Creating your portfolios

Go here, Tiger, and look at Tarika's sketchbook.

http://www.amiria.co.nz/artist/igcse-art-and-design-cie/

 Website contains ideas on compiling and presenting sketchbooks, portfolios, and books containing your visual explorations of ideas.

Portrait

Find a sitter, and draw a pencil portrait. The rule is that every part of your page must be touched by your pencil.

Ha! You must use shading, big time. Use every tone of grey to make your sitter's face rounded, from light to dark.

For a starting idea, go to the British Museum, and let's visit that exhibition on Spanish artists.

Explore animation

Watch an interview with animator Helen Hill on Youtube here.

Find what you can about Lotte Reiniger.

1924

Take a year, 1924, and find out what art was being produced in that year. You can interpret art to be painting, sculpture, even furniture, if you like. Go browsing through the books on the shelves and see what you can turn up. You could collect your findings in any way: make a map, provide some links, give me names to research.

If you need a start, I found this for Miro.

Matisse

'His constant concern is with space and how you can create it out of objects or simple colours. His continuous ambition was to keep trying different ways to achieve balance.'

See the rest of the article at The Independent.

Look at paintings of Matisse on Youtube here and see his use of colour and light here.

Make your own creation based on your feelings about Matisse's work.

David Hockney's trees

'Bright oil paintings of wheat fields and tree-lined country lanes ... multi-canvas vistas of woodland seen in different seasons ... watercolours of hedgerows and haystacks, charcoal sketches of copses and logs, and more than 50 colourful 'drawings', created using an iPad and printed on to paper, documenting the onset of spring along an old Roman road that runs out of Bridlington'.

Visit here and read the article; also watch the video at the Telegraph newspaper site.

What do you think about Hockney's pictures? Do you like the colours and shapes?

You could also scroll down the pictures here at the Daily Mail site. Photographs show the scenes painted by the artist matched against photographs of the site. Any comments? Does an artist have a responsibility to prettify a landscape? Do they have a responsibility to represent it as it is? What would you choose to do?

It's all in the angles

Look at David Stephenson's 24 images on his portfolio, taken from Heavenly Vaults.

What would have happened if the architects mixed up 90 degrees with 60 degrees? Disaster.

Now check out Vi Hart's Origami Proof on Youtube. Try it out!

At the very least, you'll have folded your paper with wonderful creases; they give you a working space for your next task.

Use your folded paper to create a design for a space that you'd like to see when you look upward. Imagine it painted on a ceiling. If you were to do that, you'd need to divide your space carefully, check your measurements (twice) and then begin painting.

Oh, and visit a chapel, or somewhere with a big roof space. Ladies, did you look upwards at King's?

And while we're wandering about here, you should know about this.

Damien Hirst

Julian Spalding on Damien Hirst:

'Damien Hirst isn't an artist. His works ... have no artistic content and are worthless as works of art. They are, therefore, worthless financially. [...]

'I've coined the term Con Art, short for contemporary conceptual art and for art that cons people. Contemporary conceptual art? All art is a concept in the sense that it's the product of thought. But all art must also be a creation. You have to be able to see art; it can't just be a projected thought. That's how the emperor got dressed; his expensive robes were all in the minds of people around him, when in reality he had nothing on. [...]

'The trouble with found objects is that you can't tell just by looking at them what the person who put them in front of you is trying to tell you unless he or she has altered them in some meaningful way. Nor does the act of placing something in an art gallery, whether it's a stack of bricks, a bin bag or an unmade bed, automatically make it a work of art, any more than framing a canvas with paint on it automatically makes it a painting.'

See Hirst here and here. Read Julian Spalding here. What's your opinion?

Patrick Heron

Go to Abstract Art Framed. Read about Patrick Heron and review the images on the right-hand side.

What was it about your art last week that made me say, 'That reminds me of Patrick Heron'?

Travel advertisements

Scroll down these beautifully designed travel ads from the first half of the twentieth century at Brainpickings.

Can you design a poster for Hong Kong using some of the techniques of line, shape, colour, that you detect in these ads?

Here is a delightful Hong Kong travel film to help you, from 1938.

If you don't fancy Hong Kong, do your research for a poster somewhere else, such as Singapore, London, Sydney.

Stars

Remind yourself of Van Gogh's Starry Night. (The McLean song for Van Gogh is here.)

Draw stars. As many and as various as you can create.

...when you run out of ideas, watch Vi Hart, then start all over again.

Collage

Recall an emotion you have experienced. Sadness, anger, delight, frustration? Try making a collage which expresses that feeling.

Go through old magazines, pick out printed ephemera, choose fragments of colour that represent your emotion, and so on, until you have a good selection. Bring them together and glue them down to form a complete and coherent whole. Look at your finished piece. Did you capture the mood?

Wiki describes a range of materials used in collage. I guess there is no limit to what you can find to stick down.

If you work in a scrapbook, we can take your assemblage home.

