Seurat- Color and Pointillism

Eiffel Tower 1889

As we move into our next Art Element of study Color, I am excited for my students to study and interesting artist Seurat. He developed a painting technique called Pointillism. Using dots of colors to fool the eye into thinking it is a mixture of another color. It still exists today in how comics are colored, and anything that has  pixelated color, computers, cell phones, etc. these things build on this artistic way of mixing color.

Georges Seurat

For example: dots of blue and red together trick the eye into thinking it is purple if you are far away from it.  Here is what I mean, look at the picture below I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This is Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the bottom picture is a close up of the lower right hand corner of the painting.

                                                                         

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

detail of Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

As you can see from far away your eye is tricked into thinking it is another color when really it is several hues used to make one. Interesting, don't you think?

Please link to the following YouTube to see a 3 min. video all about Seurat and his artwork.  Then go to this video to see a time laps self-portrait done in pointillism- this is super cool!

Edvard Munch

Munch is famous for his painting The Scream. But he was also a great expressionistic painter and painted many other moving paintings. I wanted students to be able to see an artist's work as a whole. Munch created so many works depicting the deep emotional places of life, many of them filled with extremes, such as great love and great loss. This is a great view of the culmination of his life’s work, call The Frieze of Life.

At the website below students will still get a great understanding for this artist, even if they view just a few slides in each section. (warning there is nudity: slides #7, 11, 13, 18, 22) The  wonderful thing about this site is that the notes for each painting are a primary source! Munch’s own words, from his own diaries. I hope you will take time to visit and explore the world according to Munch.

http://www.munch.museum.no/livsfrisen/english/eindex1.htm

This is our artist model as we study the element of light. So much of Munch's work is from a deep place of emotion,  I chose this painting because it offered a bright look at life and the environment around him at the time he painted this picture. Students will be using oil pastels and watercolor washes to paint this picture.

Study of Light, Value and Shading

 Watch the following fun videos on shading. I hope they will inspire you to get out your art box and practice what we have been learning in class! Try different techniques and different mediums. Pens and cross-hatching, Charcoal and smooth blending with your smudge nubs, Sketch pencil and lines. Get creative! What did you like best? What did you find difficult?

Shading shapes into forms- this is awesome!  I hope it will inspire you to practice your shading! This complements what we learned about in class today.                       http://youtu.be/ExRRHY9wT6Q

This is a fun video to watch on how to draw a pumpkin and shade it . Can you see the value scale on the pumpkin?Which direction is the light coming from?

                              Shading a pumpkin http://youtu.be/xJnMK-kSbEo