Fine Art Class Description
Fine Art At Vine!
Materials List – Supplies available at Hobby Lobby or online
Sketch Book, graphite pencil set, hi polymer eraser, small mechanical pencil erasers(bonus), Prismacolor student set, Hobby Lobby Speedy Stamp Carve Block, Masters Touch Acrylic Paint set (24), Koi Watercolor set, taklon brush set, micron pens, ruler, container of some description.
Bonus Materials – if your student would prefer to work in different mediums, that’s super! Masters Touch Oil Pastel, Masters Touch Chalk Pastel
Classroom Materials – Strathmore mixed media or watercolor paper tablets 18×24, hobby lobby wood carving kit (2) Stretcher bars, (4 per student in 2 sets of 2 @ 16” and 20”, canvas sheet (Joanne Fabric), staple gun (borrow if someone has), gesso, sandpaper(instructor), Paper towels, brushes, paper plates
Projects – materials in addition to basic materials – graphite pencils, color pencils, erasers, sketch book
Project 1 – (Parents please provide stamp carve blocks as listed in materials)
Linoleum Block Printing – Stamp carve block, inks/rollers (provided by instructor), multimedia or watercolor paper
Project 2 – (Basic materials)
Cubist piece – Acrylic paint, brushes or oil pastel, sharpie/micron, multimedia or watercolor paper
Project 3 – (materials provided by Instructor)
Batik – acrylic sheet, acrylic paint, paraffin wax, paint, fabric dye, iron, newspaper
Students will be expected to keep a sketch book and spend about ten minutes or more per day observing and sketching their ideas and surroundings. These will be spot checked throughout the year.
Classroom Exercises –
Contour Line Drawing
Identifying shapes in objects
Gradients from light to dark
Hatching
Sketching exercise – apples, planets, pyramids and cans and other round and three dimensional objects
Canvas stretching
Blends – Acrylic – tint and tone, mixing techniques to create backgrounds
Blends and Washes in watercolor/ wet into wet
Perspective drawing from different points of view
Drawing a crowd
Brush loading and shape – techniques for texture
Units – Line, Shape, Shade, Color, Form, Space, Texture
Artists of note will be contributors who worked with the element of art we are discussing in a notable or relevant way, creating or contributing to the progression of Art History. We will talk about DaVinci, Raphael, Monet, Klimt, Kandinsky, Rembrandt, Renoir, Toulouse Lautrec, Durer, Hokusai, Carravagio, Matisse, Van Gogh, Munch, Picasso, Warhol and more. The intention is to build familiarity and observation skills and discuss culturally or historically influential art pieces.
Local Artists of note are our neighbors and community members who currently work as professional artists in the Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Martin and surrounding areas, such as; Nacho Moya, Betty Franks, Marlene Amerian, Nancy Takaichi and more!
Periods of art will include, but are not limited to – Renaissance, Classicism, Baroque, Expressionism, impressionism, post impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Contemporary
We are not writing papers, we are learning to spot notable works of art that have contributed to the progression of fine art and art history and that have become comparative benchmarks for how art represents the values of a society. Critical thinking and respectful discussion are skills we will work on in class. This might seem like a lot of history, but it will come in a conversational style.
Fine Art at Vine Academy!
We will study the elements of art and design in an exciting progression through Art History, Techniques and discuss Career options. We will work on developing good habits for a flourishing art practice. This class is intended to give students an understanding of the elements of art and design, as well as hitting the basics in traditional techniques and mediums. We will be discussing what art is, and how it shapes and is shaped by societies throughout history. We will look at art from a career perspective, exploring career opportunities and prerequisites. We will hopefully be taking a couple of field trips to explore behind the scenes at Colibri Gallery/ Cura Contemporary in Morgan Hill, and will be entering their Student Art Show.
This outline is a summary of the themes we will be working with but is in no way meant to be a study guide. The content will be given in class. The ‘tests’ are currently informal and primarily based upon classroom participation and thoughtfully applying the concepts we discuss. We will be doing a hybrid of warm up, lecture/ instruction time, and hands on technique.
