TY Christmas Decorations

Before they went on work expereince the TYs were busy making cribs and candle holders in construction and ceramic decorations in the art room. Their Seasonal Somethings mini company have a stall at the Christmas Craft Fair on Breaden's Lane, Longford next weekend (11th and 12th December) so they are putting the finishing touches to their work this week. Here are a few samples of the decorations on offer:

Mainie Jellett

One of the artists who featured in The Moderns exhibition was Mainie Jellett. Here's a short video I put together of some of her work. You can find more indepth biographies and other samples on www.hughlane.ie and www.crawfordartgallery.ie (both galleries have good online catalogues that can be searched by artist, date or category).

IMMA trip

We had a very interesting trip to the Irish Museum of Modern Art last Wednesday, hopefully everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. As well as being valuable for the gallery question, most of what we saw is also on the course for the Irish section. We had a quick look around the Novak/O'Doherty collection before attending a lecture on the staging to the Moderns exhibition, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition. Covering the period from 1900 to around 1970 we saw a multi-disciplinary display including painting, sculpture, film, photography, literature, deisgn, architecture and music which aimed to contextualise all that was happening in Irish arts in the period. On show were art and artefacts from such names as Eileen Gray, Samuel Beckett, Jack B Yeats, WB Yeats, Mainie Jellet, Robert Ballagh, Patrick Ireland/Brian O'Doherty, Paul and Grace Henry, Louis le Brocquy, Anne Madden, Mary Swanzy, Michael Farrell, Michael Craig-Martin and many more. We couldn't take photos inside, but here are a few of the outdoor sculpture, buildings and surrounding:

4th and 5th year Gallery Trip

Fourth and Fifth years are heading to Dublin for a gallery trip on 24th November. We are going to The Moderns exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, so you should be prepared by having a look at the gallery website www.imma.ie
As well as looking at the exhibition (under current exhibitions) you should download and read some of the What Is...? series booklets to find out about some different forms of modern art: www.imma.ie/en/subnav_112.htm
The Hugh Lane gallery have a useful guide to answering the Leaving Cert gallery question which you should all read before we go too. You can download it and more Leaving Cert notes here: www.hughlane.ie/education.php?heading=Guided%20Tours&type=Leaving%20Cert%20Groups&rsno=4

It would also be a good idea for  everyone (not just 4th & 5th Years) to have a look at gallery and museum websites to keep in touch with what exhibitions and events are going on and often get some useful exam notes. The main Irish ones are www.nationalgallery.ie, www.hughlane.ie, www.museum.ie and www.crawfordartgallery.ie (Cork) but there are many smaller ones worth investigating around the country too: www.backstage.ie (Longford) www.roscommonartscentre.ie (Roscommon) www.thedock.ie (Carrick-on-Shannon). Most exhibitions are free, try to make time to visit a few. There are also some great international gallery websites which have loads of valuable resources for the Junior Cert support studies and Leaving Cert art history, try searching and see what you find.

Self portraits almost finished

This year's TYs have taken the brief way beyond the formal self-portrait idea. They were asked to express their personalities in any form of mixed media that they thought best suited how they wanted themselves to be viewed. Most are now finished or near completion. There is a link to the Picassa web album that shows the work in progress in an earlier post, but here are a few other sample pieces (click on image for closer look):

Still-life drawings

Some more life drawing

One-minute gesture drawings from last Wednesday's class.

