INTO THE NEW SEMESTER

Greetings Archway Families,

I hope everyone is settling into the new year and enjoying this beautiful, warm January in Arizona. After the week of evaluations and conferences, students took home their portfolios from last semester and created new ones for this semester. They took home all work (mostly from the fall quarter) but not any final projects yet. Most of the work they took home were bell work assignments, practice drawings, art critiques, and other classwork.

During the spring, each Archway campus will be hosting a fine arts week that includes spring choir concerts and the annual art walk. This is a time for students to show off their best work from the year, so their projects will stay safely in the art room until then. Each student will choose one or two of their best artworks to be hung in the halls for everyone to admire. This is an exciting time to see all of the hard work that the students have been doing all year. After the art walk, students will take home all of their projects from the year. More information about the art walk for Trivium East and Trivium West will be coming soon!

New projects will be posted soon as the students are finishing up their work. In 5th grade, we are studying Michelangelo Bunarroti and his iconic Renaissance figure drawings and sculptures. Students are creating a drawing of their hand using close observation like the old masters did to create the illusion of realism. We discussed the importance of drawing from closely looking at details and relationships of shapes to create correct proportions of the hand. We looked at several artists' sketches that are lesser known to appreciate that they all began as art students and studied the human form before they went on to create master paintings that we recognize today. A few of the artists' drawings we looked at are shown below.

Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam

Pages from Da Vinci's Sketchbooks

Durer's Hand Sketches

Van Gogh Hand Sketches

Phoenix Art Museum is hosting a Michelangelo exhibit that is going on now through March 27th entitled Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane. I haven't experienced this yet, but I am looking forward to visiting the museum soon to view some of the rarest Michelangelo figure sketches, architectural drawings, and memoirs. This would be an exciting opportunity for the students (especially 5th grade) to be able to get a first hand experience of the master artist's sketches and drawings! The Phoenix Art Museum is free Wednesdays from 3-9 pm; there is a small fee for admission into the Michelangelo exhibit (adults- $8 and students- $5, or free for museum members). More information about this event here: http://www.phxart.org/exhibition/michelangelo. Have a lovely weekend!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

New artwork is up at ATW as well! The students worked so hard this semester on their projects and assignments and I can't wait to see what they create next semester! Thank you families for your support and generosity. Have a safe and relaxing winter break, and best wishes to your families for the new year :)

4th grade Unicorn Tapestry drawings in oil pastel

5th grade Renaissance still life drawings in colored pencil

HOW TO LOOK AT ART AND THINK LIKE AN ARTIST

When students become discouraged during an assignment, I remind them that all artists started off in their shoes, learning little by little and making errors along the way. We grow from our mistakes and persevere through tasks that we do not necessarily wish to do, but we may realize that we discover something we excel at and become passionate about! It feels good to produce something beautiful that took dedication, patience, and practice. Even if a student doesn't go on to have a career in the arts, learning "visual literacy" will help them throughout various avenues of their lives.

In class, we often discuss different types of art and the importance of art in our world. We have practiced looking at and formally talking about art, especially how to closely observe an artwork using correct vocabulary. We have discussed how artists sometimes create art to make something beautiful, but sometimes they create art to record something exactly how they see it through close observation. We have practiced the steps in an art critique so that students can become familiar with looking at all different types of artwork, and gaining knowledge through visual perception and critical thinking skills.

Students can go on to be able to critique master artworks, but also their own and even their peer's. A critique is an oral or written discussion strategy used to analyze, describe, and interpret works of art. Critiques help students hone in on their persuasive and creative oral and writing, information-gathering, and justification skills. Art criticism can be used outside of the classroom as well, and would be a good opportunity to practice if you and your child visit a museum or art gallery. They can also bring a sketch pad or paper to practice drawing a part of or the whole artwork using close observation as we have done in class. Sketching master studies helps with the visual organization of objects in the picture and being able to translate that understanding onto their own paper.

The four major areas of art criticism are describe, analyze, interpret, and judge. They should focus on each step sequentially using some of the questions below:

Description

Describe the work without using value words such as "beautiful" or "ugly":

• What is the written description on the label or in the program about the work?
• What is the title and who is the artist?
• When and where was the work created?
• Describe the elements of the work (i.e., line movement, light, value, space).
• Describe the technical qualities of the work (i.e., tools, materials, instruments).
• Describe the subject matter. What is it all about? Are there recognizable images?

Analysis

Describe how the work is organized as a complete composition:

• How is the work constructed or planned (i.e., movements, lines)?
• Identify some of the similarities throughout the work (i.e., repetition of lines, colors, shapes).
• Identify some of the points of emphasis in the work (i.e., specific scene, figure).
• If the work has subjects or characters, what are the relationships between or among them?

