Art Education Daily

Monday, September 12, 2011

what are your favorite christmas stories to read aloud?

Question: What are your favorite Christmas stories to read aloud?

Answer: We recommend the following selections of Christmas Books for parents to read aloud to their children during the holidays. Some of these are suitable for public school classrooms and some are more suitable for the home or parochial schools.

"The Birthday of a King" by Bob Hartman Michael McGuire

"A Taxi Dog Christmas" by Debra and Sal Barracca, Illustrated by Alan Ayers - "Maxi and Jim the taxi driver gladly interrupt their Christmas celebration to lend Santa a hand." publisher

"Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Barbara Shook Hazen Adapted from story by Robert L. May, Illustrated by Richard Scarry. "Here is a delightful version of the tale of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer--the little reindeer so well known in song and story." publisher

"One Wintry Night" by Ruth Bell Graham, Illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson. "Ruth Bell Graham retells the Christmas story in a contemporary setting, beginning with creation and closing with Christ's resurrection." publisher

"All Is Well" by Frank E. Peretti - Poverty stricken and low on hope. A divorced mother and her daughter prop up their sagging spirits and keep the flames of faith alive by clinging to a phrase heard on a previous Christmas, "All is well."" publisher

"Frosty the Snowman" Adapted from the song of the same name, retold by Annie North Bedford, illustrated by Corinne Malvern. "Frosty the Snow Man was born in 1950 as the subject of a phonograph record, and soon after appeared in many different forms. He has been in numerous Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Parades. Unlike other snow men, he is at home even in the warmest parts of the United States." publisher

"This is the Star" by Joyce Dunbar and Illustrated by Gary Blythe.

"Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree" by Robert Barry.

"Christmas at Long Pond" by William T. George, paintings by Lindsay Barrett George. - "Father and son observe the plant and animal life around Long Pond before finding just the right Christmas tree." publisher

"The Night Before Christmas" by Clement C. Moore, Illustrated by Ted Rand (our favorite version)

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" by Tim Burton - "When the king of Halloween decides he wants a new holiday, Christmas will never be the same." publisher

"The First Noel", Illustrated by Jody Wheeler - "Illustrated version of the well-known carol in which an angel appears to poor shepherds to announce the birth of Christ.

"The Steadfast Tin Soldier" by Hans Christian Anderson and Illustrated by Fred Marcellino - (our favorite illustrated version)

"The Advent Book" by Jack and Kathy Stockman - A MUST Have for Christian parents celebrating the true gift of Christmas with their small children this Christmas. (Crossway Books a division of Good News Publishers.)

"Santa's Book of Names" by David McPhail - A young boy who has trouble reading helps Santa with his yearly rounds and receives a special Christmas present.

"Winnie The Pooh's Stories For Christmas" by Bruce Talkington, Illustrated by John Kurtz

"The Polar Express" by Chris Van Allsburg

"How The Grinch Stole Christmas" by Dr. Seuss

Asian Art of Ink Wash Power Point

In an old Chinese legend, an artist named Zhang Sengyou (張僧繇) was asked to paint a mural in a temple. He painted four dragons but left out the pupils from their eyes. The Abbot asked him why. Zhang explained that if he painted the pupils, the dragons would come alive. When the Abbot insisted, Zhang proceeded to paint two of the dragons’ eyes. As soon as he finished painting the pupils on two of the dragons, they roared to life and flew away in a thunderous flash of lightning. The two dragons that had no pupils stayed on the wall.

This story embodies the philosophy of East Asian ink wash painting. The goal is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its soul. To paint a horse, the ink wash painting artist must understand its temperament better than its muscles and bones. To paint a flower, there is no need to perfectly match its petals and colors, but it is essential to convey its liveliness and fragrance. East Asian ink wash painting may be regarded as an earliest form of expressionistic art that captures the unseen.

