Modern Art/Distorted Grid Lesson

First a few key terms:

Cubism- Cubist artists rejected traditional form and shape. A cubist artist broke down a subject matter into geometric designs and shapes, and then reorganized and overlapped the elements. Commonplace objects such as tables and bottles were painted from various points of view, making them look distorted and fragmented. There are two kinds of cubist paintings-analytic cubism and synthetic cubism. Analytic cubism attempted to break down objects and reassemble them into various forms. Synthetic cubism strived to synthesize imaginative elements into new figurative forms.

Surrealism- a style of art and literature developed principally in the 20th century, stressing the subconscious or non rational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions, etc.

Artists to Know: Francis Bacon, Salvador Dahli, MC Esher, Rene Margaritte, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp.

For this assignment we are going to take the normal process of gridding a picture and change it up a bit.

Step 1: find the center of your
picture

Step 2: measure 1 inch out on
each side and do this for both
sides

Step 3: connect all the dots to
form a grid pattern.

Step 4: Take your sheet of paper
and begin to draw a curve grid
on it. Be sure you match the number
of squares on your paper to the
number on your picture.

Step 5: Now we are going begin drawing out our image. The best way to do this is to map out points where the places on the face cross the grid. Then connect the dots while keep the contorts of the face as much as possible.



Step 5: this will be your finished result before you shade

http://www.arteducation.com.au

Artist of the Month: MC Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world's most famous graphic artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, as can be seen on the many web sites on the internet.

He is most famous for his so-called impossible structures, such as Ascending and Descending, Relativity, his Transformation Prints, such as Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II and Metamorphosis III, Sky & Water I or Reptiles.


CASTROVALVA
Lithograph, February 1930
But he also made some wonderful, more realistic work during the time he lived and traveled in Italy.
Castrovalva for example, where one already can see Escher's fascination for high and low, close by and far away. The lithograph Atrani, a small town on the Amalfi Coast was made in 1931, but comes back for example, in his masterpiece Metamorphosis I and II




METAMORPHOSIS M.C. Escher, during his lifetime, made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches. Like some of his famous predecessors, - Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Holbein-, M.C. Escher was left-handed.

Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals. He was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, as the fourth and youngest son of a civil engineer. After 5 years the family moved to Arnhem where Escher spent most of his youth. After failing his high school exams, Maurits ultimately was enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem


JETTA After only one week, he informed his father that he would rather study graphic art instead of architecture, as he had shown his drawings and linoleum cuts to his graphic teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, who encouraged him to continue with graphic arts.

After finishing school, he traveled extensively through Italy, where he met his wife Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. They settled in Rome, where they stayed until 1935. During these 11 years, Escher would travel each year throughout Italy, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home.

BARBARANO,CIMINO

Many of these sketches he would later use for various other lithographs and/or woodcuts and wood engravings, for example the background in the lithograph Waterfall stems from his Italian period, or the trees reflecting in the woodcut Puddle, which are the same trees Escher used in his woodcut "Pineta of Calvi", which he made in 1932.

WATERFALL

M.C. Escher became fascinated by the regular Division of the Plane, when he first visited the Alhambra, a fourteen century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain in 1922.
During the years in Switzerland and throughout the Second World War, he vigorously pursued his hobby, by drawing 62 of the total of 137 Regular Division Drawings he would make in his lifetime.

He would extend his passion for the Regular Division of the Plane, by using some of his drawings as the basis for yet another hobby, carving beech wood spheres.

He played with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces. His art continues to amaze and wonder millions of people all over the world. In his work we recognize his keen observation of the world around us and the expressions of his own fantasies. M.C. Escher shows us that reality is wondrous, comprehensible and fascinating.

Credit for this artist info retrieved from http://www.mcescher.com/
For more information on M.C.Escher we refer you to:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Escher.html

In The Begining

I am currently a student teacher at Barbe High School and I will be graduating from McNeese State University in May.