Chinese landscape painting

One of the art genres I've enjoyed finding out about since we arrived in Hong Kong is landscape painting.

I like the idea of a long, scrolled painting, assembled like a narrative for the arm chair traveller: one that tells the story of a journey, the different people you meet, the physical places you pass through, and the different emotional and thinking states you experience.

Think of a journey you have made, and how it affected you. Were you in haste when you began? Worried en route? Relaxed? Sad? Angry? Could you tie your ideas into a landscape? Can you draw the entire story, from start to destination?

If you want to research styles of drawing, look at some Chinese landscape painting through the centuries. The Hong Kong Museum of Art has an excellent range. If we can't make it to a collection, find some inspiration on the internet.

El Greco

When I first laid eyes on a painting by El Greco I thought it had been hung it in the wrong gallery! It was out of style, out of time, out of place: human shapes were distorted, the light-dark contrast was shockingly exaggerated, the faces were deeply expressive. I loved it, immediately.

And I would run through time to give him a big smackeroo for Gentleman with hand on his chest.

What do you think the man's hand gesture signifies? Is it a secret sign? Is he swearing an oath? Are his fingers fused? Is he forming a letter shape? Is this a Christian symbol of the cross? Does it mean nothing at all?

What about the golden top of the sword? Does that influence the meaning of the hand? Or his facial expression. Does it fit with his hand? Then the sloping shoulder... is he in movement, his form exaggerated by clothing, or is his shape significant in another way?

I adore it all. Especially how there are no answers. It's one of those paintings that keep me guessing.

Textiles

Watch this video of WOW.

Many of the costumes in WOW are multi-media creations, and require plastics, wood, and cloth.

Can you create a piece of textile art this week, maybe using some of the ideas you've seen in WOW. There are hundreds of places online to go for textile inspiration, and many tips, tutorials and inspirations from textile artists.

I enjoyed thinking about ideas of printing cloth, trapping sequins and looking for photo inspiration in Catharinablog, Sew Danish, and Judy Scott blogspot.

Secret art

Your assignment this week, which you cannot refuse to accept, is to create a piece of art at home, then transport it to another place to leave it there.

You could make a drawing, create a sculpture, make an item of craft from bead and wire, paint a picture. Make whatever you would like, but you must leave it in a place we'll visit. If you wish to label it, do so, but you can leave it with no message if you wish.

To inspire you, watch this video about Scotland's secret sculptor.

Mail art

Send mail art this week. As Wiki explains:

'Mail art is a worldwide cultural movement that began in the early 1960s and involves sending visual art (but also music, sound art, poetry, etc.) through the international postal system.'

Scroll this mail art blogspot to see postcard examples.

Multi-media projects can grow out of mail art; see this video on youtube to set you thinking.

Talk about your ideas on these words: Art out of control.

Find out about Ray Johnson.

And some lucky person in Buckinghamshire will soon receive my own hand-crafted joy on an envelope. (I bet they can barely breathe in anticipation.) But we can call both sender and receiver an experiment in mail art.

Fun with frottage

Ladies, a definition and example of frottage is given on the cover of your new sketchbooks.

Try it this week; see what you make. Don't look in the house. Rub the outdoors. Streets, signs and textures. Don't scribble over the face of old farmer Chang though; his life is hard enough.

For examples and ideas, try All About Drawings.

And if you want to think about it... Wiki says Max Ernst 'invented a graphic art technique called frottage'. I think Ernst brought the approach into the range of drawing techniques used by graphic artists, and so encouraged its acceptability, but inventing is a bit strong. What do you think? Is frottage an approach to mark making and communication that you can imagine people doing for generations?

Geology and Michelangelo

Visit the Saylor art course video on carving marble, from the quarry to the finished sculpture.

For a demonstration of carving with traditional tools, watch an artist at work.

Who wants to give this a go?

Cartoon lessons

Link to 26 lessons at the Incredible @rt Department and CartoonArtClub.

Draw cartoon people, animals, made-up creatures, places. The same principles apply whether your cartoon is intended to be funny or sad.

Photography/Art

If you want to join in with a never-ending debate, you can ask yourself Is photography art?

Or you can consider the many photographs that inform our culture - in magazines, ads, hoardings - and wonder if you'd include them in your definition of art.

Go taking pictures in the village. Or go looking on the internet for inspiration.

Landscape and architecture, people, still life.

Dress

I hear one of the Arseface dollies is about to have a fashion redirect.

Check out the history of costume starting on this page: Dress, fashion and social change. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the picture icon Next when you are done; on following pages you can take a quick tour through costume in history.

I hope to see Arseface showing off her new couture down the catwalk soon. But watch out! You have a critical audience! I'm going to engage the designers in talk about the inspirations they've found and the impacts they want to have.

(And if they don't have any, I'll put Arseface in the freezer until they come up with some.)

Grab a sketchbook and pencil

Draw.

If you want to make objects or people appear rounded - as if they're growing from the page - experiment in using your pencil in varieties of density and pressure to create all grey tones. Control those grey tones to take your drawing smoothly from white to black.

