My First Year of Blogging: Teaching Art, Travels, and Observations

Teaching Art

My blog topics, like my art lesson plans, usually start with inspiration. It can be something I've seen, places I've visited or want to visit, or an art topic I want to talk about or learn more about. With Blogspot, the first picture you choose becomes displayed as a thumbnail, along with the first few lines of text, when viewed from a smartphone. This enlargement project, commemorating Dr. King, was done by another Art Docent's class at an elementary school where I volunteered. The lesson was likely about value though I don't recall which artist was being taught. I try to align my projects with what the students may be studying or possibly the time of year (e.g. MLK in January).

My enlargement project was a black-and-white photo of Elvis Presley inside a car, complete with his guitar-shaped watch. My parent helper used the result on a Valentine's Day bulletin board with a red background and construction paper 45-rpm records.

I also relate my teaching experiences, classes I've taught, successful lessons, famous artists that have inspired me, and discussion of the elements and principles of art. These JFK collages by Robert Rauschenberg were used as examples in my Collage Portraits Class with seniors. 

Travel

Scott Bakula & Richard Dean Anderson

I almost always start with a personal story to connect to the topic. In a recent post about art in NW cities, I started off by relating the celebrity hockey game my brother and I saw while visiting Vancouver back in 1986.

Tom Seaver (1977) by Andy Warhol

This works especially well if my experience relates and if I actually have my own photos to contribute. For example, this photo from the Baseball HOF Art Gallery of NY Mets Pitcher, Tom Seaver (1992 inductee) taken during my July 2019 trip to Cooperstown.

 

Observation: Making Connections

Every morning, I revisit the emerging blog post and add to what I already have. Many edits happen along the way. It's funny how many connections get made between the paragraphs. Relationships between the artists and subject matter also emerge as I read more about them. I begin to recall paintings I've seen before and include them for comparison. Even if I'm discovering new local or contemporary artists, I like to imagine which artists inspired them, and how their work is sometimes reminiscent of the masters who preceded them.

Selfportrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)

This self-portrait of Van Gogh has one of his re-interpretations of a Japanese print hanging on the wall in the background. I hadn't noticed its significance before. Apparently, in another self-portrait, he even changed the shape of his eyes to look Japanese.

Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ (1889)

In the same year, his friend, Gauguin painted a self-portrait with The Yellow Christ and Pot in the form of a Grotesque Head in the background.

More obvious is Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola's Self-portrait Painting the Madonna (1556). She's actually posed in front of her work like Norman Rockwell was in his triple self-portrait. Even in the 16th century, it paid to advertise! 

Portrait of the Artist at His Easel (1660)

I always learn something new in the process, for example, discovering the above self-portrait painted before Rembrandt's time. Rembrandt painted the most self-portraits of any artist (>75), though sometimes shown with a palette and brushes and even a glimpse of an easel, but without an opportunity to see what he is painting. He modeled for these portraits because he couldn't afford to pay a model.

Engaging in visual observation and having conversations about what you see can be entertaining and a great way to interact with people and surrounding art. You don't have to know about the art you're looking at to appreciate it, though it can lend understanding to learn more about it or the artist from museum personnel, bloggers, artbooks, or your own online research.

Sketching & Painting

Elaine de Kooning with JFK Sketches and Paintings

Blogging is much like painting. It can start with a sketch. Once the groundwork has been laid, you begin to add areas of color, building up elements of the story in layers. As the composition grows, you then highlight certain features and add details that may change the focus. I try to balance words and pictures and keep the topic thematic, harmonious, and unified. In both cases, you hope to learn something from each new work.

Portrait artists may need to become familiar with their subject before settling down to paint a serious final image. This was especially true for Gilbert Stuart, who kept an unfinished portrait of George Washington as a model for all future portraits of the 1st President.

Like drafts of a manuscript, sketches and studies help an artist practice their craft in a fluid and expressive manner that resembles a writer's stream of consciousness. Many artists, such as Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Wassily Kandinsky created studies leading up to some of their most famous works. Such works were often numbered rather than giving them representative titles.

When I visited the UK in 2017, I was amazed to see these small sketchpads with faded drawings by J.M.W. Turner. They were protected under glass in a display case. It's surprising how much paraphernalia gets preserved over time, along with the prolific works of artists who created them centuries ago. I am most impressed by the number of works by Van Gogh that have survived, given that he started painting at age 27 and died less than ten years later.

Visual Art Activities

I will often finish out the school year with a timeline of the artists we've studied. I created this collage of famous self-portraits to see how many of them my students could guess correctly. MS-PowerPoint allowed me to reveal them in order through the use of the animation capability.

