Betty Edwards

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

video - 2 hours http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctkRwRDdajo

Ed materials FREE

Movies like Darwin by Peter Greenaway
http://www.openculture.com/2011/07/darwin_a_1993_film_by_peter_greenaway.html

The Importance of the Ephemeral

Iain McGilchrist: The Divided Brain

An excellent site for PEDAGOGY: http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/Compose.htm

Educational Origami

many things to consider: http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/21st+Century+Assessment

Science, Research and other ISSUES explored via TED

MINDFULNESS + CONSCIENCE and CONSCIOUSNESS

Chris Jordan: http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn2/#maya + http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html


The fragile Earth in wide-angle: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/yann_arthus_bertrand_captures_fragile_earth_in_wide_angle.html


How Photograhy Connects Us:  http://www.ted.com/talks/david_griffin_on_how_photography_connects.html

Wade Davis: http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_the_worldwide_web_of_belief_and_ritual.html 
+ http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html


Google Bubble - technology and knowledge: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

How the news shape the way we see the world: http://www.ted.com/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html

What's wrong with what we eat: http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html
  
Statistics about the world: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html   5 yrs ago

Visual Literacy and why it's discouraged (discussion) http://www.ted.com/conversations/6719/why_is_visual_literacy_discour.html

3 ways the brain creates meaning: http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_on_3_ways_the_brain_creates_meaning.html

What's so good about drawing (doodling) http://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown.html

Creativity and Play: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html

Ken Robinson on Do Schools Kill Creativity: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

My subversive (garden) plot: http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_doiron_my_subversive_garden_plot.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-12-21&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email 

Laura Skerlj and other artists - look down the side bar

go to the side bar on the link below - lots of artists

http://lauraskerlj.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post_24.html

ethics + the ocean

artmaking

Ian Francis on his Artistic Practice -, 19 June 2009 10:00

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/06/19/2603469.htm

designing film and T.V title sequences

Gehry

Links to Other ARTi sites

Ms H's Multiple Intelligence Pie Graph

I know, music isn't my strong point but I do love it ... I just can't sing, play a musical instrument or even remember the names of some of the songs I love the most! But I do love music ...

ARTiWiki

Alchemy

The Work of Alchemy

In the popular imagination, the alchemist is a seeker of gold, driven by personal profit and greed to extract that precious substance from base metals. From a modern-day perspective, attached as we are to material wealth, this reading of the alchemist's exploits are understandable. But while there were those 'puffers' who did indeed mint coins and sought riches and fame, some were at least after an 'inner' gold. This was variously known as the Philosopher's Stone, Golden Flower, Elixir of Life, and universal medicine, depending on a particular tradition, but all symbolising the search for the supreme and ultimate value.

The alchemist's quest was one of self-development, attempting to integrate the many facets of personality to attain psychic wholeness. Alchemy, as the depth psychology of an earlier age⁴, thus required infinite patience, subtlety in appreciation and dedication to the Art, often at great personal sacrifice.

The work or opus of alchemy was an inner repetition of the cosmology outside - except, on the psychological level, the alchemical process was a complete reversal of our contemporary notion of biological evolution - as an expanding, outer process on the physical plane. Its final 'goal' was inorganic matter, either a metal (notably, gold), a mineral, a crystal or a stone. more

Jung and Alchemy

The Swiss psychologist, Dr Carl Jung, who began studying alchemy when aged 53, realised that the alchemist was really working symbolically on the transformation of his own psyche. He found in alchemy's bizarre fantasies and afflicted imagery a metaphor for individuation and an ideal portrait of soul-work.(Jung's Individuation is a process of self-development in which an individual integrates the many facets of the psyche to become his or her Self, and thus attain psychic wholeness.) Its symbolisms and operations were a projection onto matter of archetypes and psychological processes that occur in the collective unconscious.

Believing that an individual's psychological state can be assessed alchemically, he took the four basic substances found in alchemy (sulphur, salt, lead, and mercury) as metaphors for the way the personality operates in life. The work of individuation, as the differentiation of self, is then to enact lengthy operations on these substances, as if doing alchemy on ourselves. This resulted in Jung's (often neglected) alchemical model of personality, being a development of his better known psychological typology theory. Jung was also able to elucidate the stages of alchemy and relate them to his own insights into the individuation process. more

Jung and Active Imagination
The Alchemy website
general links to alchemy referenced material
Artworks influenced by Alchemy

Visual Arts @ StH

Artmaking at St Hilda’s encourages best practice with 21st Century approaches, techniques and technologies while valuing all forms of wisdom in the search for meaning.

