March 2021 Art Blog

 March 2021

With great pleasure I welcomed students in-person in the Baich art room for the first time in over a year!  What a difference to be able to have access to supplies and a teaching style not via a screen. Through the end of the school year two grade levels will be rotating through the art room for in-person art instruction in a two week wheel schedule. Distance learning classes will continue to have art instruction via zoom following the same two week schedule. 

Kindergarten 

Students were introduced to the concept of contrast: to use different elements or opposites to make areas in artwork stand out. The tint white and the shade black are the lightest and darkest shades to create the highest, strongest contrast and a dramatic statement.

 

Are black and white colors? Many do consider black to be a color, because you combine other pigments to create it on paper, but in a technical sense, black and white are not colors, they’re shades. They augment colors, and yet they do function like colors. They evoke feelings and allow for balanced, and aesthetic pleasing designs.

4th grade

Building on our study of skin colors 4th grade students engaged in the inquiry: “Why do the shape of eyes differ in different races?”

They are not different eye shapes, they are different eyelids. Some Asians as well as others have what is called an epicanthic fold in their upper eyelid and it makes the eye appear to be a different shape.

The epicanthal fold is a skin fold of the upper eyelid covering the inner corner of the eye. It is often seen as a normal finding in very young children and is most pronounced in some people of Asiatic descent. There are also varying degrees of the fold throughout the world's population.

As far as its evolutionary purpose, there are various thoughts on this and has been a topic of discussion since the 19th century.

One hypothesis is that it was a trait that evolved to protect the eye from the blowing sand of the Gobi Desert. Interestingly, the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert also have epicanthal folds. It has also been suggested that the fold itself might provide a level of protection from snow blindness. It can be seen in Siberian peoples and Inuits. There are several other hypotheses but these are the two most widely known.

Japanese Anime is an art genre that focuses on the eyes of characters. The word anime — pronounced "ah-knee-may" — is an abbreviation of the word animation. Anime character’s eyes are over exaggerated and often take up about one third of the characters face to illustrate the actions and emotions of characters. Students were introduced to “manga” creator artist Osamu Tezuka. Practicing the manga cartoon drawing style students sketched their eyes and named  their unique eyelid shapes in creative, descriptive ways.