Can you guess the artists?

When I started blogging, I would pull topics from something I had taught about. I hoped that other art docents would appreciate the topics about art elements and principles and also use some of my project ideas in their own lesson plans. I wanted to encourage participation in visual art activities.

Finishing Up

How do I know when I'm done? I like to share ~12-15 photos per blog. The size of each photo depends upon how much text there is describing it. Or the amount of text is edited down to fit adjacent to the picture. I try to arrange my photos alternating between left- and right-justified so that my article flows visually.

I have a couple of dedicated readers who suggest improvements and sometimes provide ideas for topics. Since I now have over 70 posts, and I haven't been teaching due to the pandemic, it would be helpful to get more suggestions. I hope to get the opportunity to do online teaching as students begin this challenging new era of online education.

Opposites in Art -- Color Contrast, Light and Dark, Smooth and Rough Textures

Without opposing forces in art, it would be difficult for artists to communicate form, space, and texture in a two-dimensional painting. Like the Chinese philosophy of Yin Yang, these contrary forces become interconnected so as to complement each other. Applying contrast, shading, and highlights bring figures, objects, and shapes alive. Contrasting and complementary colors and textures add interest and show how the objects or shapes interrelate. Opposites may also create rhythm and strengthen focus.

Color Contrast & Artist Relationships

Café Terrace at Night (1888), Van Gogh

In my Frenemies post, we saw how relationships between artists, though often friendships or romantic partnerships, created an environment of competition, conflict, and hopefully encouragement. Probably the pair that was most opposite is Van Gogh and Gauguin. Vincent liked to paint what he saw, like this outdoor café in Arles, and Paul preferred using his imagination or painting from his memory. Picasso was critical of Matisse's work. Manet and Degas also had their ups and downs.

I enjoy the combination of light and dark and how the perspective of the orange terrace and deep blue sky make the yellow awning stand out even more than its brightness, providing focus.

The Blue Mountain (1908), Kandinsky

Since they say that opposites attract, I wonder what differences or conflict existed among other famous artist couples. Pollock and Krasner, like the de Koonings, were abstract expressionists. Kandinsky and Münter were both members of the Blue Rider and created compositions full of bright colors. The primary colors in this Kandinsky painting and the contrasting white horses make a frame around the blue mountain, keeping the focus on his subject.

Smooth and Rough Textures

Marriage Between the Sun and
the Moon, Fidelma Massey

Traditionally, sculptures are smooth and monochromatic in white marble or patinated bronze. Already presented in 3D, the shading and highlights come naturally based on how the light hits the monochromatic surfaces. Therefore, how the limbs of a figure are posed, clothing is draped, or faces are expressed, must create the movement and interest without contrasting color. Totem poles, though usually thematic, often contain opposites. They may also be painted in contrasting colors or in a color scheme using black, white, and red, and sometimes light blue.

This unusual piece by Dublin artist, Fidelma Massey uses primary colors, including a red apple between the opposing figures perched upon a green marble base.

Breakfast in Fur (1936) by Surrealist, Méret Oppenheim is actually

a sculpture of a cup and saucer and spoon made entirely of fur. Personally, I think it looks more like feathers.

Its opposite would be the painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, painted in 1854 and entitled White Cup and Saucer. Opposites in both texture and reality!

Convergence (1952), Pollock

Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock tended to use thick layers of paint called impasto to add rough texture to his compositions. Helen Frankenthaler used the opposite technique to create flat areas of color on her canvas. Both were quite successful -- one at using layers of bold textural splatters and the other soft areas of color and space -- focusing on the artist's strokes or lack thereof.   

Mountains and Sea (1952), Frankenthaler

Contrasting Value -- Light & Dark

Surrealist, Salvador Dali painted his classic Persistence of Memory in 1931 contrasting hard and soft using images of melting pocket watches. He also painted it using opposite colors of orange and blue. Surprisingly, this is not Dali's dreamlike interpretation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity (space and time) but instead, he likened his timepieces to Camembert cheese melting in the sun. Really!

Vincent Van Gogh's Crab on its Back (1889) is another example of contrasting colors. I'm surprised that he used green for the background although it is a good contrast with the red claws. Another of his works has two crabs, one on its back, using a slightly bluer colored background for more contrast. This may have been a study.

I use Édouard Manet's Vase of Peonies on a Small Pedestal (1864) when teaching my 5th-graders about contrasting value. It's really a study in light and dark. The green leaves are contrasted by the red flowers for added interest and focus.

Contrasting Color in Graphic & Optical Art

Graphic art relies upon using contrasting colors, especially in silk screening. In my Illusions post, the mysterious puzzles were presented in black-and-white. When the palette is limited, line and the placement of opposing colors become critical in establishing shape, form, and balance.

