Op Art

Optical art was a big movement in the 60's and 70's. Today you still see op art in marketing, album covers and video games. This week we drew some simple optical art designs and colored them in with sharpies. Once the students know how to create these drawings, they can experiment with varieties that are great for backpack designs, backgrounds for paintings, or just awesome doodles. Great job guys! These were especially cool altogether.

Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

The students loved learning about Edvard Munch and ‘The Scream’. Edvard was a Norwegian artist born into a very sickly family. He endured illness and death around him and was deeply affected by it. He became anxious and afraid of death. He was walking home from work one day over a bridge and felt a ‘scream’ sweep up behind him- whether it was a ghost or death encroaching, it didn’t matter- it scared him. This event was the inspiration behind his renditions of ‘the scream’. He did two paintings and two pastel pieces of his experience. One of the paintings valued at 100 million dollars was stolen from a museum in Norway in 2004, but was recovered and returned back in 2008. Munch is the father of expressionism. This technique involves color and movement in the work that creates a mood or feeling when you view it- in this case, fear.
The students did their own rendition of the work in pastel. To make the face stand out, we did it in Fimo clay and then pasted it on the page! They turned out really cool.

Keith Harring Prints

Printmaking was inspired by the simple concepts of Keith Harring. Although printmaking is incredibly messy, it is soooo fun. We used a foam piece as our printing 'plate'. We covered this in paint and drew pictures with Q-tips. This essentially removed the paint and then we flattened another piece of paper over top to get our print. The students had so much fun experimenting with the process. excellent job this week!!