The idea that Art is another way of knowing and communicating is at the heart of programmes from Years 7 – 12. With its focus on visual literacy, students are constantly challenged to find their own ‘voice’ through the artmaking process by experimenting with ideas, new and traditional media and a wide range of techniques to allow them to evolve a personal aesthetic. To this end the curriculum is constantly revised and evaluated.

Learning is a process of solving problems and making sense of the world, there isn’t one right answer that stands forever and a day – not in our own lives, not in science. Learning is a process of unfolding meaning through an ever-deepening process of understanding. On a purely physiological level, it is the creation of networks in the brain, a process made visible through new technology of brain imaging.

The art vision, like the literary one, is unique and the so called geniuses are the ones who unpack this unique vision in their own way. In this philosophy THERE ARE NO FORMULAS.

Philosophy

Making Art is like entering a labyrinth: it is a conscious decision to begin the process of evolution in the knowledge that it is only by travelling inward that we can hope to make sense of the external. It is both a physical and a spiritual endeavour and must be engaged with as a purposeful process.
All artmaking provides an opportunity to dive deeper into life, to discover territories on and below the surface. If we see the self initially as a surface and as material to work with, it is possible to mine that surface in the same way we mine the surface of an artwork. Things can be understood on ‘other’ levels, explored and developed, delved into and synthesised.
We begin with the material of self as we do with the physical materials of armaking – the media, the equipment, the blank paper surface, the initiating idea. The tactile manipulations of raw materials (light, form, object) that engage the sensual inquiries of making, experimentation, development, resolution, are identical with the initiating processes of the labyrinth journey. It is in the making, the doing and the reflection on the conscious process that we are given entry to the deeper realms of meaning and the making of meaning.
In this light the making of art becomes the embodiment of the search for self and understanding – a process, that in the first instance engages the physical, but carries a great deal more in its potential. In the end artmaking provides access to levels of spiritual realisation if you chose to engage fully with the opportunities.

We enter on the surface, using the tools of the sensory world to negotiate the first layer. Here, we learn about the images, symbols, systems etc that equip us with the necessary schema to allow us to recognise the signs presented on other levels.
As artists, this is the level of raw materials; visual language, paint, pencils, knowledge of composition and history, etc.
Below this layer, we find things equated with the subconscious, the things that drive us, attract, fascinate and beguile. At this the level the artist is drawn by the need to express and conceptualise. This is where the things learned on the first layer are put into a purposeful form – an artwork a tangible object. Below this level are many more.
At the end of this process what we find is not a product or even a series of pieces or even a body of work but a mapping of a journey.
The initial engagement is an invitation to continue the process. Hopefully, it becomes a life long process, like life lived – the products are tangible evidence of the process only, the whole is viewable only at the end.

As an art student, having made the choice to enter the labyrinth at whatever level, for whatever reason – I hope you will take up the challenge and in so doing, find a key to a much greater understanding of yourself and of the world. You see, artmaking contains within it processes, like gateways to opportunities to seek and find both purpose and meaning.

As a teacher I see my role as a facilitator – there are things to teach, some basic learning equipment that it is easier to give you than expect you to discover for yourself though many artists have done just this. But this information/knowledge is not an end in itself – these things are merely the tools to aid you in a much greater undertaking. My purpose in this is as one side of a partnership with each individual student. If you can help me to know your interests, directions, needs, ideas, then I can join with you in the process, empathise and aid in the journey through the labyrinth. This is one part of the purpose of your Visual Diary; when I see and read, I gain insights into both your conscious and subconscious, even unconscious directing forces.

Artmaking, like the process of living, is a purposeful seeking, it makes tangible the struggle to find meaning out of what is essentially a journey full of awe-inspiring insights, unexpected detours and often horrible pitfalls. But, unless we are willing to ‘go there’, to look at what is presented, what we discover, what is offered, we can only ever expect to live a half-life, on the surface. As Einstein said
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
Albert Einstein

And so, art at St Hilda’s offers you a rare invitation in this life – it is offered openly, with a great deal of love and an infinitely unselfish purpose. All I ask is that you invite me to travel through the labyrinth with you and a willingness to accept my limitations and gifts as I will accept and welcome yours. This is the essence of the contract you make with yourself as much as with me – what more is there? I can honestly tell you, there will be few other invitations of this kind so openly offered.