Interpretation

Describe how the work makes you think or feel:

• Describe the expressive qualities you find in the work. What expressive language would you use to describe the qualities (i.e., tragic, ugly, funny)?
• Does the work remind you of other things you have experienced (i.e., analogy or metaphor)?
• How does the work relate to other ideas or events in the world and/or in your other studies?

Judgment or Evaluation

Present your opinion of the work's success or failure:

• What qualities of the work make you feel it is a success or failure?
• Compare it with similar works that you think are good or bad.
• What would you have done differently if you were the artist?

Here is a great handout that gives numerous examples of how to think like an artist!

3rd GRADE APPLE STILL LIFE | 4th GRADE UNICORN TAPESTRIES

Here is a sample of some student artwork that 3rd and 4th has completed this quarter from Archway Trivium East!

Looking at light with the Dutch artist Jan Vermeer

The Milkmaid, 1658

3rd grade student work - apple still life in dry pastel

Medieval Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestries

The Unicorn in Captivity

4th grade student work - unicorn tapestries in oil pastel

SECOND QUARTER UPDATES

Good Morning! As we are approaching the halfway point in the second quarter, we are finishing up our current projects in art. In 3rd grade, we are working on apple still life drawings in pastel. We studied how light and shadows work and how artists use value to create the illusion of 3D objects. 4th grade has started to transfer their unicorn drawings onto their final paper to create their unicorn tapestries. We talked about the importance of tapestries in the Middle Ages and how they told visual stories. In 5th grade, students are beginning their final copies of their realistic still life drawings in colored pencil. They are amazed at how the Renaissance artists created photo-realistic artwork as they are beginning to understand the time and patience it takes to blend and shade properly. I can't wait to begin to put up more photographs of student art!

I updated the sidebar of this blog to include a sample of my own artwork from the past 10 or so years.

Several parents have asked if there is anything they can donate to the school in which their child attends, so I have put together a general wish list of supplies that are always needed in every grade.

Dixon Ticonderoga pencils
Erasers- we have been using Pink Pearl
Crayola colored pencils
Construction paper of any color
White 9x12 drawing paper
Paint brushes
Tempera paint- white, black, red, yellow, blue
Crayola markers
Crayola crayons

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week!

ARTWORK ON DISPLAY!

3rd and 4th grade projects up for display at Archway Trivium East



4th and 5th grade artwork displays at Archway Trivium West

FALL BREAK

Hello Archway Trivium families,

I cannot believe we have already made it through the first quarter! It has gone by so quickly but I am excited to introduce what we will be learning next in art. I hope that everybody had a wonderful fall break and it has truly been a pleasure to meet with many of you this week during conferences. In class we are reviewing some of the material we learned last quarter and discussing some new concepts and art history. In 3rd grade, we discussed how artists use light in artwork. We looked at several paintings and observed the way that light and shadows make the subject matter look realistic. They will be creating a still life in pastel using light and shadow to make it appear 3 dimensional. 4th grade is continuing their unit on art of the Middle Ages and is discussing the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. They will be creating their own version with pastels and colored pencils. 5th grade is moving forward in their Renaissance unit by observing and discussing still life paintings from that era. They will be creating a realistic still life drawing using colored pencils.

Over the break, I had the opportunity to go to California for a few days with my family and visit the Getty Center. It was my first time at the museum and I felt so fortunate be able to experience such a beautiful space! I still can't get over the magical scale and scenery at every turn in such a giant complex. We visited almost all of the galleries and viewed so much amazing artwork. I was able to photograph many of the pieces (without flash) so I was incredibly excited to share some of them with the students. The Getty had a special exhibit about Illuminated Manuscripts which I could not believe since it corresponds with the 4th grade projects. I also saw several master artworks that we have discussed in each grade or are relevant to the upcoming projects, so this made it neat to show photographs of these works that I saw first hand!



Entrance to Illuminated Manuscripts exhibit

Illuminated Manuscripts!

Display about how Illuminated Manuscripts were created and the materials that were used



One of the paintings in Monet's Rouen Cathedral series, Morning Light, 1894



Vincent Van Gogh, Irises, 1600
Another impressionist artists we discussed in 3rd grade



Hans Hoffman, A Hare in the Forest, 1585
Renaissance realistic nature study



Sebastiano Ricci, Perseus Confronting Phineus with the Head of Medusa, 1710
Realistic mythological Renaissance painting



Jan van Huysum, Fruit Piece, 1722
Beautiful Flemish still life painting