AP Art: Drawing Month

In AP Art we will begin and end week with some drawing to ease in and out of the weekend and improve our skills.  We'll dedicate some time on Monday to drawing from life beginning with drawing portraits of each other like yesterday.  Friday's will be focused on illustration and drawing from imagination with the help of Illustration Friday and Pintrest.  Today we will continue review the artists presentations in preparation for the quiz next Wednesday.

Studio Art: Sketching

Red Hook - a film about Tommy Kane from DannyGregory on Vimeo.

Today we are beginning to look at how to draw and sketch from life and we'll look at 2 contemporary artists who are great at this type of thing Tommy Kane and Wendy Macnaughton.  After learning a bit about them and watching some short videos of them working we'll start sketching ourselves in class beginning with 4 sketches from around the classroom.



The videos above shows Tommy drawing in Red Hook, Brooklyn and at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.  Take note of the materials he uses which are pretty simple and the process he uses.  He took a photo of the bar he was drawing but choose to still draw it in person because believe it or not it definitely makes a difference, trust me!



Wendy has a similar line quality but has a different approach using a blend of single line contour with a loose sketch so there is plenty of whimsy.  The video above has a short tutorial showing how she works and the video below shows her out drawing.  I love how she pays attention to detail with drawings like the direction of the gaze of people and animals in the street and the direction they are moving.  Pay attention to the choices she makes in terms of what to include and what to exclude.



Both artist released great books recently Tommy's is An Excuse to Draw and Wendy's is 

Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them, check them out!

Media Art: Global Citizens in Action Youth Media Festival

Last year my media arts class created this Public Service Announcement that was included in the Global Citizens in Action Youth Media Festival.  Take a look at all the entries and vote!

Global Nomad Group Presents: 

Global Citizens in Action Youth Media Festival

View & Share Online 

www.globalcitizensinaction.com 

Vote by October 10, 2014

Overview: Celebrate the student arts and media projects of the Global Citizens in Action (GCA) virtual youth exchange! Over the past year, these students from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the US, – age 12-18 – collaborated across borders to identify and create solutions to problems in their local and global communities. Projects are divided into three themes: Human Rights, Environment and Health, and Media, Diversity, and Tolerance. Selecting the winners: Using the festival website, individuals can vote for more than one project in each category, but can only vote for each project once. Awards will be determined 50% by audience vote and 50% by the GCA Youth Media Festival judges! Winners to be announced live in Kabul, Afghanistan on October 16, 2014

Drawing: Contemporary Artist Research Project

In Drawing class we are starting our Contemporary Artist Research Project in which each student is assigned an artist and has to create a short presentation on that artist including a photo of the with a short one page biography and 10 large quality images of their work.  All of these artists have work In MOMA's drawing collection so that might be a good place to start.  The presentation can be created on Powerpoint or the new Google Presentation and is due at the end of class a week from today on Tuesday September 30.

Mr. Needles- Daniel Danger

Claudia- Monica Bonvicini

Emily A- Swoon

Emily - Farel Dalrymple

Dillan- Aaron Johnson

Veronica- David Hockney

Shannon- Kara Walker

Kyle- Chuck Close

Mike- José Antonio Suárez Londoño

Alana- Barry McGee

Jacob- Magnus Plessen

Amanda- Jason Jägel

Katie H- Sam Wolfe Connelly

Katie W- Wayne White

Nadia- Debra Hampton

Brittany- Jim Dine

Ashley- Thomas Hirschhorn

Amy- Yayoi Kusama

Natalie- George Condo

Dana T- Thomas Locher

Dana W- Elizabeth Murray

Jamie- Siegfried Anzinger
Griffin- Vik Muniz

Local Art: Wayne White

There is a great show that I saw this weekend from artist and creative magnet Wayne White at the Joshua Liner gallery in Chelsea.  Wayne is a terrific artist with a plethora of skills, take a look at the preview to the documentary about him below: Beauty Is Embarrassing. Wayne's work is some of my favorite so I definitely recommend checking him out!

