Muralists and Painters of the 21st Century

Mural Artist - C215

C215 - real name, Christian Guemy - is a French-born muralist, and is known as one of the most talented stencil artists in the world.

This particular mural is on the side of a building in Paris. His main art focus is on creating portraits of local people. In his words, "Faces reflect the personality of a city". He often does portraits of those in the community who are often neglected by society, such as the elderly, homeless, refugees and more. I like this mural in particular because of the bright colours, the detail, and his use of Chiaroscuro modelling. Yes. I did just search that up. But doesn't it sound way cooler than shading?

Painter - Banksy

Banksy is an anonymous street artist, film director and political activist from Bristol, England. He has been doing graffiti since he was a teenager, and much like c215, uses stencil art in his graffiti, along with a some relatively dark humour which is always fun. This is one of his most famous paintings, 'Girl with Balloon' which can be found in London -

I like a lot of Banksy's work, once again due to the use of stencils, and also because of the way he keeps large sections of his artwork monochrome and adds only one or two areas with bright colours. It isn't only his more comedic art, but his other work which relays messages of social importance. The meanings behind a lot of his artwork are really deep. 

Mural Planning

This week in art we have been working in groups of four or five to come up with thumbnail sketches we can use to make a mural representing 'whanaungatanga', which somewhat translates to family and togetherness. We also assigned each other positions within our group; colour coordinator, chief painter, director, story supervisor and assistant. 

This is a draft of the ideas we have for our mural so far

Painting Techniques

This week in art, we are learning how to implement four painting techniques into our artwork; mono-printing, texture, glazing and blending. We started with just doing these techniques by themselves, then moved on to recreating small sections of paintings by popular artists using said techniques.

Art Semester 2 Week 1

This week in art we have been learning a small bit about the techniques and designs of particular street artists and working on tonal accuracy. We also worked on research drawing and created pages comprised of fragments of pieces of work made by different artists from around the world. 

Here is my page of research drawing. 

Magazine Page

For the past few weeks in art, we have been working in groups of three or four, working towards creating magazine pages. We started by drawing up thumbnail sketches of possible layouts, and looking at tutorials showing how to do particular things like change font and add photos etc, before using Adobe Illustrator to create magazine pages based on a combined version of all our group member's sketches.

Does your design reflect your thumbnail sketches so far?
I believe so. We've changed certain things as they didn't work/look the way we had hoped they would, but the general placing of images and text is the same.

Does your design reflect the feeling of your topic?
My groups topic was originally theatre, but we have since then changed it to 'the arts'- which makes it much easier to incorporate our own artwork when it comes to that. We haven't decided on how we are going to display our art or some of the photos, but so far the writing we have on the page reflects our topic. It doesn't fully quite yet, but it will.

Do you know where your leading lines are?
Yes, the page on the right of our layout is a mix of both photos and writing with very noticeable leading lines.

Do you know what your focal point is?
Our focal point is our heading, which says 'Mahi Toi', translating to art in English, and is on the middle of the left page.

Have you played around with layering your visuals?
We haven't yet, but we are strongly considering trying to layer some of our prints, and also partially tinting fragments of photos on our page.

Is there a 'thing' you want to know how to do, but don't? Have you googled it or asked?
Regarding the tinting, we didn't know how to do it on Illustrator to do with, but we soon realised we could do this by creating boxes the same colour as the background of our text, and changing the level of transparency.

How does this help your learning?
It shows all the skills and techniques we have been learning throughout this first semester, such as using leading lines and focal points. By incorporating out artwork it also shows the different forms of art we've been looking at such as Michael Mew and mixed media, Sonja Terk Delaunay and orphism, and more.

The following photos (and video featuring Molly) are... Pretty much mistakes we made along the way. There were many, Many, mistakes.

This is what our page looks like right now-

Lino Cutting and Orphism

LO: To develop an understanding of Sonja Terk Delauney, Orphism and colour theory through lino cut print making. We should also be cementing our understanding of leading lines and focal points in completing these.

For the past two weeks in art, we have been working on preparing for lino cut print making. We drew six or more thumb nail sketches, with colour and annotations pointing out it's key features, and from there chose the two which we not only liked the most, but had the most prominent leading lines, a focal point, and the one which resembled the art from the most.

Here are the two final thumbnail sketches I chose

Here is the full page of all my thumbnail sketches

Once we had chosen our two thumbnail sketches, we chose the one which worked best, and thought of ways we could turn the design into two layers in order to split it and put it on two different bits of lino. Then after drawing our two layers onto two different bits of lino, we started cutting.

To begin with, some of my thumbnail sketches didn't have a very definitive focal point, but I managed to change that with the use of colour, and I think it quite closely resembles the art form of Orphism.

Sonja Terk Delauney- Orphism

Sonja Terk Delaunay was a French-Ukrainian abstract artist,

                                                                                              

wife of fellow artist Robert Delaunay. She spent

most of her life working in Paris, and was responsible

 for co-founding the art form 'Orphism', a type of art 

involving lots of bold colours and geometric shapes.

Sonja was born into a Jewish Ukrainian family, and moved 

to St Petersburg in Russia at the age of seven. 

She first thought of this type of geometric cubist art when her son was born in 1911, and she decided to make him a blanket out of bits of fabric similar to those she had seen in the houses of people in Russia when she was younger.

O R P H I S M

Orphism, also known as Simultaneism, derived from Cubism, and was named in 1912 by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire.

Oil painting 'Triptych' by Sonja Delaunay, 1963

Oil painting 'Rhythm Colour' by Sonja Delaunay, 1964

Orphism thumbnail sketches

Michael Mew Inspired Art

In art for the past few weeks, we have been working on completing Michael Mew inspired mixed-media art, using things such as leading lines and focal points.

