This week starts the Second Quarter!
Art News for November 13th through November 16th

I invent nothing; I rediscover.
~ Auguste  Rodin
 Happy 172nd Birthday Rodin!

While Rodin is famous for his sculptures The Thinker and The Kiss,I would have to say my favorite is The Burghers of Calais.( Learn more about the sculpture by following this link-  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burghers_of_Calais

Welcome to the newest 6th Grade General Art Class!
You kids are stuck with me as your homeroom teacher too.  Its Art Portfolios for you this week. We will be talking alot about compositional space.  For class you will need a notebook or space for art in your binder and a pencil every day. 

Welcome to the newest Computer Graphics Class!
This week will be all about log in names, U drives and W drives, and if you catch on quick, maybe even a little Photoshop Elements...

Art7 - Bird, bird, bird.  Bird is the word! 

This week marks the beginning of our next project;
Watercolor paintings in the spirit of John James Audubon.

Studio in Art - Road Map Book Pages are due this week!  The studio classes will be working on composition (aren't we always working on composition?)  After some drills with skulls and skeletons, students will be taking their own dramatic photos to use as the start of a larger composition in Pastel.
Sound difficult? You betch ya!

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh

Post for Wednesday, October 31, 2012   Happy Halloween!  Above is a jack-o-lantern carved for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, based on VanGogh's Starry Night.

This Week in Mr. Scheffel's Art Classes...
Art 6
The 6th graders are wrapping up self- portraits once and for all!  This is the last week kids, so bust a move on those proportions and values. Friday is the last day in class on them!

6th Grade Computer Graphics. 
Below is a link for a video tutorial on the lasso tool.  This may help you play the role of Frankenstein for the next few days, taking your head and putting it on other bodies.
Bolts in the neck, well that's a different lesson...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh0qeqNYtKQ
We will be working on our Romare Bearden Collages for the next three days, with Friday being the export deadline!

Art 7
These every-other day classes   r-e-a-l-l-y   s-t-r-e-t-c-h    o-u-t  a  p-r-o-j-e-c-t.
Still working on our Two-point Perspective drawings. This week we will add values to add to the dimensional quality of the works.

Studio in Art
The quote above is meant for you.  You must persist,persist, persist!  Bring to the classroom, not just your physical self, but your whole heart and mind. Bring your soul!  Come to class ready to explore the richness of  your life's experience and the limits of your potential.  Come to class ready to make art that is thoughtful; meaningful. 
Book Project #3-  A road map of your life.  This week, ladies and gentlemen, we are gonna talk
SYMBOLISM!

                                           Three Folk Musicians, Romare Bearden

 October 22nd - October 26th, 2012

This week, Computer Graphics is studying Harlem Renaissance Artist, Romare Bearden.
Bearden is best known for his collage work, in which he would combine, photographs, cut paper, textiles and paint to create his compositions.  Bearden often had recurring themes in his work of roosters, trains, farm shacks,hills field workers and musicians playing acoustic instruments  to symbolize his childhood in North Carolina; and jazz and blue musicians, row houses, stoops, doorways,windows  bright lights and signs to symbolize his adult life in New York City.
While the students will be creating digital collages, they will be employing some of the same collage techniques as Romare Bearden; combining photos, shapes, textural  filters and their own image to  tell their own unique story through art!




















Art 6 is working on self- portraiture this week.  The students are learning about PROPORTIONS of the human face, incorporating VALUE ( a range of lights and darks) in their COMPOSITIONS.

Art 7 is  learning about Two-Point Perspective. The students are doing  an amazing job on their two-point perspective drawings of  cities, adding details such awnings, sidewalks, windows, balconies, parking meters, stoops and more!  Perspective drawing used by modern day artists can be traced back to the Florentine Italian Renaissance artist, Fillippo Brunelleschi, who developed the technique in the early 1400's.

















The Studio classes just completed their second Altered Book Page assignment based on a literary source or song lyrics and their PROPORTION andVALUE studies of Manikins. This week, the studio classes will explore non- objective ABSTRACTION, learning how to express ideas and emotion through the artist's choices of color, tone, texture and mark-making.  The works above are those of Abstract Expressionists, Jackson Pollock (left) and Mark Rothko (right).