pages of planning/thinking
3 research posts on artists you were influenced by from within the German Expressionist movement
ALL your work documented on your blog.

A great example is:



Click on the picture to take you to all of Scarlett's Art posts (because she used her labels effectively).

Week 5/6 Catch up

We ended last week with definitions of words we use in explaining, describing and eventually analysing Art:

Wednesday was all about learning composition a bit more specifically:



In-between these notes were the ones on 'creating a sense of unity' using:
- Repetition of colour, shape, tone, texture
- Pattern
- Line and mark making style (I forgot to take a photo of those ones)

 

Today was about preparing our idea for making an art work - we call this developing and refining an idea based on what works and what does not.

Week 3 Term 3

Stuff you should know that we went over today:

Stylisation. You all should have chosen one of these four styles as your MAIN style to know

1) Kowhaiwhai (printmaking)
2) Art Nouveau (printmaking)
3) Manga (painting)
4) Pasifika (painting)


Further reading:
https://literacynz.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/teaching-maori-art-to-children/
https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/maori-art
http://www.designishistory.com/1850/art-nouveau/

Week Three Term Three

Where you are at is where you can find what you should have done and what we are working on.

Today was cut short by assembly, with a 15 minute class and not much time to get things sorted. Friday, we will be cutting up your custom wood to work on and drafting up your prints.




By the end of Friday success means:
- You have all of your book work done and documented on your blog
- You have completed a reflection blog post
- You have drafted your final idea onto wood that you have helped to cut up... :-)

Week One Lesson One term three :-)

Today you should have produced a number of thumbnail sketches. We have done these before. It is a process we use to make decisions that make sense visually.

You are using your selfie and the ideas and visual marks, and gestures in german wood cut printmaking as your 'muse'.

Thumbnail sketch just refers to a sketch being a little sketch. It's an ideas sketch, helps you plan and reflect on your idea visually.

Some of you had me draw the start of an idea on a piece of paper for you, while i talked it through, and added annotations to that idea as a starting point. I do not mind if you use that idea, but it should only be a start to your page.

You should consider the following when you are planning these ideas:

- balance of positive and negative space
- the point of what you are trying to say with your work... be clear with what that is
- are you going to use a word or quote to emphasise this?
- are there visually interesting things happening that you could make more of in your work - beauty in your mistakes.

On Friday you should have:

1 finished page of thumbnail sketches which includes 6 - 8 ideas
1 final idea that you are going to make into a print.
1 page of emotion-based mark making

Everything documented on your blog.

Term three week one

Choices:

This first week is about getting to know 4 different movements of Art from a visual point of view. That means, you look at them and you can see what of the four movements of art they belong to.

We are also wanting to see some drawing from you, with an emphasis on looking after your page and setting it out nicely.

Eventually, you are going to decide which of these 4 movements of Art you will use as a focus. each one comes with a contrasting movement that you will then be directed to use (one choice, one given).

Why we are making art? To demonstrate your understanding of at least one of the school values - Commitment, Achievement, Resilience, Respect.

Keep this in your mind for week 2 as well. Which school value are you going to focus on?

Below is a sample of amazing sketch book pages. have a look, and consider what it is you are doing with your page.

Mark making

Putting your progress so far together as a potential art work; 

• term two selfie, how can you incorporate this, 
• term two understanding of German Expressionism and woodcut technique, how can you best use this, 
• as well as your own personal expression? 

It is really important that you process your selfie as a graphic, black and white drawing that focusses on translating tone into MARK MAKING and texture, not shading. That might mean you interpret some areas a little differently to how they appear, or that you change tones into marks, or simplify them. It might mean you try one way of doing things and it does not work. That means try another way. Don't just quit. You also should be focussing on making this drawing NOT pretty. It is meant to be you considering how over-the-top and self-obsessed the idea of the selfie is. Make it ugly, make it creepy, make it a bit angsty, but let's not glorify it. 

From here, you should be moving onto our Pinterest site for German Expressionism and beginning some thumbnail sketches. We can go over how to manage these more carefully in class. 

Drawing selfies, being comfortable with selfies and using them for art...

Oooo this is hard! We have done this each year from 2015 - now and it is really obvious that using a selfie to make Art is harder than it seems with self-consciousness taken into account.

Self portraits in Art - pretty much since Cave Art this has likely happened. Though there are more examples of rich pompous people paying an artist for a favourable portrait, rather than the artists portrait, it has been a 'thing' for a long, long time in Art history.

On Wednesday, when everyone is back from camp, we are going to run through this:




When I was at Art school a million years ago, Woodcut printmaking was my 'thing'.

Below are two examples of work I did around the idea of self portrait (the ugly colours rather unfortunately reflect my terrible dress sense at the time...)

Let's discuss all of this further on Monday.

I'm really pleased to see the drawing work that happened today with the selfies already:

 

Installation Art

This is a genre of art that you could use to extend your concepts. Documenting this process would be specific to 1.3. You need to keep good documentation for 1.3 for this. By the end of next week, we will have an adjusted checklist on 1.3 suitable for installation with photography or painting or design.

Click on image for link to page

The thing that Installation Art is not necessarily, is collaborative art. Just because a group of people collaborate on a project, does not make it Installation Art. Installation Art is about making a space speak. Either giving that very specific space a meaning or using that specific space to tell it's story.

Concept is first and foremost, decorative qualities, not so much.

If this is a consideration for you, start with looking at Judy Chicago, Christo, Marcell Duchamp, Barbra Kruger, and teamlab. Your thoughts and ideas and reactions to these artists should be present on your blog.

Go back to your concept. how could it relate to a space? Is there one you are thinking of already?

Open your blog, open the tracking sheet for your class.
New post; Re-state your concept (always do this, so that it is the first thing you are considering as you work)

• Brainstorm appropriate spaces you have access to - around school, around home, that you could make "speak" with your work, OR that you could subvert. 
• Think about your work so far and record - are there three dimensional elements to it? Can you install imagery that adds to the voice of the space? 

If you are doing this properly, you should have notes and ideas, drawings that you can add to your post of ideas. 

Come to class ready to discuss your potential further progress from here. 

It is actually really easy to incorporate installation Art meaningfully into a folio for 1.4. We photographically document it.

Outcomes here would be:

• 2- 3 blog posts, which include research (use the same kind of format you used for art history 1.2, but on your own - could be a resubmission for 1.2 if you would like) 

New google site - use it!

Please bookmark this. Under senior, there is a drop down list of all of the course outlines and when you click on senior for the page, you will find the lines for our classes.

The tracking sheet is in your line, use it and keep it updated or keep you teacher updated.

Posting a Progress Blog for German Expressionist Printmaking

You all have this document shared to your Year 10 Art folder on your google drive. That is your own copy. This is the structure for your blog post that you are writing today!

You need your work and a chromebook. There are 5 macs as well, but it might be easier to use a chromebook or even your phone.

When your post is done, if you have work to finish off to fill in the gaps, then that is what you need to do.