East Asian ink wash painting has long inspired modern artists in the West. In his classic book Composition, American artist and educator Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) wrote this about ink wash painting: "The painter ...put upon the paper the fewest possible lines and tones; just enough to cause form, texture and effect to be felt. Every brush-touch must be full-charged with meaning, and useless detail eliminated. Put together all the good points in such a method, and you have the qualities of the highest art". Dow's fascination with ink wash painting not only shaped his own approach to art but also helped free many American modernists of the era, including his student Georgia O'Keeffe, from what he called a 'story-telling' approach. Dow strived for harmonic compositions through three elements: line, shading, and color. He advocated practicing with East Asian brushes and ink to develop aesthetic acuity with line and shading.

Shading in ink wash painting refers to the varying ink density produced by grinding an ink stick in water. Ink wash painting artists spend years practicing basic brush strokes to refine their brush movement and ink flow. In the hand of a master, a single stroke can produce astonishing variations in tonality, from deep black to silvery gray. Thus, in its original context, shading means more than just dark-light arrangement, it is the basis for the beautiful nuance in tonality unique to East Asian ink wash painting and brush-and-ink calligraphy. (Wikipedia)

The following slides of Asian ink wash paintings are created for art educators who wish to design a Power Point presentation for an art project that I will include with my collection of lesson plans in the near future. Read the Terms of Use before downloading the jpgs. and click on the thumbnails to download the very largest photo available.

Hasegawa Tohaku, 1539 - 1610

Shiokawa Bunrin, Japanese, 1808-1877
River Landscape with Fireflies , 1874
Both screens are at The Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City Missouri

Japanese screen at Tokyo National Museum

Dong Qichang. The Qingbian Mountains

Henry Moore Power Point

The Art Gallery of Ontario's Henry Moore collection is the largest public collection of his works in the world.

Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.

His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore's works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire.

Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a mining engineer. He became well-known through his larger-scale abstract cast bronze and carved marble sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Yet he lived frugally and most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. (Wikipedia)

The following slides of Henry Moore's sculptures (from the Nelson Atkins Museum/ Kansas City Sculpture Park) are created for art educators who wish to design a Power Point presentation for an art project that I will include with my collection of lesson plans in the near future. Read the Terms of Use before downloading the jpgs. and click on the thumbnails to download the very largest photo available.

Henry Spencer Moore, English, 1898-1986, b. Yorkshire, England
Two-Piece Reclining Figure No. 9, 1968

Henry Spencer Moore, English, 1898-1986, b. Yorkshire, England
Upright Motive No. 9, 1979

Henry Spencer Moore, English, 1898-1986, b. Yorkshire, England
Reclining Connected Forms, 1969

Henry Spencer Moore, English, 1898-1986, b. Yorkshire, England
Seated Woman, 1958-1959; cast 1983

Henry Spencer Moore, English, 1898-1986, b. Yorkshire, England
Three-Way Piece No. 1: Points, 1964-1965; cast 1966

Henry Spencer Moore, English, 1898-1986, b. Yorkshire, England
Large Torso: Arch, 1962-1963; cast 1963

Henry Spencer Moore, 1898-1986 Sheep Piece, 1971-72

Friday, September 9, 2011

Sewing Book Covers

A book cover is any protective covering used to bind together the pages of a book. Beyond the familiar distinction between hardcovers and paperbacks, there are further alternatives and additions, such as dust jackets, ring-binding, and older forms such as the nineteenth-century "paper-boards" and the traditional types of hand-binding. This article is concerned with modern mechanically produced covers.

It seems that the first printer to introduce mechanical book-binding was the printer Jorg Schappf, (from Augusta), in particular the Chiromantia, in 1488. Before the early nineteenth century, books were hand-bound, in the case of luxury medieval manuscripts using materials such as gold, silver and jewels. For hundreds of years, book bindings had functioned as a protective device for the expensively printed or hand-made pages, and as a decorative tribute to their cultural authority. In the 1820s great changes began to occur in how a book might be covered, with the gradual introduction of techniques for mechanical book-binding. Cloth, and then paper, became the staple materials used when books became so cheap – thanks to the introduction of steam-powered presses and mechanically-produced papers – that to have them hand-bound became disproportionate to the cost of the book itself.