Students will be expected to keep a sketch book. (color, size and brand of their own choosing – parents please select a better (weight/ quality) paper as that it will stand up to ink and eraser. It is recommended that students spend about ten minutes, and as many pages as desired per day sketching. Start with what you know. A sketch book is an artists journal. Feel free to write your thoughts, recipes, use stickers, make this your own creative space. I will spot check periodically, and we can discuss progress on an as desired basis. Sharing with the class is optional. The important thing here, is spending the time putting pencil to paper. Ideally, we don’t tear out the pages that didn’t turn out as hoped. We can learn a lot from the things we consider errors, and this is a reminder that not every piece is going to become a finished work. If the sketchbook runs out, parents, please replace. Save them. You will love looking back over these in years to come and so will your student. Also, parents, please talk to your artists about their progress. They may or may not choose to share, but it’s important to support their progress. It can be as simple as “what are you working on?” Technical critique should be avoided on sketchbooks, these are the working ‘thought jots’ and shouldn’t be limited by concerns about technique or correctness. That will come with time.
What is Fine Art?
Fine art intentionally uses the elements of art (line, shape, texture, form, space, color and value) and design in a composition for aesthetic or intellectual purposes.
Visual Art describes a variety of expressions, some being fine art, but are not limited to pieces created with an aesthetic or intellectual purpose.
Is crafting Art? Yes. Is it Fine Art? No.
Is hip hop dance? Yes. Is it Ballet? No.
They are both art, however they are different disciplines and are created with different purposes. Bonus food for thought – 1 Corinthians 12:12-12:26
Unit 1 – Line
Materials – Sketch book, Hi-Polymer Eraser (White), Graphite Pencil Set – Hobby Lobby(Masters Touch, Faber-Castell) or Amazon/ equivalent
A line is a dot with a message!
Vertical, Horizontal and Diagonal and Organic/ Thickness and weight
Notable Artist – Picasso – We will discuss the development of the artist and begin to take on the task of examining the development of messaging and developing your own voice in art. We will also discuss Reduction and Cubism.
Additional Artists we will be discussing – Kandinsky, Differantly, Rembrandt, DaVinci
Techniques – Beginning an art practice, contour line drawing
The Word – Book/ Chapter of note – 1 Corinthians 13:1 – 13:13
Bonus info. Lets look at art. I do not want anyone leaving this class at the end of the year to be in a position to say “I never could understand a word of that art mumbo jumbo” (a la Hank Hill) You must understand the language and the message and tell me WHY you disagree with it, not that you gave up before you ever began. You may have a very good reason to disagree with something, but if you can’t speak to that reason in a way that is understandable to others, then you haven’t really said anything worth saying.
Unit 2 – Shape
Materials – Sketch Book, Hi Polymer Eraser, Graphite Pencil Set
A shape is a closed contour in a two-dimensional area that is defined by a change in value or some other form of contrast.
Geometric or Organic
Notable Artists – Matisse 1865-1954 – French Post Impressionist, Father of Fauvism, reflected bold, flat forms, use of brush shape in art – Les toits de Collioure – bourgeoisie
Techniques – using shapes and lines to draw the face, identifying shapes and building with them to create forms
The Word – Reading on Art – https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-art.html – What does the Bible say about Art?
in 1 Kings 6, we see Solomon creating a temple for the Lord. In verse 4, “artistic frames” were made for the house. This reinforces the fact that God does desire beauty and likes to be surrounded by it. If Solomon did not think that God was glorified by beauty, he would never have taken the trouble to create “artistic” window frames. Again, in Song of Solomon, the beauty of the bride is compared to “the work of the hands of an artist” (7:1). God is the creator; He is the artist whose hands create beauty. It follows that any beauty we create is glorifying to God, our creator.
