Influences- Claude Monet

Claude Monet is one of the first artists I can remember learning about.  I remember spending time with my grandmother and looking through her art books.  There was one we loved to look through a lot, which was A Day in the Country. 

Terrace at Sainte-Adresse, 1867 was my favorite Monet painting to look at in the book.   This painting for some reason was burned into my memory.  I liked it because it was very realistic looking instead of the impressionistic look.  Even at a young age I was fascinated with a more realistic style.

Claude Monet
Terrace at Sainte-Adresse, 1867

My love for Impressionism continued to grow and I remember doing reports about Georges Seurat in middle school.  But my love of Monet was permanent on my first visit to New York.  I went to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and saw one of his water lily paintings.  It was massive and as you sit and look at it, you become consumed by the serenity and calmness of the colors.  From that moment on, any time I was in New York, I had to go to MOMA and sit in front of the Monet. 

Then in 2008, I had gone to Paris.  It was my first trip to Europe.  It was a beautiful city and I was excited to see all of the graffiti art.  Then I stumbled upon the Orangerie Museum, which houses 8 water lily paintings.  They were massive and beautiful! I remember being a bit sad because my camera batteries were dying.  But I managed to get in some photos. I think I also bought every book they had in the gift shop about the paintings.  If you ever get a chance to see one in person, I recommend finding a place to sit in the middle of the painting and just stare.  

Sunday Agglomeration

I'm surprised how I managed to work on my own art this week, considering how tired I've felt. I wasn't able to complete a drawing a day, but that is because I worked on a few other things.

Here are some of the drawings I did this week:

Here are some Shrink-A-Dink Mizzles I created:

Before shrinking

After Shrinking

And lastly, I am working on an in progress watercolor piece. This week I was worked on the water. I am using watercolor pencils for the entire piece.

Random Thoughts Thursdays

Sketches of students faces while testing.
They all looked so miserable.

 I figured in my quest to reorganize my blog I would need a day to rant about something not related to my art directly.  So, Thursdays have been designated "Random Thoughts Thursdays."

This week has been exhausting, and people who know me are probably thinking "When are your weeks not exhausting?"  True, I take on a lot of different activities, or extremely huge projects that consume me.  But this week was the week I have dreaded all year...state testing week!  It is so exhausting.  This year, we tested students in our own classrooms instead of corralling them into the gym.  I actually liked having my students in my class and administering the test wasn't so horrible. What surprised me was how draining and exhausting it was to watch students take tests for 3 hours!  I can only imagine how my students felt after taking their tests.  A friend of mine compared administering the test to watching grass grow or paint dry.  It is so true! I do have to say my kids were rock stars!  They didn't complain or rush through the exams.  They seemed to take it seriously and do the best they could. 

I am not a fan of state testing.  I think it is ridiculous to judge student learning from a multiple choice test.  Everyone has a different style of learning: visual, auditory, or kinetic.  If we learn in these styles, why are we testing knowledge that doesn't address them?  With all of the studies that have been done, you would think there would be a better method.   But we are creatures of habit, and to make such a change would be a difficult one to maneuver.  It is just disheartening to see the arts get pushed aside because test scores are low, or due to budget cuts. *SIGH* But I'm beginning to get into a topic that becomes depressing for me, so I'll stop here.

In addition to testing week, we had our awards ceremony, The Golden Bear, on Wednesday night.  The Golden Bear Awards show is where departments select students who demonstrate great skill, knowledge and passion.  Any grade level can be nominated.  My colleague/guy best friend and I present the Golden Bear Award for the Visual Arts Department. We are second to LAST to present and by the time we get to the stage everyone has checked out.  It is a little sad, so for the past 3 years we have done something to liven things up.  The first year we wore masks of the other 2 art teachers' faces.  We got a few laughs for that one.  I can't remember what we did last year.  But this year, we made our winner a very colorful crown!  We do these things in hopes that they will get tired of our antics and put us at the beginning of the show to get us out of the way.  But I think they look forward to what we might do.  Even though it is always during an exhausting week, or around the testing schedule, it is always nice to see the kids get dressed up and walk on stage.  We have so many talented students!


I would say I'm looking forward to the week almost being over, but this weekend proves to be just as busy.  At least I will be able to sleep in a little bit...hopefully!

Influences- Mark Ryden

 I have decided to dedicate my Tuesday blog posts to Art, Artists, and anything that influences my personal art, or that sparks creativity and imagination.

Today, I would like to introduce you to one of my all time favorite artists...Mark Ryden.
 I fell in love with this Mark Ryden's work in 2002, when I bought my first issue of Juxtapoz Magazine. I was "actively listening" for art assignments.  "Active listening" was the term my Art Education Advisor used to describe finding inspiration from our surroundings.  I had just graduated from college and was about to embark on Student Teaching, so I was trying to find art and artists that high school students would be attracted to. I made a poster of some of my favorite paintings of his and have it hanging in my classroom.  It always creates discussion amongst the students sitting near it.  Soon it turns into a Q&A session between me and my students about the art work and what they think it means.  His works sparks a positive curiosity in my students.

 I love how his work is surrealistic, but painted in a hyper-realistic way.  But it is his symbolism that truly won me over.  His paintings hold so much meaning in them.  I always use his work as an example of symbolism for my students. The only series I didn't enjoy was his Blood and Tears collection.  It is a very dark grouping of paintings, but it reflected how he was feeling at the time.

My favorite series is The Tree Show.  This is probably where my love for trees truly began, but I loved the humor in his paintings. I had almost decided not to go to the opening of The Tree Show, which would have been a huge mistake because I got to meet Mark Ryden, talk to him, and take a photo with him.

