Miniature 1

a Demon from the "Conqueror's Albums"

Mehmed Siyah-Kalem was an artist to the Ottoman court whose work is preserved at the Topkapi Sarayı (the Imperial Ottoman Palace Library). Miniature painting comes from the tradition of illustrating manuscripts. The works of Siyah-Kalem are collected in what are known as the "Conquerors Albums", the albums are a selection of miniatures taken from various manuscripts in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. What is fascinating about Siyah-Kalem's work (whose name in English means Black Pen) is just how dark they are in their portrayals of monstrous-like figures, usually miniature paintings are quite pastoral and show scenes of noble life or great battles being fought.

For your next assignment you are going to reproduce one of Mehmed Siyah-Kalem miniatures using fine-art paper and chalk pastel.

Sock Monkey 1

by Marisa @ www.creativethursday.com

We are starting our Sock Monkeys this week or as some of you are already calling them, our Shock Monkeys. You will need to have 1 pair (2 socks), a needle and some thread in order to make your monkeys. The first thing that you are going to do is lean how to sew, so come prepared to do some stitching in your Development Sketchbooks. That is right, you will learn to sew on paper, then we will move on to a cloth sample AND then you will start creating that monkey.

In Your Development Sketchbook
You should have written an exploration of who your Monkey is going to be and how you think it is possible to create a Monkey from two socks. I asked you to think about the following things:

1. What kind of character do you think your Sock Monkey will be?
2. How do you know what kind of personality traits s/he will have?
3. Do you think that the colour and pattern of your sock helps determine who your Sock Monkey will be?
4. Draw a diagram of how you think the socks will become the various parts of your Monkey.
   

Target Final

The Target Project is almost complete. The Grade 6 is putting the final touches on their Target pieces, all that is left are some touch ups in paint and last minute details to be added to some Bows and Arrows.

Here is a picture of the Target that we took in class today. It has turned out really well. 6_03 especially like how each individual piece is a stand-alone work, but also how well the 12 canvases fit together to make one larger work. Very cool!

Poetry Book Making 1

The Grade 7 rounded off their Poetry unit in English last week with a Poetry Slam and now they are bringing their work into the Art class to make a bound book of their own writing. We have spent the lasts few weeks making a mock book/template to work from.

Grade 7 you have at this point; figured out how many sheets (1 sheet = 4 pages) you need in your book, what colour they will be and what will be on each of them. Over the next three weeks you will be spending every lesson steadily creating the contents for each page by writing out your poems and illustrating the pages. The week before Spring Break we will spend the time in class actually sewing the pages, making the covers and binding your Poetry Books.

Check out this link to see the basic process of what we will be doing...