Drawing a head

Here's an easy to follow video tutorial with good tips for drawing heads:
http://media.academyart.edu/freeclass/index.html

Life-drawing examples

Fourth year and Leaving Certs have also been practicing some quick life-sketching in various media:

More visual brainstorming

The Wednesday group have also been doing some visual brainstorming recently. Here are a few examples:

The Secret of Drawing

I've been stressing the importance of drawing all year, both as a research tool and for itself. You should all be building up sketchpads (which I'm collecting this week) and experimenting with media and techniques as often as possible. I've just watched episode 1 and 4 of the BBC series The Secret of Drawing and recommend that you all try to watch them too:
http://art.docuwat.ch/videos/the-secret-of-drawing/the-secret-of-drawing-01/?channel_id=21&skip=0
Episode 1 explores research drawing from Leonardo's human and Stubbs' horse anatomy studies, Turner and Constable's Romantic explorations of nature, right up to modern council housing estate drawings. The interactions between science and art and the fundamental nature of drawing as a language are emphasised. Episode 4 focuses on the role of drawing in design from concert sets and fantasy architecture to fashion tracing the development from Renaissance mechanics to modern computer graphics. I haven't had a chance to watch the other two yet, but Episode 2 looks at storytelling in drawing (comic books etc.) and Episode 3 looks at how the artist portrays what's inside their mind to the viewer. I hope you all find time to watch at least one episode soon, you can post comments here if you do.

How Art Made the World

There is a very interesting BBC series, How Art Made the World, that is worth watching.
The first episode is linked below:
zSHARE video - Hartweltmacht01.flv
You can also watch the other four (links under How Art Made the World on list) and lots of other art documentaries at:
art.docuwat.ch/videos/?channel_id=0
There's loads of useful links there for the Leaving Cert art history course and other areas of art and design appreciation.

Local Ceramics

It's always a good idea to be aware of what's happening in the local art world. This can be very useful for  Junior Cert support studies and the art appreciation section of the Leaving Cert paper. Here's a link to the website gallery of local ceramic artist Thomas Lynam:
thomaslynamceramics.com/thoswrk.php
Thomas is based in Ballymahon, has just completed the Crafts Council of Ireland Ceramics Design & Skills Course in July 2010 and was a runner-up in this year's House and Home Student Designer awards: www.houseandhome.ie/blog/homebirds/student-design-awards-2010-%e2%80%93-the-runners-up/

Learning to see

I know I've said this thousands of times, but the most important thing you can do to improve your drawing skills is to learn to look, and draw what you see not what you think you should see. The second most important thing is to practice. You should be using your sketchbook every day, drawing people and actual objects around you in lots of different media (pencil, pastel, charcoal, crayon, pen etc.) If you can't actually draw somewhere practice your observation skills. Look at items around you, notice shadows and highlights. Where is the light source? What is the texture like? How would you draw it? I just found a site with good drawing lessons that can be downloaded or viewed online. Here is a good one to start with:
www.drawspace.com/lessons/view/b11 and a sample image from it:

Renaissance sites

Here are a few sites that let you explore and interact with the art and architecture of the Renaissance. Enjoy!
www.renaissanceconnection.org/main.cfm
www.mos.org/leonardo/
www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/studio/

Leaving Certs don't forget about www.wga.hu and smarthistory.org also.

New students wanted

Tuesday evening classes (4.10-5.30 pm) are getting very busy lately, which is great to see, but Wednesdays (2.50-5.30pm) are still very quiet. I'm looking to recruit new third, fourth and fifth year art students. I will be putting up posters around the school during the week, but if you know anyone who you think might be interested let them know that it's not too late to start. The Junior Cert themes are out now, any new third years should be getting started on the research stage very soon, so the sooner they start the better. Fourth years and leaving certs will have some art history to catch up on, but we will be revising what we've done over the next few weeks. I look forward to seeing lots of new faces in the art room in the next few weeks. There is still room for a few more 1st, 2nd and TYs too.

Henry Moore

I'm setting the Fouth and Fifth Years the task of creating short videos to teach each other about some sculptors on the Leaving Cert course. I thought I should try it out first, so here is a short example. The audio files came from sample music on my computer and www.kew.org/henry-moore/explore/index.shtml - 1. Large Reclining Figure. Lots more information can be found there on Henry Moore. All images were downloaded from google images. I used Windows Movie Maker to make the video.

Visual Brainstorming

The Tuesday evening group (1st, 2nd and TY) are continuing their research and carried out some visual brainstorming yesterday. Here are a few examples: