Visual Arts

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VISUAL ARTS

 

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES (Freshmen)

 

Code: JMW915

Materials and Techniques is a year long studio arts class designed to impart a foundation of skills, vocabulary, and art history knowledge which students will build on their entire career at JMW.  Lessons in drawing will focus on observational drawing of still-life objects.  Still-life subjects will increase in difficulty as skills to express proportion, perspective, light and shade, and composition are mastered.  Students will learn processes for positive block printing and intaglio printing as well as techniques for carved and modeled sculpture.  Art history will be taught throughout the year through lectures, reading, projects and papers, and museum visits. 

 

COLOR AND ANATOMY (Sophomores)

Code: JMW916

 

Color and Anatomy will teach sophomore students to paint and create a foundation of knowledge of the human figure which will be elaborated upon in the junior year.  The first half of the year will be devoted to color theory and painting in acrylics and watercolor.  Still-life and master copies will be the subject as students learn to mix color, apply paint, and understand value.  The second half of the year will be devoted to learning investigative drawing in examination of bones and learning human anatomy through lectures and the creation of a scale model of a human skeleton in clay.  The final project will allow students to apply their skills in self-defined projects as they start to explore self expression.  Art history will be taught throughout the year, continuing from where we left off the prior year in Janson’s Art History Book.

 

LANDSCAPE/ INTERIORS AND THE FIGURE (Juniors)

Code: JMW917

 

Students will start the year taking advantage of the warm weather to try open-air painting, exploring the traditions of the impressionists.  Students will learn to edit the immense detail and complexity of the outdoors to the essentials for communicating their personal experience.  Students will go on to learn the rules of perspective and depict complex architecture and interior spaces.  Midyear we will connect the anatomy learned in the sophomore year to the actual body.  By the end of the section, students will be able to draw a believable figure in any position from their imagination or from life.  The class will culminate in large scale painting where students will place the figure in an environment (interior or exterior).

 

PORTFOLIO/PUBLIC ART (SENIORS)

Code:  JMW 918

 

Senior year will begin with portfolio preparation for art college admissions. Once students have their admissions portfolios in order, we will explore the world of site specific art for the public.  Students will design murals and sculptures for sites in the community.  The process of writing proposals and budgets for public arts contests and grants will be covered.  Students will learn techniques for creating scale models and enlarging and will work with guest artists who concentrate on public art.  Students will work individually and in groups where teamwork and compromise are necessary to project advancement.