Cycle Four...we study UNITY and COLOR

"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art"

Paul Cezanne...1839

Today we began the second semester of the school year.  The students had had a week of finals and a four day weekend.  Some were ready some were not.

I had them get out their folders where they kept their sketches, ideas, and experiments along with various pages of information I had handed out.  I told them to sort out what they had into two piles.  If they thought they might take an advanced art class and they were interested in art they might want to keep some of this information for future reference.  If so, to place it into their backpacks and take home.  The other stack would be thrown out so they would have a nice clean folder to keep handouts they would be given this semester.

Then I proceeded to introduce the next unit, UNITY and COLOR.  We looked at three of the student's works that I felt demonstrated good unity.  The first was a composition of lines and triangles shaded from dark to light.  We discussed how the composition was unified by the use of these elements.  The second was of overlapping circles and the third was of three flowers using value very well.  

I passed out the six week test academic handout discussing what chapters/pages to read and take notes on the two concepts being studied.  We looked at the color wheel assignment briefly and I gave them an idea paper to work out 6 preliminary designs for theirs.

I told the students about the fact that a few students had suggested that they might do better about getting the reading/note taking done if I would just "make them do it" on given days instead of always leaving it up to them to decide whether to do that or work on their art.  I relayed an incident in my past when I was signed up for an Art History class my last semester during my graduate work and had to decide each day whether to go to the library to read/write or to the studio to create art.  I always chose the studio and dropped the Art History class after 2 weeks.

So we spent the remainder of the period either reading/writing or finishing up their last 6 week's drawings if they still had things to do to them.

One of my students, SaVonne, had handed in her finished drawing late and I hadn't included it in the previous array of art work by the students.  You might remember her because I videoed her working on this drawing on two separate occasions and posted them on this blog.  I will end this posting with a photo of her finished art work.  I think she did an amazing job and I think you will also.

ARTCLASS 2.0