Here's a pair of decorative art pieces that complement each other by swapping the light and dark colors.

 

Op artist, Victor Vasarely obviously knew how to use opposites to create his graphical illusions. So many wonderful examples to choose from!

                       Faces

Pattern & Value Contrast

In my 5th- and 6th-grade classes, we experimented with patterned paper to create wrapping paper self-portraits. The challenge was to build up the features of a face, head, neck, and shoulders atop a contrasting background such that you could still recognize the person. We used holiday paper which traditionally comes in opposite colors, some rolls even being reversible. It was interesting to see the results of the students' choices.

Japanese Notans

More impressive still, is the Japanese Notan art we made in my 5th-grade class. We used positive-negative space to create masterpieces by flipping cutouts from a square opposite each edge.

Black Diamond Anniversary -- Artists Who Used Diamond Shapes

In honor of my one-year anniversary of living in Black Diamond, an old coal-mining town, we will be exploring diamond-shaped patterns in art. 

Growing up, our rec room floors were laid with large black-and-white square tiles that resembled a checkerboard or a diamond pattern similar to those in Vermeer (1632-75) paintings such as “The Art of Painting” (1665-67). Ours were laid 300 years later!

Two Harlequins (1886), Degas

Harlequins

Modern artists, such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Emil Betzler (1892-1974) used a diamond pattern in their harlequin paintings. The pose of Degas' harlequin is like one of his ballerinas warming up before a performance.

I wonder if Cezanne was channeling Vermeer when he painted the similarly-patterned curtains in his background. The white hat also looks like something out of Vermeer's era.

Pierrot and Harlequin (1888), Cezanne

The Two Saltimbanques (1901), Picasso

Harlequins 2 (ca. 1960), Betzler

Neo-Plasticism and Op Art

Later, in the eras of Neo-Plasticism (1917-1944) -- Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Ilya Bolotowsky (1907-1981) -- and Op Art (the 1960s and 1970s) -- Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) --engaged in non-objective art employing geometric shapes such as the diamond.  Mondrian even took his compositions typically painted on a square canvas and rotated them 45 degrees. He originally painted Broadway Boogie Woogie in 1942-3, then in 1944, just before the artist’s death, he painted the similar Victory Boogie Woogie, which he oriented like a diamond but never completed. 

Black Diamond (ca. 1970), Bolotowsky

Another artist who used the style espoused by Mondrian was Ilya Bolotowsky, who began to include the diamond shape in his art in 1947.

I love the opposing color scheme in this work by Op Artist, Victor Vasarely. It is also a study of value gradation. How wonderful to be able to precisely record what one's brain is imagining and to preserve and communicate such images for other brains to interpret!

In 1979, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) made several gold screen-prints using diamond dust, including this portrait of fellow artist, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). Because this was part of the Warhol exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2018, my photo captured his image reflecting off the opposite wall. As I said in another post in which I displayed this photo -- doubly creepy!!

As a nod to my Arizona friend who quilts, here is a fine example of a diamond pattern sewn into a quilt. It's actually made up of small triangles arranged such they combine to form larger diamond shapes.

Now let's move to paintings showing workers in coal mines and other venues. 

Miners and Other Workers

Workers in the Snow (1912), Munch

When I went looking for paintings of miners, I immediately thought of Edvard Munch, whose works we saw at his museum in Oslo, Norway while on our cruise of the Baltics in June 2019. It was impressive to see Munch's painting alongside a matching sculpture of workers (not necessarily miners) carrying shovels.

British artist, Norman Cornish (1919-2014) is most famous for his drawings and paintings of English miners. His Cornish Pit Road reminds me of the sad figures seen in paintings by Munch and Van Gogh.

His pastels painting of Two Miners, supposedly from the 1980s, is particularly moving. He traveled 'Pit Road' many times to and from the mines for 33 years before turning to the art of painting.

Miners' Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal (1882), Van Gogh

Van Gogh painted coal miners' wives, who were also laborers. I marvel at the obscure Van Gogh paintings that I find when doing research about other topics. After all, he didn't just paint wheat fields and beautiful landscapes dotted with cypress trees and starlit skies.

Twenty-first-century artist, John Scott Martin, also from the UK, who has recently been making linocuts commemorating Cornish mineworkers (like his grandfather). Such workers mined coal, tin, copper, silver, zinc, and even arsenic.

Martin's work is quite impressive!

In 2013, the City of Black Diamond dedicated this bronze statue of a miner, created by artist, Paul Crites, along with a 28-ft granite wall engraved with the names of miners who died in Washington state coal mines. You can read about Black Diamond history here.

Unfortunately, this year's Miner's Day was canceled due to COVID-19.

Things That Go Together in Art – Subjects, Portraits, Landscapes/Seascapes, Still Lifes, and Couples

I'd like to base this post on the compositional element of unity or harmony or things that belong together in art. Here, we will be looking at the subjects of paintings, the components of landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes, and famous art couples. A subject is usually the main focus of a painting, the idea or essence that the artist wants to communicate. It can be a portrait, a landscape, or a still life that depicts something natural or imagined or even an abstract expression or feeling.

Portraiture

Let's start with my favorite -- portraiture. Portraits may be composed of a single person or animal or any group thereof. Some portraits focus on just the face or body, while others are accompanied by familiar surroundings, costumes, pets, etc. that tell a story. Sometimes they are abstracted using unexpected shapes and colors or something from nature made to look unnatural. Whatever technique, style, or color scheme you choose allows your subject to be more interesting.

I couldn't resist using this black-and-white photograph as my portrait example. It's simple, harmonious, repetitious, and balanced.

Landscapes

Perhaps one of the easiest subjects to portray or imagine is a landscape. This photograph of a person feeding swans in the snow adjacent to a lake is both a portrait and a landscape. The large rectangular-shaped areas of the snow and water and the somewhat similar organic shapes of the person and the pair of swans provide both value and texture contrast and a dramatic focal point for the scene.

Occasionally even portraits, such as the Mona Lisa, will have a landscape as a background or secondary focus. 

Spring Ploughing (1940), Thomas Hart Benton

In 2017, the Seattle Art Museum displayed 39 landscapes (like this one) from Paul Allen's private collection in its exhibit called, "Seeing Nature". Trees can be your focus or may be used to frame your view. Maybe you want to create depth and include mountains or hills in the distance. You can add buildings, barns, bales of hay, fences, roads, rivers, etc. to create interest in your composition. You can even change the environment or set the time of day. Maybe the focus in your landscape is the sky. Clouds may be particularly challenging. What's more difficult is creating atmospheric effects.

Probably the best example of atmospheric paintings are those accomplished by J. M. W. Turner. His Depositing of John Bellini's Three Pictures in La Chiesa Redentore, Venice (1841) is one of the more spectacular pieces in Allen's collection.

Still Lifes

Still Life With Skull (1898), Cezanne

Arranging a collection of inanimate objects into a still life is an excellent way of learning to draw and paint. Such subjects teach an artist what makes a good composition and may dictate what objects are chosen and how they relate. They also teach you how to create space and form using overlapping and shading.

While the skull in Cezanne's painting may seem out of place, its shape is similar to the pears arranged on the tabletop. The color palette of the skull, table and triangular background shape unifies the disparate objects. Even the skull's nasal area is highlighted in yellow and masquerades as another piece of fruit.

Still Life with Apples on Pink Cloth (1925), Matisse

Artists who painted Still Lifes are  Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. I've bolded my favorites, both of who were not afraid of color, printed tablecloths, or elaborate wallpaper. I'd like to know what the brown and gold pillar-shaped objects are unless they're curtains or the hinged areas of a screen. I think the small white pitcher gets lost in the composition, except for the fact that the black and blue backdrop provides its emphasis.

Viva La Vida (1954), Frida Kahlo

Both Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera painted still lifes of watermelons as their last paintings. Kahlo died in 1954 at age 47, apparently from a pulmonary embolism, within eight days of completing her final work. One of her legs had been amputated below the knee and she had been bedridden.

Curiously, Édouard Manet lost his foot and died in 1883, just a year after painting A Bar At The Folies-Bergère (1882), his final and probably most famous work.

The Watermelons (1957), Diego Rivera

Rivera died three years after Kahlo at age 70. His painting was a commissioned work that he had initially refused because of his dislike for watermelon.

Several Circles (1949), Kandinsky

Abstract Compositions

Abstract expressionists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró used lines and circles as their subjects. Such compositions may or may not be representational though the arrangement of objects creates a feeling of harmony and uses colors that make us feel happy.

This is perhaps my favorite Miró painting. In an elementary school class I taught that focused on the art element, Line, I made paper stick puppets out of all the figures that I found in Figures and Dog In Front of the Sun (1944). Maybe you'd be surprised how many dogs are depicted here. You may also imagine a couple (a man and a woman) lying on the sand under a red sun. At least that's one interpretation!

Famous Art Couples

Frida and Diego Rivera (1931), Kahlo

My original idea for this post was to find paintings of objects that go together or are often seen together in a painting. Of course, landscapes and still lifes have recognizable components that together form an outdoor scene or an indoor arrangement. It seemed only natural to make the leap to couples. At first, I found a painting of a couple of ducks (a drake and a hen) and a photograph of two puppies that I used to introduce the topic. I found pairings of gods and goddesses and even some double portraits. I've already posted about Grant Wood's American Gothic and The Two Fridas in earlier posts. Then I remembered that Frida Kahlo was married to Diego Rivera. They painted each other for 25 years, divorcing once and remarrying one year later. In Kahlo's painting, the relative sizes of the heads are mimicked in Miró's painting above, but instead of a dog, Rivera is holding a palette and brushes and there is a pigeon overhead instead of a red sun. 

Rivera's feet are turned out and even Kahlo's feet are as small as the black dots in Miró's work.

I'm pretty sure that Miró did not have this couple in mind for his painting!

Murnau Landscape (1909?), Münter

Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter were both expressionists and together with Franz Marc started the Blue Rider movement in Germany. Kandinsky, though married, met Münter in 1902 and lived together for many years, separating from his wife in 1904 and eventually divorcing in 1911. Münter painted several of these colorful landscapes, each with three lollipop trees. 

Münter's Kandinsky

She also painted this portrait of Kandinsky, looking a bit like a sepia-tone photograph with a more modern background. Curious that the only highlighting or shading is on his hair and beard, and nothing on the pipe or clothing. Also, it's as if she put herself behind him with the outlined areas of color.

Taos Mountain New Mexico (1930), O'Keeffe

Painter Georgia O'Keeffe was the favorite portrait subject of photographer and husband, Alfred Stieglitz. He apparently photographed her for 331 portraits. Although most famous for her American Modernist closeups of flowers, you may have seen her southwestern landscapes and animal skull paintings. It's funny how colorful her paintings are when the artist herself wore strictly black and white.

Abstract Expressionists Willem and Elaine de Kooning were married in 1943, and her most famous subject was President John F. Kennedy, whose portrait she painted in 1963. I was lucky enough to see her work, along with 11 other female artists, as part of the 12 Women of Abstract Expressionism exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2017.

Gothic Landscape (1961), Krasner

Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner were married from 1945-56. When they met, Krasner was already active as a painter in New York and apparently was intrigued by Pollock's work. Her work was also on display in Palm Springs when I visited in 2017. This one from London's Tate Museum is similar to her work exhibited at PSAM. The thick black lines resemble trees.

Galatea of the Spheres (1952), Dali

Surrealists Salvador and Gala Dali married in 1958, though they lived together for 53 years. She was his muse, and for a time Dali signed both their names to his works, crediting her (blood) as his inspiration.

In 1972, Dali painted a double portrait of the artist and his muse (wife Gala). It reminds me of an interior, painted by Johannes Vermeer, with light streaming in from a window. Here, we get to see both figures from the front and the back with the aid of a mirror. If only we could see what's on his easel! Notice how Gala's chair is downplayed in both color and value so as not to compete with the artist's chair and mirror frame.

Everyone is familiar with Norman Rockwell's 1960 Triple Self-Portrait. It is also aided by a mirror, though in this case, we can see what he has drawn bigger than life. What an iconic image! Did he really draw himself without glasses? I like how he pinned several famous self-portraits to the top right-hand corner of his easel. Included are artists Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh. Notice also how the mahlstick (or maulstick) that Rockwell is using to steady his hand points directly at the masters he acknowledges.

Las Meninas (1656), Velázquez

My favorite classic group portrait is by Diego Velázquez. I challenge you to decide who is the subject of this painting. Entitled Ladies in Waiting, the central figure is 5-yr-old Princess Margaret Theresa, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, surrounded by several strange figures, including the painter himself. The crazy thing is that you can actually see the King and Queen reflected in a distant mirror. I always thought that it was just another portrait hanging in the large room. Yet, as it turns out, Velázquez is painting their portrait as they sit for it out of our view. The man in the doorway is Don José Nieto Velázquez, the queen's chamberlain, who may be waiting for the royal couple's exit. So, is the royal couple the subject? Their little girl? Or is this simply another self-portrait?

Though difficult to see, Jan van Eyck sneaks a very small image of himself in the double portrait, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434). Even more obscure than the mirror in Velázquez's composition, the centrally located convex mirror discretely contains the artist's reflection. Check out those crazy shoes in the bottom left corner. They look like bones for the pet dog that is staring at the viewer.

The painting is fraught with symbolism of fidelity, love, marriage, opulence, and religion. The Artstor Digital Library is a great source for highlighting such obscure details and answering questions surrounding such complicated works.