Not only were the new types of book-covers cheaper to produce, they were also printable, using multi-color lithography, and later, half-tone illustration processes. Techniques borrowed from the nineteenth-century poster-artists gradually infiltrated the book industry, as did the professional practice of graphic design. The book cover became more than just a protection for the pages, taking on the function of advertising, and communicating information about the text inside.

The Book Cover Archive
Grand Valley State University digital collections – contains photographs of decorated publisher bindings from the 1870s to 1930
Historical book cover design gallery
Pulp fiction cover gallery
The Art of Penguin Science Fiction The history and cover art of science fiction published by Penguin Books from 1935 to the present day
Thomas Bonn Collection of Publishers Interviews – more than 100 audio interviews with publishers, art directors, etc. on the topic of cover art

Sewn book covers are very popular project assignments in both sewing classes and fine art classes. I will link to some fun examples below.

Mitten Sewing Projects

Gloves which cover the entire hand but do not have separate finger openings or sheaths are called mittens. Generally, mittens still separate the thumb from the other four fingers. They have different colors and designs. Mittens have a higher thermal efficiency than gloves as they have a small surface area exposed to the cold.

The earliest mittens known to archeologists date to around 1000AD in Latvia. Mittens continue to be part of Latvian national costume today. Wool biodegrades quickly, so it is likely that earlier mittens, possibly in other countries, may have existed but were not preserved. An exception is the specimen found during the excavations of the Early Medieval trading town of Dorestad in the Netherlands. In the harbour area a mitten of wool was discovered dating from the 8th or early 9th century. Many people around the Arctic Circle have used mittens, including other Baltic peoples, Native Americans and Vikings. Mittens are a common sight on Ski slopes, as they not only provide extra warmth but extra protection from injury.

Sewing your own mittens is both fun and easy!

Sewing Tea Cozies

Although the history of the tea cozy may begin when tea was introduced to Britain in the 1660s, the first documented use of a tea cozy in Britain was in 1867. It is probably the Duchess of Bedford who, by establishing the activity of afternoon tea in 1840, would have brought the popularity of the tea cozy. Afternoon tea was the time for networking and keeping up to date with aristocracy gossip and topical news. With all the chatter at teatime the teapot would get cold, which would have at times cut short some tea parties. And so, the tea cozy came about. Tea cozies then flourished during the late 19th century, where they appeared in many households across Britain, motivated by the obsession of decorating and covering objects characteristic of the Victorian era.

Tea cozies started to be used in North America in the same period. Newspapers of the time reveal that tea cozies enjoyed "a sudden and unexpected rise in public favor" among women who hosted tea parties. Newspapers of the time included advice columns on how to make one: "Some very handsome ones are made of remnants of heavy brocade, but linen is generally used, embroidered or not, according to taste, as these covers are washable. Make the covering large enough for your teapot and provide a ring at the top to lift it off with."

Who new tea cozies were sew popular?

Sewing a Basic Layette

A layette is a collection of clothing for a newborn child. The term "layette set" is commonly used in the United States to refer to gift sets of baby clothes.
Traditionally, women would hand-sew their baby's clothes during their pregnancy. Today "layette" is often used to identify a baby clothing section of a store. The term can also be used for bedding, accessories, and baby care items.

Basic layette items include:

a going-home-from-the-hospital or birth center outfit
legless sleepwear (sleeping gowns / kimonos / sleeping bags / newborn sacques / blanket sleepers) or footed sleepers
onesies (short-sleeved, legless bodysuits) / all-in-ones / rompers / coveralls
undershirts / T-shirts
receiving blankets
swaddling blankets
hooded towels
baby washcloths
cloth diapers for diapering
socks / booties
hats / beanies / sweaters / bunting (depending on the climate)
burp cloths (cloth diapers are often recommended)
Scratch mits
Vests

Layette patterns and ideas:

Index Pages