Media Arts: Extra Credit

This month's extra credit assignment for Media Arts class is to see and write a short review of the film Boyhood by Richard Linklater and starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater and Ethan Hawke.  The film was made over a period of 12 years and follows characters as they grow up through elementary, middle, and high school and what they deal with in the process.  It's extremely innovative in its scope and is a must see film for any student of the medium.  the extra credit is due on October 1.

Back To School Night

Welcome to art room 161 this classroom blog is used for all our assignments and is a great reference for due dates, study guides, extra credit, and keeping track of what's going on in class.  Here's some of our ongoing projects that we'll be working on in all Mr. Needles classes:

Our "Going Global" project with the Japan Society & Global Nomads Group projects

SKYPE in the classroom and Google Hangouts with professionals and alumni

The MSG Varsity program

College and alumni visits 

Studio in Media:
IMDB- http://www.imdb.com/
Short & Sweet NYC-http://www.shortandsweetnyc.com/author/tim-needles/
You Tube- http://www.youtube.com/user/TimNeedles
Vine: https://vine.co/v/bt9Qbx5XBM0




Studio in Art:
Google Art Project- http://www.googleartproject.com/
Illustration Friday- http://illustrationfriday.com/



AP Studio Art:
Wiki-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement_Studio_Art
College Board-http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_studioart.html
Artnet- http://www.artnet.com/?gclid=CKW4_bj4m7ICFYFo4Aod61UAag
Drawn- http://blog.drawn.ca/



Drawing 1 & 2:
Illustration Friday- http://illustrationfriday.com/
Artnet- http://www.artnet.com/?gclid=CKW4_bj4m7ICFYFo4Aod61UAag
Drawn- http://blog.drawn.ca/



National Art Honor Society & National Media Art Honor Society:

Meets every Wednesday in Room 161

Volunteering at the Hampton's Film Festival on October 6-7

Building our Safe Halloween "Haunted Museum"

Our fall field trip to New York City and our spring trip to the Hampton's

Guest speakers & alumni visits

Contests:
Young Arts- http://www.youngarts.org/
LI Best- http://www.heckscher.org/
Scholastic- http://www.artandwriting.org/
Shanti- http://www.shantifund.org/

AP Art: The Artist Project

In AP Art class we are beginning The Artist Project in which I assign each member of the class two artists to research who I feel have some commonality to the work you have been creating and you're responsible for researching each artist and creating a short presentation with 10 full size images and a short biography with sources.  Below is the list of artists and the presentations are due on Wednesday:

Andrew: Eric Fischl & Xu Bing

Paige: Francisco Goya & Käthe Kollwitz

Juliana: Donald Baechler & Lauren Greenfield

Mikenzie: Sigmar Polke & Ai Weiwei

Christian: Sebastião Salgado & William Eggleston

Troy: David LaChapelle & Billy Kidd

Rose: Tara McPherson & Marilyn Minter

MacKenzie: Barry McGee & Kimsooja

Morgan: Yayoi Kusama & Mona Hatoum

Samantha: Louise Bourgeois & Peter Beard

Bella: Cindy Sherman & Barbara Kruger

Cassandra: Chuck Close & Alphonse Mucha

Kristin: Gustov Klimt & Henri Cartier-Bresson

Mr.Needles: Robert Rauschenberg & Daniel Danger
TA: Swoon & Wayne White

Art & Media Art Honor Society

Today is the meeting of the Art & Media Art Honor Society after school at 2pm in room 161 and we'll be discussing the projects we;ll be doing this year.  We'll also be planning the first field trip of the year to NYC and the volunteering opportunities at the Hampton's Film Festival along with some early planning on this year's Haunted House for Safe Halloween!

Media Art: Production Companies

This week in Media Art class we are talking about producers, directors, production companies, and how films and television shows are created.  Here's a list of some of the production companies you might be most familiar with: American film studios take a look and see who makes your favorite films.  We'll have a quiz on Friday of the basic job titles on a film set and what they're responsible for.

