Showing posts with label Inspired by Artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspired by Artists. Show all posts

Sunday, June 4, 2017

audubon's legacy lesson

Description: Audubon, a French-American ornithologist, hunter, and artist, developed his own methods for drawing birds. First, he killed them using fine shot. He then used wires to prop them into a natural position, unlike the common method of many ornithologists, who prepared and stuffed the specimens into a rigid pose. When working on a major specimen like an eagle, he would spend up to four 15-hour days, preparing, studying, and drawing it. His paintings of birds are set true-to-life in their natural habitat. He often portrayed them as if caught in motion, especially feeding or hunting. This was in stark contrast to the stiff representations of birds by his contemporaries, such as Alexander Wilson. Audubon based his paintings on his extensive field observations.
      He worked primarily with watercolor early on. He added colored chalk or pastel to add softness to feathers, especially those of owls and herons. He employed multiple layers of water-color, and sometimes used gouache. All species were drawn life size that accounts for the contorted poses of the larger birds as Audubon strove to fit them within the page size. Smaller species were usually placed on branches with berries, fruit, and flowers. He used several birds in a drawing to present all views of anatomy and wings. Larger birds were often placed in their ground habitat or perching on stumps. At times, as with woodpeckers, he combined several species on one page to offer contrasting features. He frequently depicted the birds' nests and eggs, and occasionally natural predators, such as snakes. He usually illustrated male and female variations, and sometimes juveniles. In later drawings, Audubon used assistants to render the habitat for him. Going beyond faithful renderings of anatomy, Audubon employed carefully constructed composition, drama, and slightly exaggerated poses to achieve artistic as well as scientific effects. Read more...


Subject: Fine Art/Biology

Instruction Time: Three sessions at least

Materials needed:
  • White drawing paper
  • Audubon prototype
  • Colored pencils and watercolors
Objective(s):
Show-Me Visual Art Standards for Missouri Schools
Strand I: Product/Performance – Select and apply two-dimensional media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas and solve challenging visual art problems for all high school grades.
  • Select and apply drawing media and techniques that demonstrate both sensitivity and subtlety in use of media and informed decision making
Strand IV: Interdisciplinary Connections, Explain the connections between Visual Art and Communication Arts, Math, Science or Social Studies
  • Explain how historical events and social ideas are reflected in artworks from selected cultures or historical time periods.
Show-Me Standards for Biology
Strand 7: Scientific Inquiry – Science understanding is developed through the use of science process skills, scientific knowledge, scientific investigation, reasoning, and critical thinking
  • Concept B. Scientific inquiry relies upon gathering evidence from qualitative and quantitative observations. - Determine the appropriate tools and techniques to collect, analyze and interpret data.
Phase 1: Clarify goals and establish set
  • Students will study the watercolors and drawings of the famous orinthologist John James Audubon by observing a slide presentation, reading the attachment about him following this lesson plan and visiting web sites.
  • Students will copy prototypes of Audubon’s work and develop their skills in watercolors and colored pencils.
Phase 2: Demonstrate knowledge or skill
Task Analysis: rewrite below
  1. Students will research the life of Audubon through a selection of provided materials.
  2. Students will select a prototype of James Audubon.
  3. Make tracings or stencils to transfer the prototype to fine watercolor paper and paint.
Phase 3: Provide Guided Practice
  • The teacher will show a slide presentation of John James Audubon’s life.
  • The teacher will assign to each student a prototype to work from.
  • The teacher will demonstrate methods of watercolor and drawing to the class during the sessions.
Phase 4: Check for understanding and provide feedback – A standardized rubric will be used to analyze and critique each individual student’s artwork.

Phase 5: Provide extended practice and transfer – Students will be encouraged to create even more projects at home. Materials used during class and the research conducted on their own computers at home may be duplicated in their own home environment at very little expense.

Reflections: Reflections are attached to rubric. There is room enough for both the instructor and student to respond. Copies of reflections are returned to students to keep in their three ring binders. (phase 4 above)

Resources: The lesson plan adaptations and written content, excluding State Standards, is written and copyrighted by Kathy Grimm, 2009. The use of the ideas and 10% or less content constraint on previously published materials is met in accordance to United States copyright law. Some scientific definitions come from public domain resources. Interested parties may visit the following link to read about Fair Use and Teachers http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm#Purpose%20of%20use

Friday, June 27, 2014

tim jenison's vermeer

      "Tim's Vermeer" is a documentary film, directed by the performer Teller, produced by his stage partner Penn Jillette and Farley Ziegler, about inventor Tim Jenison's efforts to duplicate the painting techniques of Johannes Vermeer, in order to test his theory that Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices. The film premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in limited theatrical release in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on January 31, 2014.

Vermeer's "The music lesson" is Tim's obsession.
      Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (Dutch: [joˈɦɑnəs jɑn vərˈmeːr]; 1632 – December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.
      Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.
      Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."
      Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Read more . . .

incredible losers become incredible masters

      Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time. Read more . . .
      Two excellent videos to show to high school art students at the beginning of the school year. Teach the young, "patience is the virtue that pays in the end."