That said, it is important to define beauty. Art that is created to shock or horrify, or to glorify or elicit sin (violence, lust, greed) cannot be called “beautiful.” It is still “art” but not art that glorifies God. Using Exodus 31:3 as a guide, art that glorifies God should exhibit “skill, ability, and . . . craftsmanship”. Art that models God’s handiwork will be creative, intelligent, and well-crafted. It will have value.
God will not put in an artist’s heart to make things that will elicit sinful responses in others (Mark 9:42). He will not lead a person to create that which contradicts His nature. Artisans who create idols may be skillful (Isaiah 40:19), but they’re using their skill to pervert God’s glory, not honor it. This doesn’t mean that all art has to be like the Sistine Chapel, however, or that it can only depict biblical subjects like Jesus on the cross or the disciples in a boat. God dwells in “the perfection of beauty” (Psalm 50:2), and His holiness is beautiful (1 Chronicles 16:29 and Psalm 29:2). In creating God-glorifying art, the artist’s goal should be to lift the soul of man toward heaven and to illumine in new ways the multi-faceted beauty of God’s holiness, power, and grace.
Unit 3 – Shade/ Value
Materials – Sketch Book, graphite pencil set, hi polymer eraser, Prismacolor student set, Hobby Lobby Speedy Stamp Carve Block, Masters Touch Acrylic Paint set (24), taklon brush set, micron pens, sharpies
It would be helpful if the school could pick up the cost of the carving tools for this project, 14.99 each at hobby lobby for a wood carving kit that we will be using on the speedy stamp carve block. I can cover one and the school can cover one and we should have enough for everyone to work on their project.
Shade – Shading is also an art technique that can add realism and volume to a drawing by using lights and shadows. Some elements of shading include:
Shadow edge: The lighter part of an object where it turns away from the viewer
Halftone: The mid-gray of an object
Reflected light: A light-gray tone
Core shadow: The contour of a shadow, which can be ring-like on a sphere
Hatching: A technique that uses parallel lines drawn close together to create shade or texture
Cross-hatching: A similar technique to hatching, but the lines crisscross in different directions
Stippling: A technique that uses small dots to create shading and show value
Scribbling: A technique that involves drawing scribbles in any direction to create shading
We will be creating gradients using these techniques to create a bank of techniques that can be used in our first official project. Diligence is incredibly important in these exercises to ensure the best possible outcome in projects.
Notable Artists – DaVinci, Carravagio(chiaroscuro – the strong use of contrasting dark and light)
Project 1 – BLOCK PRINT!!! This is a super fun project which will be the culmination of our units in line, shape and shade. We will be cutting “linoleum” to make a print. The challenge in this is that we have to cut the reverse of the image we want to create. We will ink, and print, and this will be our first graded project for the year.
Additional artists of note – Albrecht Dürer, Hokusai
Unit 4 – Color
Materials – Sketch book, graphite pencil set, Prismacolor Student set, Masters touch Acrylic Paints 24 count, brushes, watercolor set, “Koi”
Techniques – paint! We will be making use of our knowledge of line, shape, and shade, paired with color to begin a painting that we will continue to develop as the class progresses.
We will use blending to create backgrounds,
Color as an element in art is both as simple and complex as color itself.
We can divide color in many ways, primary, secondary and tertiary, warm and cool, tint and tone, ROYGBIV, CYMK or RGB… the ways we have come to perceive and categorize color are kaleidoscopic.
Color, as we experience it is a visible wavelength of reflected light, perceived by the cones in the human eye. On an atomic level, color is not the color that is absorbed by a surface, but the light that is reflected by the surface. So an object that appears blue, absorbs more red and yellow waves and reflects more blue ones. The shade of blue will be affected by the percentage of each type of light is being reflected to the eye.
In the 1660s, English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton began a series of experiments with sunlight and prisms. He demonstrated that clear white light was composed of seven visible colors, the colors of the rainbow, or ROYGBIV that make up the visible spectrum. The visible spectrum is the narrow portion within the electromagnetic spectrum that can be seen by the human eye. We cannot ‘see’ microwaves, radio waves or gamma waves because they are outside of this spectrum.