The Art & Media Art honor society will also be meeting today in room 161 and we'll be discussing volunteering for the Hamptons International Film Festival which we take part in every year.  The festival takes place in the Hamptons on October 9-13 and will feature Academy Award winning actress Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry & Million Dollar Baby) and director Joel Schumacher (St. Elmo's Fire & A Time to Kill).

Studio Art: Drawing terminology

In Studio Art we began our Drawing unit and are beginning to review the drawing terminology.  The video above shows the basic elements or art and design that we are working with and you can also reference my Quizlet study guide to review all the terms you'll be responsible for.  We'll have a short quiz Friday on the drawing terms.

Drawing: Every person in class

This week in class we are drawing each member of the class.  It's not just a great icebreaker, the experience also teaches you to look closely at subjects and distinguish facial features.  Remember the best way to improve at anything is simply to do it often so if nothing else you'll get a good amount of practice a t drawing portraits!

AP: New technique week

In AP art we completed reviewing the summer assignments and went over the first assignment of the class which is to draw or paint on a 3D surface.  The video below from Soul Pancake shows artist Cheeming Boey a great example of this technique but you can find it all through art history back to the beginning cave paintings.  The final piece is due on Wednesday in class.  If you want to see more of Boey's work check out his cup collection and his website iamboey.com



In addition to Boey's work we looked at work from artist Audrey Kawasaki who often works on wood, check out the video of her working below:



We also started "New Technique Week" in which we'll learn a new advanced art technique every day for a week.  Today we experimented with open paint and yesterday we learned how to transfer photographs.  Above is part of the demo that I did in class and on Thursday each student will chose one or two of the techniques and incorporate them into a new piece.

Studio Art: Contour drawing

In Studio Art class today we learned the basics of contour line drawing along with continuous-line contour drawing, and blind contour drawing.  We started by drawing our own hands and we'll continue with more subjects this week.  The video above give some additional insight on the drawing style if you had any difficulty understanding.  Tomorrow we'll expand on the technique and look specifically at the silhouettes of the objects.  Below is a really great contour line drawing done by a student a few years ago of another classmate in my classroom.

Media Art: Film & Animation History

In Media Arts class we began learning about the history of film and notable people in the process such as Thomas Edison, William K Dickson, and the Lumiere Brothers.  Here's a link to the study guide and the video above goes into more detail about the Lumiere Brothers first films.  Below is the short film we watched in class showing how a camera obscura, lens, and aperture works.  Well have a short quiz on Friday based on the material we cover today and tomorrow so be sure to use the study guide!

Drawing: Alphonse Mucha and the Zentangle

We began drawing in our sketchbooks today with a great drawing method known as the Zentangle which fills in space with different textures and patterns.  The specific type of pattern we learned is based on the great Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939).  We began by drawing out our name is a design font or script and filling in areas around it using Zentangle patterns such as the Mucha pattern shown in the video above.  This finished design will be due on Tuesday and will count as the first grade of the year.  Below is a great tribute painting to Alphonse Mucha by the street artist Mear One from La Brea, Los Angeles.

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year!

Welcome to a new school year!  Today in class we'll be going over some of the basic and discuss the expectation for each class and below are links to a few of the contests and opportunities we will be talking about:

National Art & Media Art Honor Societies- the art club is open to all students enrolled and meets Wednesdays after school in room 161.  We do art workshops, alumni talks, volunteer at local events such as the Hampton's Film Festival, go on art related field trips, arrange the annual haunted house, work with outside charity organisations, arrange art shows, and work on student driven extra-curricular projects.

Google for Education- We'll be taking advantage of Google's new classroom technologies to share information and collaborate in the classroom.

The Japan Society's Going Global program- Classes will collaborate on lessons virtually with students from Japan, the US, and Pakistan on projects throughout the year.  There is also a student exchange program which students may enroll in.