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Well for our final Carnival piece for the term we turned our attention to the big stage! The Warhols looked at how light influenced how a subject is perceived. They composed their piece and executed it moving from back to front and layering different elements to create a finished product that they were all proud of in the end! Have a great Carnival!
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The Warhols got into the spirit of Carnival in our last class... translating the movement and rythmn of the pan into a charcoal piece! This is the first time they have used charcoal in class and I think the results are really good. Of course Aunty Ariel (who sidenote plays pan for Skiffel Bunch and placed third in Semis) was only too happy to help them get the gestural movements of the pannist!  HISTORY Chacachacare Island received its name by the Amerindians who populated the area. In 1498 Christopher Columbus named it El Caracol (the Snail). Presently it is part of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and it lies in the Bocas del Dragon (Dragon’s Mouth), only seven miles from the coast of Venezuela. It encompasses approximately 900 acres. Between the period of 1777 and 1794, Spaniards established cotton plantations on the island, as well as whaling stations. By 1797, Chacachacare came under the control of the British. During the French revolution émigrés or Creoles from Santo Domingo and the surrounding islands settled here. Coconut, cocoa and sugar were also grown, with the biggest sugar mills in the British Empire being located on the island. The last remaining structure on the island is the ruins of the house pictured above and it has a varied and very interesting past! The Warhols heard about its history as a whaling station and even a hospital for POS's growing leper colony!  I came across this lovely painting by a little known artist and I just loved the viewpoint. Every Trini can tell exactly the spot this painting is done from. This is what good art does, it connects the viewer to a time or place and evokes feeling. The Warhols painted a different view of the savannah but the inspiration piece gave us a good starting point. They are also using acrylics with this piece so they get to use a different texture paint and see how that affects their painting. Of course we also get to immerse ourselves in the wonderful feeling of painting nature. Take a look as they each try to bring the Savannah to our studio!  The Warhols are starting off the term with a little history... Art history and local Trini history. They learnt about Impressionism today. Claude Monet was the first painter in the Impressionist movement. The word IMPRESSIONISM comes from one of Monet’s first paintings called Impression: Sunrise. Because sunlight is always shifting, Monet decided to paint the same scenes over and over to show how the color changes as the light moved. He was pretty determined, too. He painted over 30 paintings of a cathedral on France. Each painting shows how the light effects not only the cathedral’s color but also how light affects the details in the architecture. He set up a series of easels and used different paint colors to paint the cathedral at dawn, mid-day and a sunset. Art critics labelled the painting, impressionism, in order to mock it but the term stuck. It now means painting with light. Monet and other Impressionist had many things in common: they all painted outdoors, used photography to influence their art, wrote about their ideas and used color in a new and different way. Unfortunately we aren't able to paint outdoors, but we can mimic the characteristic elements of Impressionist work by focusing on the use of light as well as the quick gestural brushstrokes of Impressionist painters. As for our local history... well! Chacachacare which is an island off the coast of Trinidad (actually it's only 7 miles from Venezuela but it is T&T territory.) is only about 900 acres of hilly and thickly forested terrain. All that's left of the few structures now are the remains of the house pictured above. During the course of it's history it has served as a cotton plantation, a whaling station and a hospital for a small leper colony. There was once a small convent and cemetery close by that is now almost completely overrun. This is the subject of our piece. The children will draw and paint this fascinating place in the Impressionist style.  This lesson was inspired by artist Sandra Silberzweig. That's her piece in the picture. The main focus of this lesson is to teach children how to create tints and shades using tempera paint. But creating the tints and shades is quite easy, what is more difficult is establishing a prominent positive space with the fish. Especially when colours are everywhere... it's easy for a piece of art to get hard to look at it seems unsettling. To avoid this Silberzweig uses mostly cool colours on the fish and warm colours in the background. She also emphases unity and balance in the art piece by enforcing the RULE OF THREE... so there are 3 large fish and 3 smaller ones. Also the fishes are tied together using colour, whereas the background is multicoloured. Watch as the Warhols explore, line, shape, colour, movement and balance! A whole heap of Elements and Principles of Art to create some beautiful masterpieces. My Warhols were introduced to artist Gustav Klimt. They learned a bit about the artist himself, but they really focused on what made his style unique. He helped to shape a movement called Art Nouveau or new art. This movement was all about using symbolism to make statements in art and this is exactly what they did. They were challenged to look at two local icons, Wendy Fitzwilliam and calypsonian Shadow. They will use Klimt's style of including lots of gold and metallics in their piece but they will also bring the focus to the background and instead of using Klimt's motifs, they will practice symbolism by including local flowers and birds and other symbols that speak to their subject with a nod to Klimt. I just love how they're moving around the space, getting into the different aspects and really putting their mark on their piece! YAY for creativity! This is going to take two weeks so check out what they've done so far!  Divali is in the air and while the Hindu community is immersed in prayer and fasting, the rest of us can't wait to take in the colour, food and fashion that culminate on Divali day! My Picassos are creating an abstract-styled Indian dancer but my Warhols tackled one that's a bit more realistic. They got the chance to really focus on painting a figure in motion, while also getting to work in all those fun elements like colour and using brushstrokes to show movement! Just love this piece! A couple of my girls opted to paint a lady all decked out in a gorgeous sari so not a dancer but still very very beautiful! Continuing on our artist study of Cezanne, the Picassos and Warhols took a look at some examples of Cezanne's landscapes. We looked at his use of complimentary colours and his brushstrokes as well as his shapes. The Picassos went on to create a Cezanne-inspired landscape using simple plains and focusing on colours and brushwork. Cezanne is called the Father of Cubism and the Warhols got to really focus on what that means in creating this piece. They looked at how Cezanne famously reduced the subjects of his paintings into geometrical shapes like cubes, cylinders and cones. The were also asked to observe his brushstrokes and mimic his choppy style. Cezanne of course never painted coconuts because they were not native to his home country, France. His works are full of apples, oranges and other fruit. But local artist Che Lovelace created a piece in Cezanne's style and I thought it would be nice to show them both side by side and have them try their hands at this master's style but with our own local flair! They focused on drawing this week, next they will add colour and texture to complete their Cézanne/Lovelace inspired coconuts. |
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Be a fly on the wall in our art room! Take a look at what we do, how we do it and the smiles that I get to see week after week :) Archives
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