Watercolor Painting

In Painting class this week we are staring out by learning about watercolor painting whand to get an idea of the range of possiblities take a look at this Smashing Magazine page with a range of works in watercolor including the image above by Matheus Lopes

Welcome to semester 2!

Welcome to the new semester, for inspiration here is a preview of the new documentary on artist Wayne White, Beauty is Embarrassing. He's a tremendously creative and eclectic artist and I love his quote at the end of the preview- "Do what you love, it's going to lead to where you want to go!"

AP Art: Mandalas

Here's two examples from one of our cultural assignments from this quarter's AP Art class, creating a personal mandala. Mandala is Sanskrit for the word circle and has a religious and spiritual significance in the Buddhist and Hindu religions but for our assignment I asked students to create a mandala that is meaningful to them personally and the results were varied and really interesting. For more information on mandalas check out the Mandala Project.

Isamu Noguchi Museum

This weekend I visited the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens, a museum I've been wanting to see for quite a while. If your are unfamiliar with Noguchi, he's a Japanese-American sculptor and artist who is also know for his set design, furniture design, and paper la terns which have become immensely popular.

He apprenticed with Constantin Brancusi and was a contemporary of artists we've discussed in class such as: Willem de Kooning, Alfred Stieglitz, and Alexander Calder but his style and body of work is very different and defies category. He collaborated with other creative and innovative people like engineer Buckminster Fuller and dancer Martha Graham and has a varied body of work so take a look at the museum's website timeline to get a better sense of how he developed.

Having studied Japanese art and culture as well as American art his work has interesting aspects of both but his later work which is the majority of the collection at the museum has a intensely Japanese feel due to it imperfections and connection to nature, especially thanks to how it is displayed in open air rooms and gardens.

Continuing the creativity

Now that our photography class is over anyone who's interested in continuing with the creativity might want to join me on Instagram, a free app for digital devices and smart phones which has a number of filters and effects available (such as the image above which was taken on the walk into school this week). My user name is "Tim Needles" so add me as a contact and sharing some cool new pictures! Also if you want to see the images and you don't have a device or phone around try Webstagram.

Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim

I had a chance to catch the Maurizio Cattelan: All show at the Guggenheim NYC yesterday just before it closed which was thankful because it was without question one of the most tremendous installations I've seen there. If you're not familiar with Cattelan's work, he is an Italian artist who primarily works in sculpture with a definite sense of humor and social satire. The show was as interesting technically as it was thought-provoking which is the most an artist can ask for!

End of the semester

Here are two fantastic student triptych portraits from our last in-class project in photography class. Today is the final day of classes for the semester so I'd like to thank everyone from all my classes for their hard work and dedication, I wish you all well in your future endeavors!

The Wonder of Wacom

Here's a student example of our most recent assignment in computer art and design class which had students working with the Wacom stylus and tablets digitally drawing selective self portraits of themselves.

Senior AP Show 2: Ally

Wednesday was Ally's senior show which was a great success incorperating various media such as photography, drawing, painting, and mixed media work.

SKYPE time!

As of this week we now have SKYPE available in our classroom so we will finally have a chance to speak with some of the students that we have been working with all semester from Japan and Pakistan through the Japan Society's Going Global social networking program! All of our sessions will be early in the morning due to the time difference so if you are in later classes you'll get a pass to come by earlier in the day, don't forget, it should be fun!

The first 10 Days of the year

This week we collected our first assignment of 2012 in photography which was to document your first 10 days of the year on film. There were some really great results and if you continue to the end of class it'll also count as extra credit.

It's an interesting project that teaches you a little about yourself, here is my example which I did every day for the full year in 2008: Tim Needles 2008

Art Honor Society 2012 murals

The Art Honor Society has begun a series of new mural throughout the school beginning in the art wing and branching out to other parts of the school and community.

AP Art Senior Shows

Today was our first AP Art senior show of the year featuring Ariel's work from the past two years.

Enviromental Portraits in School

Here's a few of the enviromental portraits photography students created of faculty and staff this month in school during our portraiture unit.

Last day to enter the Scholastic Art Competition

Today is the final day to enter the 2012 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards! Just upload your images to artandwriting.org and make sure to mail out the forms today because envelopes must be postmarked and dropped in the mail by the close of business on 1/6/12.

Maurizio Cattelan @ the Guggenheim

The NY based Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan currently has a retrospective entitled "All" at the Guggenheim that runs through January 22, 2012 and I would strongly suggest checking it out before it closes. The artist will be present in the museum on Monday for a book signing and the show features 130 sculptural works from the artist's career hung through the center of the museum, it's a perfect fit for the space!

Miranda July Project

Here are some of the results of our recent Learning To Love You More project based on artist/filmmaker/interesting person Miranda July. There are still a few of our inspirational banners up around school and the reaction has been pretty positive. Above are some of the images students created for the following:

30. Take a picture of strangers holding hands.

27. Take a picture of the sun.

33. Braid someone's hair.

Making Fontastitic Design!

This week we will be creating our own typography using freeware We had a chance to watch some clips of the Helvetica documentary and looked at some of the details of how fonts are created so sketch out some of your ideas in pencil and make it creative and legible. There are a number of websites that have step by step instructions (fontforge, yourfonts) if you forget a step or get stuck.

Famous Photographs Project

Here are some of the results from our project on remaking a famous photograph that was due today concluding our photography history unit. There were some really fun remakes, great job!

Writing for Television

This week we are working on writing short segments for television that we will produce in class. We will learn the process and go over each element involved from the concept to the filming to post production. Above is a short clip from the Paley Center with the cast of Curb Your Enthusiasm discussing how the show came about and below are the writers from Jimmy Fallon talking about how they were hired on the show.

Welcome to 2012!

Welcome back and happy new year, I'd like to begin the year with a short message from Art & Copy, a terrific documentary on advertising art which reminds us that in order to succedd we need to "Fail Harder"!