Me with Mark Ryden at The Tree Show, 2007

These are a few of my favorite paintings from the show:

Girl Eaten by Tree

The Apology

Allegory of the Four Elements

You can see more of his work at http://markryden.com/

Sunday Agglomeration

I am trying to organize what I do into more manageable chunks.  I'm not sure how successful this is going to be, but it might prove to be easier.  I've decided to do a summary of my daily drawings on Sundays instead of posting every day or every other day.  My art club vice president liked the name Sunday Agglomeration for its title. I will still post a few other days during the week, but I think I want to designate them topics.  I think one might be a continuation of artists and art that has inspired or currently inspires me. The other might be a random thoughts day.  I'm not sure, but little steps will eventually turn into long strides.

Here is this week's first Sunday Agglomeration:

Some of my daily drawings this week are not influenced by anything in particular. For some reason, this week has been a week of very intense dreams, which means I wake up more exhausted before I find my way to bed. My dreams are like adventure movies. I'm always searching for something, but I never find the answer. But thanks to the amount of detail my dreams have, and the intensity of the search I wake up drained of energy. Coffee and Mint tea have become my best friends this week. This was my inspiration for this drawing. I want nothing but to jump into the biggest pile of soft pillows and fall gently asleep.

I had no idea what to draw, but I desperately needed to draw something.  Life decided to throw me a curveball that I wasn't expecting AT ALL!  I wasn't thinking of the baseball analogy when I drew this, but clearly my subconscious was.

The rest of the week's drawings were not inspired by anything in particular.  They were just quick drawings I put together.

During the week, I had my Art Club students play with Shrink-A-Dink paper.  Do you remember Shrink-A-Dinks?  They were my favorite thing to make as a kid.  Needless to say, my students had lots of fun drawing on the paper and then watching them shrink in the toaster oven.  I traced my drawing of Stargazer in tree pose, colored it, and then turned it into a pin.  This gave me a great idea.  I can turn a lot of my daily drawings into key chains, and pins.  I might even make earrings.  I'm still playing with it, but I a bit excited.  I tried out a few others and shrank them.

Happy with the results I began tracing more of my drawings.  Here are the ones I need to color and shrink. I haven't decided what these will be.  I think for now I might stick to key chains.

The Self Portrait

The Self Portrait can be a nerve wrecking assignment because you are forced to look at yourself for long periods of time.  I was nice to my students and allowed them to work from photos.  But I remember having to create dozens of self portraits using a mirror; staring at myself, watching myself breathe, and forced to see all of my flaws.  I remember not liking the drawings at all.  Perhaps it was because I didn't have the amount of focus that I have now.  It could also be that I just wasn't comfortable being the person I was. Or maybe I just didn't know who I was. 

The four blue self portraits are from my sophomore year in college.  I believe I used charcoal on blue toned paper.  The proportions are so off, but I these were my first portraits drawing form a mirror.  If I remember correctly, we had to draw ourselves from different angles: straight forward, 3/4 view, looking up, looking down, and a large portrait including the body. I never liked these drawings, but do artists ever like their own work? 

My second year teaching at Warren, I was given my Intermediate Drawing class.  It was my first time teaching an advanced level. In my ambitious excitement, I decided it would be great for students to create portraits that really explore emotions.  Each student had to choose one emotion and draw 5 people expressing that emotion.  The portraits were about 3x5 or 4x6 in size.  They used Prismacolor colored pencils on a thick vellum paper.  This is one of the last self portraits I have done in quite a long time. Here is the sample I created of the emotion confused.

It has taken some pretty big obstacles and life lessons for me to accept a lot about myself.  But I feel the journey of getting to that acceptance of oneself is vital.  Without that journey, we might never care to ask ourselves those important questions which lead to revealing answers.

I sometimes wish my students would have this same curiosity about themselves when they create their self portraits.  But I expect too much from teenagers, who spend most of their time making themselves be like those around them.  They search for a group to belong to and do what it takes to erase any individuality.  A funny occurrence that I see happening is that there is a group of students who try to maintain their individuality, but they try so hard that they just end up looking like all of the others.  And never point this out to them! They get really upset when you point it out.

I'm not exactly sure what I did this year, but my students rocked their self portraits.  Normally, I get a lot of portraits that look nothing like a human being.  But this year, my students did a great job.  Plus, there were many who pushed themselves to go beyond the typical "likes" and hobbies.  They really tried to capture something more about themselves. 

Color Run

Sunday, April 22nd was the Color Run.  This was my first time participating in it and I LOVED IT!  I am looking forward to running it again!  I enjoyed running this event because by the time I was finished it didn't feel like I just ran 3 miles.  I wanted to go back and run through the course a few more times!

Waiting for the race to begin.  Look at that sea of white!

What we looked like before the race began.  Always, always get a before picture!

The first section was yellow.  It was really amazing to see a cloud of each color as you ran the course.

The only downfall was that a line would form at the color point, but if you wanted to really get color you had to get in close

My friend after the purple/blue section.  This was our favorite section.  The people really got into covering us with color.

This was a fun random picture I took of the next section.  It is some random person getting hit with color.

And our "after" shot!  We look good in color!

My little sister and I after she complete the course with her friends.

Every 15 minutes, a little distance from the finish line, people would throw the color into the air to create a color cloud.

I was trying to get a photo of my sister and I accidentally got into this woman's photo.  She insisted that we take a real photo together!

This will have to become a color version later, but this is my daily drawing inspired by the Color Run.