The end ... or is it?

First Order of Business.
I loved the art gallery. I almost went back there Thursday night with the lady friend and my parents (as Thursday nights are free).
Here is a picture of my hand shamelessly stolen from Marissa's blog.

I liked how the second artists photographs looked like a group of feral people. I can see how it could make others uncomfortable. I suppose it appealed to my wild side, yearning to free itself from the yoke of society.

Ted Hiebert Incidental Self Portrait #2 (go see it in person if you missed it, it is awesome)

Second Order of Business:
I had fun at the Christmas Lunch. It was nice to sing with the whole class. I did feel a bit bad though that not a lot of students from the other cohorts showed up.

Third Order of Business:
I like the idea of sharing creative development with a close group of friends, and I would be willing to continue updating this blog, but I suspect that many people won't continue to check it, so for now, this will be the last post.

Drawing is hard

I finished the three drawings I said I would attempt. The first is Giger and the bad dreams he suffers.



The second is my feeble attempt at an organic landscape like the ones he drew and painted.



The third is a (tongue in cheek) visual representation of Giger's legacy.



I tried to use some of the contour and gesture drawing skills that Willow showed us early in the semester. I used pictures and models for all three images (with certain obvious additions). It also seems obvious that I was beginning to tire of drawing. I think the quality drops steeply in the third picture. C'est la vie, and a lesson for another time.

Here we go...

So I just finished the research for the artist that I selected (H. R. Giger) and I think I am going to try to draw 2-3 pictures while imitating his art style to present to the class as an assignment that students could do. Since I don't have very much formal training, it's a good thing that we only have to do a mock up of the final product. In case anyone wants a preview, there is a short You Tube clip that you can watch that has Giger talking about his art.



IMPORTANT NOTE: I researched Giger as an artist because I am a science fiction fan, but I would be very careful before bringing his art into any classroom because many of his pieces contain frighting images and erotic content that is not appropriate for young children, including several in this clip.

Ketchup Part Three

I like to think that part of this blog is about showcasing our creativity. Here is a poem I wrote in a fourth year creative writing course (it is titled "a poem"). It was judged fit to include in the 2005 UNBC creative writing anthology SAWDUST. Of the 4 poems of mine that are included in that anthology, I am only happy with this one.

Part of that is because of the positive feedback it received from my fellow students in that class. I remember it being discussed in very positive terms and being blown away by how much people liked it.

Here it is:

a poem

My daughter read me a poem she had written:

with a wally whump wizz
and a rang tangle bang
boon dock scuttletons
and rattle back bugs

muskrats and deerskins
apples and franks
white mounded mumps
and blue copper thistles

dancing dugberries
putter balloons
supper is served
placemats and cups

when I told her it wasn't a poem
she began to cry.
"Why not, dear papa?"
"It doesn't rhyme," I replied.

Note: I do have an anti war bias

I wanted to base today's blog (today is Remembrance Day) on art with an anti war theme. I recall writing something a bit inflammatory last year about how I was uncomfortable with the feeling of nationalism that I got during an observation at around this time.

This morning I was watching a television program on some ceremonies held in some small town, where various families and their experiences with the different wars were featured. One family featured a man who was Canadian, but his father had been German and had been captured by the Russian army, and who had spent more than two years trying to escape. When asked what he was thinking about his father, the man choked up with tears and was unable to answer.

I think it is important to think about not only the Canadians that died but the soldiers who they fought against.

Disclaimer: I did not create these images. They were supplied by Google after a short search of "anti war art"

Ketchup Part Deux

As some of you may know, we had a big art show the other day, and it consisted of art that we (as practicum students) liberated (stole) from our practicum classes, and I brought several pictures of pumpkin people that my students created out of various scrapbook papers (generously donated by my practicum teacher) and pumpkin templates, that they had a lot of fun making, even though the lesson itself was not totally free of glitches (one student had a bit of a temper tantrum, and two female students drew bikini tops on their pumpkin people which offended some parents when the pictures were displayed) I was still very proud to show their work in the show, and I had 2 of 5 students drag their families out to check out their work, but I was too busy fulfilling my self appointed duties as a greeter to spend too much time talking with them or their parents, so I had to content myself having fun chatting with other families about their students art work, and hanging out with other practicum students.

The word of the day is "Ketchup"

So, lets all hop in our time machines and travel back to the middle of our hero's practicum.

You might have seen the pumpkin people that my students created, but there was another Halloween themed art project that we worked on.

Students made Halloween themed stained glass artwork with various colours of construction paper and tissue paper.

Students worked together to create various pictures.

There was a slight wrinkle, in that we worked together with their grade 7 book buddies on this project. They helped the grade 1 students do the tricky jobs like folding and gluing.

I made this ghost as an example of a finished product, but students made things like pumpkins, monsters and bat signals.