After choosing and cutting out potential focal points from magazines for our piece, we drew some thumbnail sketches, using different pieces, different colours, and rearranging things on our page as we went. The media I used to create this piece was mostly water paint (a lighter shade of blue, a darker shade of blue, brown, and black) and the pieces I chose from magazines, but I also used pencil to sketch the bird. The focal point in my piece is the hands, and the bits of collage surrounding, and to the top left of the hands, create leading lines.

In our piece we also had to include one of five birds native to New Zealand (The Mōhua, the Riroriro, the Tīeke, the Korimako/Kōparapara or the Pīpīwharauroa). I chose the riroriro, also known as a grey warbler. The riroriro is part of the Acanthizidae family, a family of passerine birds, and are usually seen living in temperate forests.

Here is some artwork by Michael Mew

First week of Art: Shading and Tonal Notes

Year 10 Art - Week 1

This year, one of the choice subjects I chose is art. Today is our fourth lesson, and so far we've learnt quite a lot about shading and tone. We spent the first lesson going over the course line for this semester, and doing some drawing. We got to choose whatever we wanted to draw. If we already had an idea, then great. If not, there's a shelf in the art room full of random objects to choose from (mannequins, models, cups, cameras, jars, etc). These drawings gave an idea of how well we understood tone, proportion, and different shading techniques. I chose to draw a truck (one of the objects on the shelf), but never ended up finishing it, so it doesn't look too great.

We spent the next two lessons learning about shading, and creating a page filled with a range of different shapes and objects showing what we learnt. The first of these two lessons, we were instructed not to use an eraser, which I found kind of hard, considering when it comes to drawing and artwork I'm a slight perfectionist. After watching a video about some of these techniques, I feel like I got a better understanding of negative space, highlight, and reflected light, along with how to use them. Here's the page of tonal notes I created, along with the video we watched, and some of the examples we were given. 

Questions: 

Have I improved with shading?

I think I have. I have a better understanding of how to draw shadows and highlighted areas, so yes.

Do you understand that using a structure can help you draw better?

Yes, it makes your drawing more accurate, more specifically proportion.

What are you going to work on going forward in pencil drawing in and out of class?

I think I'll start using structure a lot more, because it looks kind of cool to see whats been done underneath the art, and it also makes your drawing look more precise.

Art Reflection

Art Reflection

Since the start of the term, we have been learning about four different types of art styles; Art Nouveau,  Kowhaiwhai, Pasifika and Manga. First we did research into each of the styles and created pages that included thumbnail sketches and information.

We then did a page including thumbnails that show what two of the four styles might look like if they were used together. I chose to do Pasifika and Manga.

After we had finished all four pages, we started drawing drafts for either a painting or a print of our designs for two styles put together. If we were painting, the two styles were Pasifika and Manga, and if we were doing a print it was Kowhaiwhai and Art Nouveau. I decided to do the painting first. The hardest part of painting was painting small details without messing up. The most successful part of my painting was the ocean. I think to improve it I could've used different shades of yellow in the sand. 

After I completed the Pasifika/Manga painting, I moved on to the Kowhaiwhai/Art Nouveau lino cut. The hardest part was making sure all of the lines were straight when I was cutting it. I could've improved my print by putting less ink on my piece of lino. The most successful part of my lino cut were the thumbnails I drew before starting my final print.

Year 9 Art Checkpoint

Year 9 Art Checkpoint:

Printmaking Process

Woodblock Printing Ink

Brayer- Ink Roller

Lino and Woodcut tools

Barren and Presses

Printmaking Paper

Bench Hook

1. Create a sketch form a variety of resources
2. Draw/transcribe drawing on to wood
3. Cover desks with newpaper
4. Put on apron
5. Put down material/tarp to catch wood shavings
6. Set up bench hook on table
7. Carve/Cut wood with tools
8. Cut paper for printing onto
9. Roll out ink
10. Roll ink onto wood
11. Press paper over inked block with Baren to create print
12. Peel print carefully off inked block and put somewhere safe to dry
13. Fold up material/tarp and shake outside
14. Wash rollers, and surface/block used for ink rolling
15. Stack chairs

At the moment, I am printing my drawing onto the wood block. The hardest part so far has been printing my drawing onto the wood, because you have to press down on the back and colour the whole back of the drawing in pencil. I'm enjoying creating pasifika patterns because it isn't like anything I've done before. I think if I made some of the patterns smaller, I probably could've added more patterns. Throughout making the Pasifika print so far, I have learnt more about how to make woodcuts and prints.

2017 Term 1 Art

This is all of my artwork that I've been working on throughout term 1 in 8Mt with Mrs Cairns

We started off by doing a worksheet on all the different types of shading. We then started learning how to draw bodies in different positions. Afterwards we made draft paintings of Lake Ellesmere, and then a final copy with a Maori superhero in front, which we made and drew ourselves freestyle.

This is my worksheet for shading:

We did this on the first week, to show how much

we knew about shading, and to help us learn what 

we didn't already know.

These are two sketches I made of D.C superheroes and villains:

We drew these two pictures of D.C superheroes

(One is a villain) to work on our technique for

 drawing bodies. I drew Superman and Venom.

This is the draft of my background along with my Maori superhero:

The piece of art here, is a Maori superhero that

I came up with the idea with myself, but I

got the ideas for the Maori tattoos from 

pictures off the internet.

Here are the two draft paintings of a birds-eye view of Lake Ellesmere:

We used the colours green, yellow and brown to

paint this. We had to paint it as a birds-eye view.

This is my final copy of my Maori superhero along with its background: 

I didn't finish painting but I finished sketching 

my Maori superhero over the top. I tried to

use as little detail in the hero as I could, so

it would be easier to paint, and as much 

detail in the background as I could.