By scientifically establishing our visible spectrum (the colors we see in a rainbow), Newton laid the path for others to experiment with color in a scientific manner. His work led to breakthroughs in optics, physics, chemistry, perception, and the study of color in nature.
Working in London, the painter Jacob Christoph Le Blon, a citizen of Frankfurt, secured a patent in 1719 from George I for a process which he called “printing paintings.” Much as fifteenth century printers viewed printing by movable type as a less expensive way to reproduce texts that had previously been reproduced by manuscript copying, Le Blon viewed his process of color printing as a less expensive way of producing or reproducing color paintings.
Le Blon was the first to outline a three-color printing method using primary colors (red, yellow, blue) to create secondary colors (green, purple, orange). He makes an important distinction between “material colors,” as used by painters, and colored light, which was the focus of Newton’s color theories.
Enrichment info from Wikipedia – how complimentary colors work:
In the early 19th century, scientists and philosophers across Europe began studying the nature and interaction of colors. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe presented his own theory in 1810, stating that the two primary colors were those in the greatest opposition to each other, yellow and blue, representing light and darkness. He wrote that “Yellow is a light which has been dampened by darkness; blue is a darkness weakened by light.” Out of the opposition of blue and yellow, through a process called “steigerung”, or “augmentation” a third color, red, was born. Goethe also proposed several sets of complementary colors which “demanded” each other. According to Goethe, “yellow ‘demands’ violet; orange [demands] blue; purple [demands] green; and vice versa”. Goethe’s ideas were highly personal and often disagreed with other scientific research, but they were highly popular and influenced some important artists, including J. M. W. Turner.
At about the same time that Goethe was publishing his theory, a British physicist, doctor and Egyptologist, Thomas Young (1773–1829), showed by experiments that it was not necessary to use all the colors of spectrum to create white light; it could be done by combining the light of just three colors; red, green, and blue. This discovery was the foundation of additive colors, and of the RGB color model. He showed that it was possible to create magenta by combining red and blue light; to create yellow by mixing red and green light; and to create cyan, or blue-green, by mixing green and blue. He also found that it was possible to create virtually any other color by modifying the intensity of these colors. This discovery led to the system used today to create colors on a computer or television display. Young was also the first to propose that the retina of the eye contained nerve fibers which were sensitive to three different colors. This foreshadowed the modern understanding of color vision, in particular the finding that the eye does indeed have three color receptors which are sensitive to different wavelength ranges.
At about the same time as Young discovered additive colors, another British scientist, David Brewster (1781–1868), the inventor of the kaleidoscope, proposed a competing theory that the true primary colors were red, yellow, and blue, and that the true complementary pairs were red–green, blue–orange, and yellow–purple. Then a German scientist, Hermann von Helmholtz, (1821–1894), resolved the debate by showing that colors formed by light, are additive colors, and those formed by pigments, are subtractive colors, and did in fact operate by different rules, and had different primary and complementary colors.
Take away –
When working in pigment – material paints and dyes, we use subtractive color, when working in digital mediums, we work with additive color. What this actually means is that digitally you can mix colors to get white. Working with pigments you cannot.
Artists who are well known for their use of color would include Van Gogh, Post Impressionist Henri de Tolouse Lautrec, Matisse, Warhol and Haring.
Different colors have different visual values and representations. What are the associations we might have with some different colors? As far back and even before the Roman Era, red has been a dramatic color. It’s been used to cloak armies, represent patriotism, and excite theatrical audiences. It is a hue we would use to call attention to a dynamic element in art. Purple in the Bible can be used to show rarity and value.
Henri De Tolouse Lautrec was a post impressionist who depicted people in their working environments, depicting both the wealthy and urban underclasses of Paris. He used rich reds, deep turquoises, and ochres and worked as an artist creating commercial art, Art Nouveau posters and advertising for theaters.
