Showing posts with label 50th birthday celebration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 50th birthday celebration. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Lanterns for 50th birthday celebration
Kindergarten artists helped paint these beautiful lanterns for our school's 50th birthday celebration. We used liquid watercolors and added salt to create beautiful bleeding patterns.
Stained glass windows... In progress!
As part of our school-wide celebration of our school's 50th birthday, fifth and sixth graders are creating these stained glass windows. They will be a permanent installation in our school. Each window represents a different aspect of our community that makes it unique, including the Mad River and outdoor recreation, gardens and vegetables, animals and farms, maple sugaring, a historical school house and Sugarbush and Mad River Ski Areas. We used cut plexiglass and glass paint to create these windows.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Wayne Thiebaud Cakes
In celebration of our school's 50th Birthday, first and second grade artists learned about Wayne Thiebaud. He was famous for painting pictures of cakes and other sweet treats. We tried to capture the halo effect that Thiebaud called "halination" by outlining with oil pastels before AND after painting with lightened tempera paints.
The Life of Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920. His father worked, among other things, as a mechanic, an inventor, a rancher, and a milkman. When Thiebaud was six months old his family moved to California where he spent a lot of time on his grandfather’s farm. His first art projects were with his mother on rainy days and with his uncle who was a cartoonist.
For many years Thiebaud did odd jobs like sign painting, cartooning, and illustrating movie posters. One summer he even worked in the animation department of Walt Disney studios. He was almost thirty years old before he realized that he could make a career of painting. When he returned to college to learn about art, he was offered a teaching job and spent many years teaching art in California universities.
At forty years old, he began his series of still-life paintings of food. Drawing with color and correcting his drawings with darker color led to a halo effect around his objects. This outline of pure, intense colors has become known as halation and adds to the vibrancy of Thiebaud’s paintings. He uses bright colors, thick rapid brush strokes, and simplified shapes to paint common, everyday food. Filling his canvas with a single cafeteria-style cake or pie elevates it to an absurd status that is part of his humor. At times he repeats the desserts over and over again, giving the impression that there is no end to these sweet things.
Some biographical information about Wayne Thiebaud from a great art blog, Art For Small Hands.
Wayne Thiebaud was born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920. His father worked, among other things, as a mechanic, an inventor, a rancher, and a milkman. When Thiebaud was six months old his family moved to California where he spent a lot of time on his grandfather’s farm. His first art projects were with his mother on rainy days and with his uncle who was a cartoonist.
For many years Thiebaud did odd jobs like sign painting, cartooning, and illustrating movie posters. One summer he even worked in the animation department of Walt Disney studios. He was almost thirty years old before he realized that he could make a career of painting. When he returned to college to learn about art, he was offered a teaching job and spent many years teaching art in California universities.
At forty years old, he began his series of still-life paintings of food. Drawing with color and correcting his drawings with darker color led to a halo effect around his objects. This outline of pure, intense colors has become known as halation and adds to the vibrancy of Thiebaud’s paintings. He uses bright colors, thick rapid brush strokes, and simplified shapes to paint common, everyday food. Filling his canvas with a single cafeteria-style cake or pie elevates it to an absurd status that is part of his humor. At times he repeats the desserts over and over again, giving the impression that there is no end to these sweet things.
When painting a cake, Thiebaud says that he is painting a picture of an object that has already been painted. It’s as though he transforms the thick rich texture of oil paint into whipped cream or icing as he spreads it across the desserts on his canvas.
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