TRICIA TOONE | artist & teacher

Art Shows Us Ourselves

This was our first day of school project. Each student, grades 1 through 8, "doodled" their way across their own puzzle piece.

Our emphasis was on using doodling as a form of visual brainstorming. The only rule: Black marker outside the bold lines, colored marker inside the bold lines.

I wanted the statement to set the tone for the school year, approaching art as self-exploration. The exercise also serves as a good initial assessment of students abilities and comfort with creativity. It's also fun to see the developmental progression from 1st grade to 8th, left to right.

Creature Self-Portraits

6th graders are creating symbolic self-portraits. Students are using animals to symbolize their personality traits. Their sculptures are a combination of those animals' traits.

Armatures are constructed from newspaper, masking tape, paper mache, clay, and wire. They sculpted the basic form from newspaper and tape. The wire provides the support. Clay allows for fine detail. Students realized that they need to distribute the weight so that the creature can stand. Some hid beans and rocks within the newspaper and tape to balance the weight.

After the "skeletons" are built, students will create the "skin" with paper mache. Finally, they will be painted.

Here's a teaser. There will be more images of all the sculptures as they develop.

Olivia's sculpture is a combination of a Llama, gazelle, and bird.

A New Way to Learn Color Mixing?

This turtle was carved into Balsa Foam and painted in acrylic paint by an 8th grade student who happens to be color blind. Concerned about his ability to mix color, he asked his friend to describe what colors should go into mixing the colors for his turtle.

Beginning with the dark green on the right side of the turtle, his friend gave very precise instructions on how much green, orange, red goes into each stage of the gradation. He coached him through painting the entire turtle.

In some ways his description gave better color mixing results than the color mixing on his own project. Perhaps the act of having to describe the contents of the color caused him to look "deeper" into the color.

Light Observations with 4th Grade

The objectives of this unit:

* Practice observation skills that are important in both art and science.
* Describe and visually represent how light affects the appearance of an object and its shadow.
* Create drawings from observation.
* Vocabulary: value, shadow, highlight

Part 1- Light Observations (You can download a lesson plan for the first part of this unit.)

In a dimmed room, student groups spent the period taking notes and sketches based on their observations of a single light source on a manikin. I left their mode of note taking open ended so that they could record their thoughts in whatever way was effective and comfortable for them. Some people think in words, some in pictures.

I loved seeing their notes at this stage. Most of the students were looking at light and shadow in a new way. The shadow was the first thing that fascinated most of them. As they looked deeper, they noticed the relationship between the distance and location of the light source to the manikin and its effect on the shadow. I had to prompt many of them to look at the actual manikin and how that looks in the light. I learned a lot from their observations- they pointed out things I never noticed.

Part 2- Proportion

Students continued with their observation of the light and manikin. This time, all students created sketches of their manikin and shadow with a focus on proportion in their drawing. I like to create an opportunity for practice in most lessons. It reenforces for the students that ALL art is part of a process of learning and that one perfect finished project is not the main goal of art.

Part 3- Individual Interpretation

Students were to take what they learned about light and proportion and take it a step further. Put it in context. Imagine a scenario for the manikin using the manikin for reference. Students needed to cooperate with their group to come up with a manikin pose that they all agreed on that could be interpreted in many ways. Example: A manikin posed with his arms up in the air could be many things- a goalie, air traffic controller, dancer, etc. Each student could interpret it in their own way.

This student focused on color for her final drawing. She brought out the warmth and glow of the light source behind the manikin. Also notice the attention to color mixing in the mostly violet shadow. She neutralized it with a combination of colors.

This student did an excellent job of taking what he learned about proportion and light and applying it to a mostly imagined form. Although he used the manikin as a model for proportion, he adjusted his character to have huge muscles and a missing limb. Using his knowledge of shadows, he adjusted the shape of the shadow as well.

Crazy Octopus

I did this lesson with Kindergarten. The objective was for students to practice making many types of lines, to create shapes by combining lines (avoiding stick figures), and to explore warm and cool colors.

Part 1

I showed a photograph of an octopus. Where do they live? What are these arms called? How many are there? Can you do different things with your arms all at the same time like an octopus? as I rub my belly and pat my head. Students try the same.

Their octopuses were to be especially crazy. How many types of lines can they use in their tentacles? As a class, we brainstormed as many types of lines as we could think of- straight, wavy, zig-zag, curly, spiral, dotted, long, short, etc. On watercolor paper, students drew an octopus head. For the first leg, I guided them on the board to demonstrate how I don't just make ONE line for a leg. Each line has to come back to the head to make a shape.

Students drew the remaining 7 legs on their own. They were encouraged to try many types of lines, making their octopuses as crazy as possible.

Part 2

We started the class talking about things that were hot or warm. Fire, the sun, the stove!
What color are those things? We looked on the color wheel and pointed out the yellow, red, orange.
Using crayon students colored their Octopuses using only warm colors.

We then looked at the color wheel as we discussed the colors that come to mind when we think about the water where octopuses live. Blue, Green!
What does if feel like when you jump in the water?
Cold!
Using watercolor, students painted cool colors only for their octopuses' background.

Santa Fe

NOTE: This is Rick. Don't tell Tricia I'm here. Webmaster privilege.

:)

When we camped in the Sangre de Cristo mountains outside Santa Fe, I was inspired to paint the absolutely beautiful mountain light: in particular, one evening as dusk fell. The lights of the city were just visible in the distance, and the moment was poised on the edge of my eyesight failing to detect detail in shadow. The sky was luminous at 12,000' of elevation.

I took a series of photographs but a camera does not perceive light as a human eye does. Cameras can only capture the average amount of light in a scene, at a given moment. Our eyes are more sophisticated, constantly adjusting aperture (light sensitivity) and focus as we move them: we can look at sunlight reflecting on water, then into the shadows of the woods...seeing detail in both instances.

Astonishing tools, really.

So, five months later, I am painting partially from photographs, and mostly from memory. My memory of light — of the feeling — from that moment.

I have a very capable instructor, although she will not let me call her one. This is my second oil painting — Cabinetmaker was my first — my first landscape, and I have no other word for: "Tricia...how do I build the underpainting? What is the paint/thinner/varnish ratio again? Do I optically mix colors on the canvas or do a modulated blend?"

Except "teacher".

The photos are snapshots of the painting, early in the process. Photo on the left is mostly underpainting. Right photo has a second layer of paint: mid-ground mountains are gathering mist, the near mountains are growing conifers. There will eventually be a foreground layer of aspens mostly obscuring the left and lower left of the scene. Details as they happen.