Keep a big contrast between the light and dark areas of your drawing. Take the dark to black and the white to gleaming. An eraser will help blend the greys in the transition and ensure the light areas stay light.

Watch how an artist who's better accomplished than me creates a water droplet. (Last time I tried drawing a water droplet someone thought it was a standard lamp.)

Trash art

Last week on the path we found a key. It was old, rusted, lost a long time ago. My first reaction was to throw it away. But as I looked closely, I thought how it would look if I stitched it on the front of a leather notebook, with the notebook sealed by another means. I won't have any other decoration on the book, just a key that doesn't turn a lock.

This week, look for materials on the ground. What items look like trash, but really will make a great piece of art? Fabric scraps? Plastic? Wood? Metal? Powerstation beach might be a good hunting ground.

There are so many hundreds of art sites you can explore. A couple of good ones to get you thinking about combining found objects is An Artist's Journal and The Erosion Bundle Project.

Take photographs of your creations and let's put them on this site.

I'd love to create an inflatable bag monster. Simple and brilliant.

Lichtenstein

Not the first/last time you'll stumble over Lichtenstein, the required pop artist of the exam syllabus industry.

But first! Let's find a magnifying glass! Who's got it? Where is it? Is it down the sofa?

(Intermission until next Friday.)

Aha! Found it! Now use it to examine a variety of print materials. You may see dots! Ask your father. Or find out about the Ben-Day Dots printing process from Wiki.

Now read this kid's guide, then look at the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation site and visit some of his works in museums around the world.

Hey, some of his dots are over the walls at the Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong! Let's visit and see how he handled China. (You can have ice cream after.)

What do you think? Do you like his dots? Certainly these people do.

How would you reproduce a scene or a subject in the Lichtenstein style? (horse? fish? ice cream? flower?)

Finally... your father's astute contribution: to remind you that you need only one good idea in life, then you can spend the rest of your time and attention making it pay.

Greek sculpture

I say let's trust the BBC.

Watch a clip of How Art Made the World.* (If you like, go on to watch more of this programme or choose other programmes about Greek sculpture.)

Here is a place for information on the Riace bronzes shown at the end of the clip.

Maybe visit this site. (Remember when Mr W helped you make a model of the Parthenon? I bet it's still in his attic.)

On the same site are pages on sculpting material and techniques for marble and bronze.

Look at the explanation for casting bronze at the bottom of the page. Does it remind you of your visit to the Henry Moore sculpture park at Perry Green?

If, after all your reading and talking, you want to try the quiz, go ahead. (I knew more than I thought.)

Me, I want to visit Greece. Who's coming?

*Maybe a particular geographic area of the world and a particular way of looking at it. There's plenty of world not affected by Greek art 2,500 years ago. What do you think?

Aachen to Zais

Time for some European art! Visit the National Gallery website.

On the sidebar under Explore the paintings, you choose how to access the works - by artist, century, or pot luck.

Click around and choose a painting that you like. Visit it, and tell me why you chose it. When we're in England, let's make a date to go and see them!

That's my dream

Look at images of the new building for CityU Hong Kong in this week's Time Out. Find out what you can about the designer, Daniel Libeskind. Watch the following video; he explains some of his approaches to architecture.

Design a building for Hong Kong. What would your building be for? Who would use it? Where would you locate it?

And for round-the-world buildings ... here is the Canon Creative Park Architecture Museum.

Skulls, lots of skulls.

Yippee. We are into Hallowe'en.

Visit skull a day and see if it gives you any ideas.

Joy.

Graphics for communication

Graphic design uses images to communicate.

As you hit 7Eleven this week, look for the logos used to catch your eye or promote a product. Let's look at images on windows, drinks cartons, at the tills, and on your monkey cards.

Direction notices, prohibitions, company information all use similar images.

What other symbols do you see around Hong Kong? What logos would you create?

Ai Weiwei

Find out about Ai Weiwei.

A good place to begin is here, then let's have a conversation about art, authority, China, and politics.

(I have biscuits.)

Landscape

How would you interpret that word?

You could make a model, or choose to illustrate or paint a landscape. You could take a photograph or make an animation.

2,000 years of art?!

I watched this video this week. It's a college student's assignment. She focuses on western art, not eastern, misses out a huge amount, and moves around to show influences. However, there are some interesting moments.

If you were going to make a video about art, what would you put in it? Would you focus on one artist, on a particular period, follow a particular content (say, representations of fish through ages and places...) or would you jumble up as many artists as you could?

Calligraphy

I'll print out this info sheet.

Let's try and find some patterns, influences and movements in this artistic style.

Get out your calligraphy books and brushes and see what you can produce.

Museum of Art

Let's visit the Hong Kong Museum of Art for their exhibits of animals in art.

Do they inspire you to create some new designs of your own?

The Great Wave

Watch this programme on the great wave.

We've studied this image before.

Does this programme help extend your thinking about this image?