Category: Art Classic

Chiaroscuro Style!

Art Classic, Art Teachering Experience, Children Paint!, Paint What You SEE!

When I was student teaching for my California Teacher Credential requirement, I worked with 7th and 8th students. One of my favorite projects was teaching the students about the art technique called chiaroscuro. This refers to the use of light and dark to create the illusion of three- dimensional volume on a flat surface. “Chiaroscuro is an Italian term which translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade in a painting or drawing. Chiaroscuro is generally only remarked upon when it is a particularly prominent feature of the work, usually when the artist is using extreme contrasts of light and shade.”

Ideally, I would have 3 dimensional heads from which the students could work, but instead they have a choice of photographs of ancient Greek and Roman heads that I have photo copied. They select a working image, chose a color of paper, they are given vine charcoal, and some white tempera paint – Then they get to art-ing! I’ve created a demo video if you care to learn more about this lesson. The following is the amazing art work of my student teaching kids. I was so proud of their efforts that I created a display in the school library!!!

Mark Rothko

Art Classic, Arting Media, We Be Arting!

Mark Rothko was an American abstract painter, working from the early 1930s until his death in 1970 (Abstract Art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate description of a visual “reality”, i.e. a person, place, or thing).

Rothko primarily painted using the color schemes (arrangements or groupings); Complimentary, Monochromatic and Analogous.

Complimentary Colors are two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel and when combined or mixed together, they cancel each other out, making brown or gray. The Complimentary sets are red/green, yellow/purple, orange/blue.

Monochromatic Color schemes are created from a single base color and extended using shades (adding black to a color), and tints (adding white to a color).

Analogous Color are any 3 colors that are next to each other on the color wheel for example, green, blue, and purple or orange, red, and yellow.

Rothko is famous for his Multiform paintings. However, he didn’t begin his painting career painting only pure color and shape. As he matured as an artist, he became uninterested in depicting reality, instead, he wanted to use “color to express/ evoke emotion”.