Redneck Art made with BBQ Ribs

Ha! William sent me this great link for another food art blog entry.....BBQ sauce! The You Tube video is fun....I wasn't sure where they were going for a bit, but then it all started coming together. This would be a monochromatic painting, using tints and shades of the same hue, art students!

Student Work - AP 2D Studio Art

We have started a new year in Studio Art and I am starting a new feature...I will highlight student's artwork from my class so you can see what we are up to. This assignment was to create a composition using letters and numbers. Janeth chose to spin off Picasso's "The Old Guitarist" from his blue period. This period was between 1901 and 1904 and was characteristic of monochromatic color work. Janeth has created a very successful solution, using the tints and shades of blue in the letters to create the modeling of the figure. Great work! Oh, and check out this site to learn more about his blue period!

Artist of the Week: Jean-Luc Cornec

Jean-Luc Cornec created this exhibit for the Museum für Kommunikation Frankfurt in 2006. These images flew around the web and got to me through my affiliation with the Dallas Handweavers and Spinners Guild. That group loves sheep! In fact, many years ago I collected images of sheep...such docile and comforting animals they are. Making art out of recycled materials is great on so many levels; it's totally clever - you have to scrounge, but don't have to buy fancy, expensive art materials - it's fun making something wonderful out of cast-offs - it brings the public's awareness to "stuff" and the issues we have with disposing of our "stuff" - and it really shows the creative spirit in all of it's glory! The link in the title takes you to a post by Doug that is a fabulous treatise on this particular installation as well as the importance of recycled art. Be sure to read his post!

Artist of the Week - Mario Mariotti

The post title link will take you to several images of the fantastic ingenuity of the late Mario Mariotti, an artist from Florence, Italy. Knowledge is so important, but creative thinking is invaluable in all walks of life. His work is evidence that there is creative potential in things that are common, everyday and right under our noses!

08/09 Academic Decathlon Image #1

Metropolitan Cathedral (Art during the Colonial Era)

This cathedral in Mexico City (also known as Catedral de Mexico) was built by Claudio de Arciniega and others, 1573–1817. Hernán Cortés (the conqueror) destroyed Aztec temples that were on this land and ordered the construction of a Catholic church built on the same site. The cathederal was built to look like those in Spain. Watch this short YouTube video - be there now! You can get more detailed information from this Wikipedia page.

I LOVE MY BLOG! I got a communication from a teacher of art classes for grades 6-7-8 at Chester Academy in Chester NH that was interested in being epals with me!

Judy Krassowski sent me this question to respond to, "This week 8-1 Art is working on a 10-figure pattern/linear or radial collage that features their colored pencil drawings of wooden figure models that incorporate pattern to enhance shape and form (we'll be posting all classworks on Artsonia in the next few weeks). From this project, we utilize classroom students as live figure models for a watercolor experiment and then (AND THEN!) we begin our charcoal (with a bit of eye color) self portraits! What advice do your students have for creating artworks of people whom you know?"

I can't wait to see your projects! They sound really interesting. Soooooo....what advice do I have? It's so simple and so hard at the same time, and your teacher may have said this to you before, but it bears repeating. Develop the way you SEE things! Many art students draw what they THINK they see, not what they actually see! Example - when drawing a person, we usually draw what we think the head (or feet, or hands) looks like instead of looking at the actual lines that are formed by objects. Notice what kind of lines are created in objects - straight, wavy, angled, so many kinds of lines. So LOOK while you draw and don't take your eye off your subject. The more you draw what you see, the better your drawings will become. Oh, and let me know how my advice works out for you! Send me a comment when you work on your projects! Good luck!

Ms. Miller