Resources

art elements

colour
Hue, value and intensity are the makn characteristics of colour. Colour is a visual sensation and can be represented realistically or artists can deliberately alter colour for emotional or subliminal effects. Harmonious colours are similar and are close together on the colour wheel. Complementary colour schemes, such as red-green, purple-yellow, are opposite on the colour wheel and produce vibrant, clashing effects.

form
While shape is two-dimensional, form is three-dimensional

line
A mark made by (eg) a pointed tool, brush, pencil or pen. It is often defined as a ‘moving dot’. A line has several uses and meanings in art. It may be the meeting edge between shapes or it may divide space. If repeated, it can make patterns, define a shape (outline), indicate mood or be used to created texture and tone. By varying a line’s width and direction an artist can create movement or weight and suggest emotions. A jagged, bold dark line can suggest anger; a gently curved line can suggest calm and happiness. Every line has a thickness, direction and rhythm. It is the most commonly used art element.

movement
Movement can be actual, as in video and installations, or created, as in the illusion of speed or activity created in an artwork. Diagonal direction and repetition are two easy ways to suggest movement. They can be used to direct viewers around the artwork, often to a focal point. Movement can be created with line, colour edges or shapes.

shape
An area contained within an implied line, or defined by a change in colour or tone. Shapes have two dimensions: width and breadth. They an be free-form and organic (asymmetrical) or geometric in nature (symmetrical)

sound
Can be heard as noise, words or music and is usually found in contemporary art, such as videos. It may be a component of installations or multimedia or interactive works. It is used to add meaning, mood and involve the audience on another level than just the visual.

space
In a painting, space is the illusion tat creates a sense of depth. It can be the area around or between objects or shapes. In a sculpture or designed object, it is an actual area of air (negative space) defined by its part or full enclosure (positive space).

surface
The outer face or outward appearance. A painting may have a rough surface through the use of impasto or may be created by layering of paint. Collage can also add interest to an artwork’s surface. A sculpture can have a rough textural surface of stone or a highly polished smooth surface.

texture
The surface quality, from smooth to rough, that can either be felt or observed. Texture can be simulated or actual. Application of paint with a dry brush suggests roughness while heavy application of paint mixed with impasto can create raised ridges of actual texture. A surface is said to be tactile if it makes you want to touch it.

tone
The degree of lightness or darkness. Tone can increase a sense of reality or three-dimensionality, or it can add a sense of drama if tonal contrast is used. Some words to describe tone include: harsh, subtle, gradual, dramatic, chiarocuro.

art principles

abstraction
Non-representational art, separate or apart from reality.

balance
The distribution of visual weight in a work of art.

composition
The arrangement of subject matter and the organization of art elements within an artwork.

contrast
Differences in tone, colour, texture, shapes and other ele3ments, used to draw attention or to make the work dramatic. For example, the strongest contrast is that of white with black. Colours opposite to each other on the colour wheel are also contrasting, eg red / green etc.

cropping
Cutting down or selecting a particular part of a whole image; usually in photography to focus on a particular area of an image for emphasis. Cropping can be an effective tool when making decisions about composition. eg Degas used cropping effectively to make dynamic compositions.

distortion
Put out of place, twist or change the usual perspective.

emphasis
Used to create dominance, to draw attention to or focus on something; enlarge or make more obvious.

harmony
An agreement of aspects within an artwork; a pleasing arrangement or combination; congruity, a feeling of rightness or balance in an artwork

juxtaposition
Placement of often unrelated or contrasting elements in close proximity within the same composition to create a new meaning, eg Surrealist artists such as Dali, Magritte etc often used this device.

pattern
Use of art elements in planned repetition to enhance the surface or add a decorative effect.

proportion
Comparison or relationship of parts, the connection between parts and the whole, particularly with reference to the human body; one part compared with another; the ratio or comparative sizes of objects

relationships
How one thing interacts / reacts near another

repetition
Replicate or copy an art element again and again, for example, a repetition of line can cause a pattern, or suggest movement, a time sequence, or can be used, as in Andy Warhol’s art, to suggest mass production.

rhythm
The repetition of visual elements creating a sense of movement (as in musical beats); movement in a pattern, the relationship of parts to the whole. Different types of rhythm include flowing, regular, alternating, progressive and random.

scale
Relative size of one part to another; comparison of sizes as in a ratio, often to show perspective – eg the receding scale of telegraph poles create a sense of distance.

sequence
The following of one thing after another, the order or series; can help to create a narrative or cumulative emotional effect.

symmetry / asymmetry
Symmetry is where each side is equal, or corresponding in size and shape (mirror image); assynnetry is where sides are unbalanced, not equal nor the same

tension / Release
Tensionis the feeling of excitement, pressure, or forces fulling against each other release is the feeling of going away, a relaxation of tension (can relate to emotions or art elements and is often employed in film)

unity
The oneness or cohesive quality, a feeling of completeness, often creating a sense of balance, calm or harmony in an artwork.

variation
To create slight differences or alter the rate of change, eg a drawing is more expressive if variation is used in the thickness of the lines. Variation in tones when painting an object produces a greater sense of solidity.