Local Artist of note Nacho Moya
Revelation 4, 1:6 The Throne in Heaven
4 After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. 3 And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads. 5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings[a] and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God, 6 and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.
Color is kind of a big deal. If we took all of the visual words describing how color is being seen out of this passage, would we have the same understanding? Would it communicate the same ideas and feelings?
Unit 5 – Form –
materials remain the same. – please stay on top of your artists paint usage. We will be needing paints for projects and continuing our paintings. Please make sure you are using an artists paint rather than craft paint. (eg. Apple Barrel, Tulip etc. are no. These paints have a different pigment to binder ratio and aren’t going to have the same blendability and consistency when mixing and using mediums.
A three-dimensional element of art that artists use to create visual tools for composing a work of art. It can be a shape that expresses length, width, and depth, or a three-dimensional object. Examples of forms include boxes, balls, pyramids, and cylinders.
Techniques like impasto, bas relief, carving and sculpture would be included when talking about form.
We will continue our practice in sketching, giving our shapes form, and using our shading techniques to create three dimensional form in our art.
Notable artists who used form – Marlene Amerian – Waiting for the Train – Morgan Hill, Assyrian Bas Relief, Picasso – Reduction to cubism
We will do a cubist piece – and oh boy – yay. This is not going to be a piece “in the style of” cubism, as it has been reverse engineered to appeal to pop art, but we are going to talk about what cubism actually is. Switching a nose and an ear is not cubism. We will talk about protégé Andres Valencia and decide if he is truly a cubist painter, or if he is only working in the style of cubism as it has evolved alongside pop art.
Early Cubism
The Cubist art movement arose out of the need to define and represent the new modern reality that was shaped by new inventions, philosophical speculation, and cultural diversity. Cubism was a rejection of classical principles of art, trading unified perspectives for multiple simultaneous perspectives, and reducing forms down to simpler shapes and large fields of color. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque are credited with inventing Cubism, and the first works in this style were exhibited in 1907. Picasso understood that painting must be reinvented if it wanted to survive among photography and videography of the future. Cubism portrays the world through a more innovative and imaginative lens, less realistic than other styles.
Cubism in many ways was evolving alongside motion pictures, creating multiple overlapping frames that transition within a single piece. It can be the average of its components, or multiple views of the same subject.
Project 2 – Cubism – We will be starting our second project, a cubist piece illustrating a simple machine or action, using reduction and motion, and showing multiple positions within the same piece.
Unit 6 – Space
Materials remain the same, with the addition of a ruler.
Space in a work of art refers to a feeling of depth or three dimensions. It can also refer to the artist’s use of the area within the picture plane.
Types of space in art include positive space, negative space, deep space, shallow space, and three-dimensional space. Positive space refers to objects that stand out from the negative surrounding or background space. Deep space refers to the depth and shallow space refers to the lack of depth in a picture.
Single point perspective, two point perspective, three point perspective
Artists use color perspective to create a sense of depth and spatial expression in their work by changing colors and contrasts. For example, in a landscape painting, artists might use warmer colors in the foreground and cooler colors in the background to create a sense of distance. As the scene moves into the background, the color range, temperature range, tonal value range, and intensity becomes more narrow.
Notable Artist – DaVinci – the Last Supper
Techniques – perspective in drawing, Horizon line, vanishing point, point of view and convergence lines
We will be doing some perspective drawing, bonus technique will be thumbnailing and decision making, the process of doing multiple low resolution draft sketches to develop a layout or concept.
We will continue to work on our paintings
Unit 7 Texture – Paint Time!
Texture in art is the perceived surface quality of a work of art, which can be visual, physical, or both. In two-dimensional art, like paintings, texture is the visual feeling a piece gives off. In three-dimensional art, texture is how the piece feels when touched.
Technique – painting – we will be working on using different brushes and different brush strokes to create texture
Project 3 – Batik