Arts Explorer #3 - Fine Art Critique

Colour "is based on the passage of light...as light changes, so does the colour" (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p. 136). It consists of different level of hue and lightness and such differences expresses the thoughts and feelings of people, particularly artists, however, everyone may portray it in various ways.

http://www.groupofsevenart.com/Harris/Lawren_Harris_3.html

Lawren Harris from the Group of Seven is one of the few artists that I love. I particularly admire his mountain paintings because of his use of bold colour, which makes it stand out. The painting that I've chosen is called "Lake and Mountain" (1927). In this painting, Harris only used three colours, white, blue, and black, but consists of the different shades of these colours. Instead of blending the colours of blue (e.g. sky and mountain), he made it visible of the two or three shades of blue that he used, which gives viewers a strong sense of colour. The mood of the colour blue gives the viewers the feel of cold and windy, because the clouds and sky is painted horizontally, pointing in one direction, as well as the overwhelming colour of blue. What stood out to me was the openness of the light colours, which is mostly used in the sky/clouds and mountain. Moreover, the thickness of each shades highlights this painting.

Schirrmacher, R. , & Englebright Fox, J. (2009). Art & creative development for young children. Belmont, California : Delmar Cengage Learning.

Arts Explorer #2 - Instant Sculpture with Found Objects

Mass/Volume element describes the width, height and length of a structure (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009). The sculpture that I assembled for this blog illustrates the following:
heavy, light, stationary, angular, solid, opaque, hard 

Back-angle

In the beginning, I had some diffculty of the design of the sculpture - what
should I use? How many items? How big/small? Abstract or not. I didn't know what direction to take, so I decided to go with the flow and pick whatever objects I find helpful and decide later what to do with it. As I walked around each room of my house, looking at every object there is, I picked up the following items in each room:



Wooden clothing clips (master bedroom)
Cardboard toilet paper roll (bathroom)
Plastic lid (computer room)
Steel fork (kitchen)
Eyeglasses cleaning cloth (living room)
Small box (my bedroom)

The assembling process was hard as I tried to think of a different way of using these objects. However, I played around with it and tried a couple of models prior to what it is now. Starting from the bottom of the sculpture is the box that serves as a stand/base that holds up everything, although it is light and not very

Side-angle

strong, the angle of the fork, which is the bone of the sculpture, is important to maintain the position of it,

Top-angle

along with the clip that holds the paper roll and fork together. The paper roll is then covered with the cloth to add a smooth texture to it and again, a clip was used to secure it. Finally, the paper roll was placed through a plastic cover to add more dimension to the overall look of the structure.

Front-angle

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J.E. (2009). Art & creative development for young children (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar Cengage Learning.

Arts Explorer #1 - My Creative Inspiration

source: http://qwickstep.com/search/how-to-teach-kids-respect.html

Creativity is most evident through children - in their work, actions, thoughts, behaviour, interaction with others, etc. When viewing a child, you can see so much potential and creativity in them, just waiting to be explored. Children's learning starts with creative imagination. What and how they interpret an idea shows their uniqueness of creativity. Constantly, I am baffled by how they view an object so differently from me. For example, how they continually build imaginative structures with Legos and all I can do is randomly stack the pieces. Children is one of my main inspirations in life. Their simplicity and unique personalities spreads happiness and love to those around them. That's the joy of learning from these children.