Level two - what is my kaupapa?

This is an example blog for 2020 to start you off.

I think most of you got the idea of the blogs by the end of the year and we have some great examples of blogging by the time you did. However, we want to start great and finish great this year. 

Your labels will be added as you write your first post like this. These labels will be five in total and you will be expected to use at least two each time you post:

2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4(folio) and Art 2019

The following is an exemplar of what your first blog should look like in a total of 150 + words:

[My Visual Arts course this year will be focussed on painting (or photography or design, you choose this bit and adjust). I enjoyed painting last year because I felt like I could do it easily/is a challenge for me/will be the most useful tool to help me express my ideas/is a passion of mine (this is your thoughts, not mine, and there is no real wrong. But, here may be the odd cop-out, which we would rather not have). My kaupapa for the year will be based upon spiritual and cultural development. This is something that interests me because my family lineage is so mixed and generations back of my family denied a great deal of their own history in order to fit into pākeha dominated culture. I felt like it would be something that I could work on for an entire year.]

The above paragraph is an introduction. It outlines my field choice for the year and explains why I have chosen spiritual and cultural development to base my kaupapa upon. So far, for my actual 'post' as a student, I am at 111 words. 

[I have gone through the artists in my theme from the matrix on Ako and created my mood board here:]

From here, I have decided on Mick Namarari, Faith Ring gold and Robyn Kahukiwa as my artist models for 2.1. These artists will also help me get started with 2.2 which is also going to be the start of my folio.

I have just copied and pasted these artists off the matrix, which keeps the hyperlinks intact for my post. 

My kaupapa based on this theme is looking like this:

(Image of the brainstorm you will do in class inserted here). 

Typed words at this point are 184. However, when you take into account what you will have on your brainstorm it is likely to be closer to 250. 

(a summing up of what is on the brainstorm here will be useful)

Level One Art - What is my Art Kaupapa? (1st blog post exemplar)

Kia Ora Level One
This is an example of what I am expecting you to include in your first blog post. This will relate to your 'WHY' and will be your starting point for the year.


Step One: Choose your theme, mediums and create your moodboard from the matrix 
This year I will be focussing on Feminism and Equality as my kaupapa.

I have chosen this theme because it is something I identify with as a woman and as someone who feels strongly about just practices in our community.

The media I will work with are Paint and Design.

The two artists I have selected for 1.1 are: Lisa Reihana and Sofia Minson from list one, and Banksy and Shepard Fairey from list two.

Insert your Moodboard here. Make it (it will have 39 Artworks on it) and then download it as a JPEG. Inserting it into your blog from there should be easy. 

(Here is exactly what I mean for this, don't include this part in your blog, this is just to explain to you... I went to the AKO matrix for level one and collected up my Artist model mood board. Then I was able to clearly state that I was looking at the artists I have listed above. )


This is the matrix from the AKO section of our site. You MUST choose two artists from list one, two from list two and then one other from the third lists for 1.2 and 1.4. A total of five artists). 

Step 2: Choose your artist focus for 1.2 and 1.4:

The artist I am interested in for my kaupapa is John Heartfield.

Here are my notes about my thinking for my kaupapa (theme, what you like about it and what you think you can do with it):

(photo of your brainstorm here)

I want to use self-portraiture from selfies, river stones and lego pieces as my subject matter. I think I can show meaning and visual metaphors for my ideas with these three things.

This amount of writing is 130 words. It is the first post. It sets the scene. If you do only this much, you have reached our target. Add Labels on the right-hand side as clearly explained already! EVERYTHING needs to have at least 2 of those 4 labels this year. 

The Process of Painting - Acrylic

For those of you new to painting or if you needed a recap, we worked through the process of painting with acrylics today in class.

We looked at a simple sphere on a surface to specifically look at the skills of:

• Depth
• Perspective
• Proportion
• Tonal Range
• Shadows and Highlights

We also looked into the process of painting from thin to thick and dark to light

We started by COLOUR BLOCKING our tones in (either a warm of cold undertone to add depth). We did this by adding our gel medium to thin out our paints

- Use colour theory to sort your base colours - cool tones look far away, warm tones look closer to you. You are an illusionist with painting. - Once you have your base colours down, then you need to determine where the lights are and where the shadows are. NEVER use black paint at this point. If you really need it, use it at the end of your painting process, to strengthen the darkest areas only if necessary.- To mix a 'block' colour or dark shadow colour, look at the paints you have and select the darkest hues from opposite sides of the colour wheel and a tiny bit of yellow. That will usually result in a good dark tone. 

You don't need every colour in the universe on hand to paint, just the basics: red, yellow, blue, a nice clear purple helps (or magenta) and white. 

Build your paint up and paint with thicker paint than you would if you were using watercolour. less water and less paint is actually what you need. too much paint and you wont be in control. Same with too much water. 

You will be looking to build up careful layers, so if it's not quite right, so long as you haven't used too much paint underneath, you should be fine:

Remember to keep all your experiments as these will count as your evidence

Painting 2.2/2.3

These are the first practical standards we are aiming to complete. It is your starting point for the body of work that goes on your folio.



As you have developed your 'why', I have asked you to plan your folio. This was a rough plan, with thumbnail sketches.



In painting, planning like this will lead you to make art works:

Here is an example of some sketches we worked out with Kingston:
His why is:
Old school mafia in America - gangsters and romanticising them.

His artist models are:

James Rosenquist, "Day job painting"

Rosenquist
AskewOne











His subject matter is:
A man in a suit,
New York city
hands to wrap around the city
fingers in every pie (as the mafia had hold of new york)
Control through the force of guns

The first sketch on the top right is taking some compositional devices from Rosenquist - angles, cropping, images banging into each other and being cut off awkwardly, some layering of the subject, but no real space detailed.

The second sketch with the full figure is based on some Askew One ideas, where there is some layering of textures and lines that are almost abstract over and within the portrait. there seems to be a word used at the base of the askew one image, so we have attempted to play with that detail in Kingston's work here too.

Following on from here, It is Kingston's job to figure out a series of works that introduce his why more clearly and show how he is learning from his two artists.
The evidence he will collect as he goes:
- His brainstorm
- His subject matter as photographic or real sources (not out of his head)
- Notes and thoughts are written up on paper and on his blog
- Some careful observational drawing of his subject matter (3 - 4 A3 pages is good)
- His finished first series of paintings (at least 2 paintings)

Next step is to paint them and stick them on his board for the folio.

2.2 & 2.3 Design

These are the first practical standards we are aiming to complete. It is your starting point for the body of work that goes on your folio.

You should have a basic brief at this point - follow the sheet I shared with you on my site to create one. I want you to answer more than one word for them as they will help you to create a clear brief.

You should have a mood board completed on a google drawing as well. If you download as a PDF, you can use it more freely in a range of programmes.  This should also be on your blog.

These two components set you up to be working systematically throughout the year. you will have a purpose and something to go back to when you get visually stuck. 

You have your 'why' - it is your brief. 

You have your visual sources on your mood board. You should have identified 3 specific artists to work on for Art History, these should be your first main influences for your design work on panel one. 

From your company name and your general visual direction, all our designers should have sketched up in pencil 20 basic concepts for a logo. 

Along with this, you should have looked on dafont.com and traced 15 or so different fonts using your company name. Your screens work well as a light table!

The evidence you should collect from all of this for these standards is:
- your brief worksheet
- brainstorm of ideas for your direction
- brainstorm of ideas for names- a mood board like the one above
- 15 or so font drawings on an a3 page
- 20 or so concept sketches thinking about logo design and your chosen design models 

Photography 2.2/2.3

These are the first practical standards we are aiming to complete. It is your starting point for the body of work that goes on your folio.

By now you should have your 'why', in the form of a brainstorm which is also a part of your blog post.

You should have chosen three photographers as the focus of your Art History which you then also use as your first major influence for your first folio board. 

2.2/2.3 looks roughly like this:

In developing this body of evidence you need to get the following skills sorted:

1) How to work the camera

2) How to upload your shots and make proof sheets out of them. the small photos in a grid are what we call proof sheets. - [there is a file on my site to take you through this process]

3) A good understanding of aperture and shutter speed, the rule of thirds and leading lines - compositional principles

4) How to open photoshop and do some basic editing (colour, layering etc)

These are skills you learn, not ones I expect you to know before we start out. 

There are four shoots here. Four separate times that the student has chosen to go and set up a shoot and record what they see. 

From each shoot, there should be 2 or 3 series of works that you like. A series of works should be 2 - 5 or more shots that work together. 

From each series, there should be one more spectacular shot that you would want to make more of a deal of. 

What do you need to do to create this body of work for yourself? 

Make a plan, show it to me. 

Level 1 Drawing - 1.2 use wet and dry media to record information

One of the standards we are attempting to tick off over the year requires you to prove that you can draw accurately from a visual source.

Things this standard does not include:
- Imaginary doodles
- Written notes
- Stuff you tried to draw to look real but without source material (a photo or a still life to show me)

Things this standard must include:
- Tone
- Perspective
- Detail drawing
- Proportional undertanding
- Dry media; pencil, charcoal, crayon, pastel, collage
- Wet media; water colour, paint, ink

The work that is done for these 4 credits can also be on your folio. because you are all doing different projects, what your drawing pages look like will all be completely different.

A rule of thumb for this standard is:
4 A3 pages of drawing (or enough to fill 4 A3 pages) in dry media
4 A3 pages of drawing/painting in wet media

The exemplars for this standard are here

If you have any tonal or detail/proportion pages started, KEEP them, they count. The stuff below is stuff that would count at a merit/excellence level:

Year 10 Printing Process

We are going to be doing a 3-part print which means you need to consider a few things:
1. the order that your prints are going to be printed (which is the background, mid ground and foreground)
2. What colours are going to make your focal point (bird) stand out best?

I have done a few trials and a few fails to gain the best outcome

*We can add cornflour to lighter colours to make them more opaque and less transparent so we can use them as top layers

A quick recap of Series and Sequences

What is a Visual Motif?

Today we went over the excellence exemplar from 2017 and looked at how you can be creating mini series of work within your folio and how you can be using different visual motifs to tie your board together as a body of work.

Series of works explain points of your work as a whole. You are trying to say something to your viewer in the way you construct your images. Think if it like an essay with an Introduction, Key points and then a Conclusion.

Art History 1.2

1.2 describe is your keyword. Interpretation is required as you describe the artwork. Read the assessment slide on the site carefully, and revise it.

In the exemplar on the site, you will notice the Robyn Kahukiwa exemplar is divided into green and purple highlights, to define the difference. This is an achieved exemplar and as you can see, not much is required past literally telling me what is in the image and why the artist might have done that. You can all do this.

Here are your instructions to start this assessment:

1) Set up the doc like it says on the instructions - google docs, in your art folder named 1.2 Art history with your name too, and shared with me on email too.

2) Select two artists from the matrix on Ako - Learn. make sure they are good ones! check with me if you need to. Ideally they will be artists you are using to inspire you own folio work. 

Find one image for each artist. copy and paste a good quality art image for each artist onto the doc. - a good thing to do when searching for an image on google is to go up to 'TOOLS' and select 'LARGE' so the best quality images show up first in your search.

3) Paraphrasing. Make sure you read these instructions on the slide share. If you find great information you need to make sure you first, understand it and second, rewrite it in your own words.

4) You need a Bibliography - Cite everything. what website did you get the information from? Copy and paste the URL onto the bottom of your doc.

We will work on this every Monday until we are done. Final hand in is Week 10

Stylisation of our School Birds

As part of our magazine we are creating a 3-part lino cut merging out bird with the art movement Orphism which translates to circular movement and interlocking shapes. 

Stylisation

- Break your object down into basic shapes - what can you see?

With a lino cut we need to think of our object in terms of a stamp or stencil so do not be afraid to separate your shapes from each other to create positive and negative space. 

I have broken down my plan into 3 thumbnails to make sure that my layers interact well with each other as I am using my Orphist shapes to create leading lines towards my bird.

I have chosen the Pipiwharauroa as my bird. You can see the shapes I have chosen to use in my stylisation. 

Proportion Drawing

Getting things into proportion is sometimes hard. If you start with drawing in one place without having mapped out where the bulk of what you are drawing is going to go, you often end up with things in the wrong place and of the wrong size.

We call that out of proportion. We want IN proportion.

Guidelines help you! Map it out lightly so you know where you are going to draw then fill in the mass. 

'Mass' means the space it takes up

'Subject' is what you are drawing.

Tonal Drawings - Light Source and depth

We have been working at getting our shading correct so our objects look realistic and occupy space - adding depth. 

TONE: 
The point is, you need to make sure you are creating a depth of tone (black where it needs to be, white paper where it needs to be).

Things you can practice are:
1) creating a gradient on paper with your pencil.
2. Pick your light source and make sure you are consistent to where your shadows and highlights would be. 
3. Shade from dark to light - avoid adding an outline to your image as this will flatten it. 
4. Implied lines are a wonderful thing - once you get to your lightest part just let the eye do the rest of the work. 

Painting Skills - Tonal Range, Mixing and Blending colours. Week 6, Term 1, 2019

After selecting our final design for our paintings, we have been learning some new painting skills before we start to paint our final work.

We have been choosing 4 colours and mixing a tonal range from light to dark. Start with adding a small amount of your colour to white to make the lightest tone you can. Keep adding more colour to make darker shades. When adding black, only dd the smallest amount as this will quickly make your colour 'dirty' if you add too much.

Then try blending colours seamlessly in a gradient - first in one colour then in a harmonious palette (warm or cold colours are a good start)

Culture Clash - Concept Sketches Week 3, Term 1, 2019

We have been researching the visual style and patterns of both Manga and Pasifika and doing some sketches to understand how these styles work.

The next step we have ben working on is to merge the 2 styles together, using the compositional principles of:
- focal point
- open or closed composition
- arrangement/grouping of objects
This makes it more interesting for out viewer.

The process of art making, with any medium, follows the steps of
1. Concepts - your first ideas
2. Developments - what is working well and how can I make changes to make it better?
3. Final design

Year 10 Drawing and Composition Skills

This term in year 10 we are working towards creating a class magazine focussed around our Turangawaewae - our community or the place we belong.

I have been so excited to see the year 10 students improving their drawing skills with the use of tone and perspective and to see them working on understanding the arrangement of a good composition. We have had a go at drawing the 5 birds that our learning spaces are named after as well as still life objects like vases and figure models.

We have learnt from the artist Michael Mew who does mixed media artworks. He has taught us about compositional principles to use to draw your eye to a focal point. These can include colour, leading lines, balance of objects and the use of mixed media.

So far, my class have just started to use cut out figures, patterns, colours and text from magazines to demonstrate their understanding of composition and I am excited to see their creativity when we come to making our own.