Week TwentyEight: April 7-11, 2008

Art Centre - Week Twenty-Eight

Week nine of semester two of year one - four days of classes

Monday Morning – Printmaking

Presentations on printmakers: Three were given.

Angelina presented on the Japanese printmaker, Hiroshi Yoshida– his famous wave print is certainly recognizable. Here’s more about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yoshida

Amy presented on a contemporary German printmaker: Kiki Smith - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki_Smith

I presented on the Canadian women printmaker - teachers and their studios and galleries. The three I talked about were:

Ann McCall - http://annmccall.com/

Doreen Foster - http://www.studiogallery.ca/df/df_main1.html

Heather Aston – http://heatheraston.com

Monday Afternoon – Ceramics

Glazing in the kiln room. I learned how to dip pieces first in wax to coat the bottom then in a barrel of glazing liquid. I used two different colours of glaze as well as broken glass for each of my two pieces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_glaze

Another resource: An overview of ceramics and terminology - http://rbmason.ca/ceramics.html

Back in the studio, I continued researching the human body for the final project for the course. I made sketches of body parts that inspired me regarding the piece I would like to construct.

The following are websites I visited in my research for this project in case anyone wants to explore. Some are interactive – try placing organs in a body or bones on a skeleton!

Human Body Sites

Interactive puzzles - http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/

Human Anatomy - http://www.innerbody.com/htm/body.html

National Geographic: Human Body - http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body

Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body - http://www.bartleby.com/107/

Get Body Smart - http://www.getbodysmart.com/

Hillendale Health Index - http://hes.ucf.k12.pa.us/gclaypo/health_index.html

MEDtropolis -: Virtual Body - http://www.medtropolis.com/VBody.asp

Smithsonian: Artificial Anatomy - http://americanhistory.si.edu/anatomy/index.html

Thinkquest: Surfing the Human Body - http://library.thinkquest.org/J001614F/

Body Systems - http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/systems/systems.html

Wikipedia - skeletal system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_system

Wikipedia - circulatory system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulatory_system

Wikipedia - nervous system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nervous_system

Wikipedia - respiratory system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_system

Wikipedia - digestive system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestive_system

Wikipedia - endocrine system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_system

Wikipedia - muscular system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_system

Wikipedia - immune system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system

Wikipedia - human body - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body

Here are drawings of my inspiration (the inner ear with cochlea and three canals) and of the piece I have designed (a diffuser).

Tuesday – Design

I painted each of four identical pictures (mine were of a group of European toys), each one in a different combination of colours: Triad, Analogous, Complementary and monochromatic. For next class, tints and shades. We used a template to mark off a strip of square cells into which we will paint (suggested using red colour) going from light to dark and dark to light.

Wednesday – Drawing Fundamentals

We were shown how to make a Grid on a master artist’s portrait. We will work at home on reproducing the drawing. I finished the grid on the portrait I selected, Peter Paul Rubens “Portrait of a Young Woman”, and a corresponding grid on my paper and started transferring the image.

Water Colour Special Session #1

Michael Janzen http://www.vintageprints.ca/janzen.htm

We had our first session (of four three-hour workshops) with Michael – hearing stories about his times with A.J. Casson (http://bremnerfineart.com/ajc_homepg.html) and how he got started as an artist. We began our first water colour – a landscape. Michael would demonstrate for us, then we would follow his lead and work on specific sections of the painting.

Thursday – Painting

Only 45 minutes in class to block in the colours for the shapes in the following study of a horse’s skill on a broken step stool. Used a lot of medium to spread the paint quickly.

Special Guest – Painter and printmaker, David Blackwood showed slides and spoke at length to the students at the Centre. The presentation was given in the printmaking studio. This is his website. http://davidblackwood.com/ My favourite of the works he showed us was a series of paintings of a wooden door.

Watercolour Session #2

We continued to work on and complete the landscape started on Wednesday. For the last part of the class, we experimented with the process of wet on wet – painting on a very wet piece of paper.

Additional Notes

So far I’ve been able to raise $130.00 for the 4^th annual bowl-a-thon for Toronto Cat Rescue on April 26 at Bowlerama. Please e-mail me if you’d like to make a contribution! drkarsten@astralsite.com