Art with clay

In this lesson, we worked and molded clay to create different shapes and objects. In order to do so, we had to use water to humidify the clay and be able to shape it to create what we wanted. Firstly I didn't know what to create; however, after molding the clay for some minutes I realized that one of the pieces was getting a shape pretty similar to a rabbit, so I decided to keep going and build a rabbit. Then, I still had time and wanted to create another work. I fought to create a statue, but some parts kept being difficult to mold and I gave up with that idea. Instead of shaping a statue, I mold the clay to shape a guitar, as I have been playing this instrument for a very long time, and tried to highlight the main elements the guitar has. Here you have some pictures to see how it looked like when the molding process finished: 

 

Then, we had to let them dry before painting them, so we left them dry in a shelf for two weeks and afterwards we painted them. I tried to paint the works in different colours; nevertheless, the colour brown of the clay kept appearing, so I decided to paint them in colours that are not the usual ones, but that give a new essence and make them different. So as to paint them, I used different pincels and a little bit of water to remove the colour and change it. For the rabbit, I went with a light blue, which I obtained by mixing the blue painture we had with white, to make it more light. Then, as our group didn't have the colour black, I used a dark blue to use it to paint the noise, mouse and eyes; however, it run a little bit. Then I used the white painture to paint the ears and the tail and give the effect like if the rabbit had also white fur. On the other hand, for the guitar I used different range of blues and purple. The darkest blue was used to represent the strings and neck, the sound hole and the bridge of the guitar, as are ones of the main parts of the guitar that lets it sound. Then, for the body I combined different blues and a little bit of purple to create a unique design and also bright. Afterwards, we let them dry and here you have the final creations: 

              

 

It was my first time molding clay, so I put a lot of effort to create pieces of work of which I could be proud afterwards. I know these are not my best creations, but for being my first time doing this technique I find them quite good. 

Interdisciplinary work

This interdiscilplinary project englobed both arts and craft and music subjects. The aim was to use different techniques from arts and crafts and play some music, using and taking into account all the  elements and aspects studied in the subject, jointly in a performance. Our seminar had the common thread of film genres, in our case we performed some scences with the essence of a thriller, which ended being quite funny. Here you can see the video and some photos of the material used for the arts and craft field. 

It become an amusing project, since it was different to all we had previously done. Nevertheless, it had been quite difficult to get together to rehearse it, which, in the end, we admitted we needed more practice. What is more, it was hard to perform music and visual at the same time in a limited period of time and being only four people. In spite of having some difficulties and setbacks during the action, we kept continuing. 

Museu MACBA: Bloc Educació

In order to understand how the Educational Department of museums work, we had to go on a visit and workshop to get the their essence and do an interview to the heads of the department, which we did by email. We chose MACBA because of its range of different educational activities it offered. 

Our group followed Primary School students along the visit and we stayed at the end to see which kind of workshops they did. 

The exhibition we saw was called the Short Century and had many works englobed; however we just focused on a few of them, chosen by the guide. We found it a really good choice because it showed different features and topics and we did not repeat any of them. Apart from that, we got a good impression from the guide, who instead of explaining the meaning of each work, asked the students questions and, from those, she linked the main ideas connected to the theme of the creation and constructed with them the significance, so then they could discuss about it. Some of the topics that appear were: war, feminism, racial discrimination, among others. What is more, the good aspect of this visit was noticing that each relevant comment from the children that appeared in the different sections were used to create, in workshop time, a big poster in groups to convince people about the importance of those topics in our society. 

By carrying out this project, I realized how many resources we could use when becoming teachers, since bringing children to museum is an amusing and different way of working or complementing the content done in class. 

Click here to go and read our research and here to have a look at our presentation. 

Portrait + Portrait with shadows

In this lesson, we had to do two drawings: the first one had to be a complete portrait of one classmate (Laura, in this case). Then, we needed to copy it in another piece of paper, but adding shadows to it so it would have volume, like if we could see it in 3D. To accomplish this, we used a new technique that consisted in drawing a type of grid, so straight lines that cross each other. Before drawing the shadows, we had to consider which parts of the body were going to have more and less light. The ones with more light are represented in the picture more separately, whilst the ones with less light are represented more closely. In this way, we can highlight the parts with more shadow that do actually give more volume to the picture. And this are the results (the first two belong to the first drawing we did and the other one is the one that has shadows):

 

Before using this technique in class, I did not know its existence. When it come to drawing, I used to paint with a darker pencil or colour to simulate the shadows. This technique allows us to give different intensity range of shadows, since we can draw the straight lines closer or farther from each other, it gives us more flexibility. From now on, I'll tend to put into practice this method, because it can help me focus where the different point of shadow are placed and with what intensity. I'm sure that if I had the chance to introduce it to children, they would be more capable to notice the difference between parts of less or more light and also that there is no concept of such as just dark or light, everything has a wide spectrum of colours.

Toulouse Lautrec + Diego Velázquez exhibitions

On 17th of December we went to the CosmoCaixa to see the exhibition of Toulouse Lautrec, an artist included in the poster movement. He was known to be one of the brave artist to fight against the ideals imposed by the Academy of Fine Arts and start the movement of breakdown and originality. 

In this exhibition, we could see different works. Some aspects that actually got my attention were, first of all, that the firsts cabarets were places in which many artists used to meet to discuss and share their ideas. Those cabarets were not the places we might relate to nowadays, these areas where divided into two: the one exclusively for artists and the other one opened to the public. Then, the guide introduced the Chats noirs, two of them opened, but because of the loss of innocence they had to close down. Afterwards, the guide presented us the name of Moulin Rouge (as can be seen in the picture), which was opened around the 60s by a Catalan and it was at this time when the concept of cabaret as we know today arose.
The exhibition mainly consisted in posters which were created as a street art that wasn't taken into consideration by the Academy.
From this exhibition I can highlight the ideas mentioned above. Although the guide was quite a good communicator, the rushing prevent me from acquiring more ideas and understanding a bit deeper what she was explaining us. 

Apart from that, we had the chance to go and see the Velázquez exclusive exhibition, as it would be there for a limited period of time. We didn't have a guide to show and explain us the portraits and different works, so it was quite difficult to deep in the meaning and the intention of the artist had when painting and creating those works. What I noticed was that many mythological creatures and characters appeared in different portraits; nevertherless, only of was from him: Marte. Not all the creations were done by Velázquez, but they related to him, to the Spanish Royal Collections and to the "Segle d'Or". In addition to this, we discussed one portrait "El Príncipe Baltasar Carlos a caballo" which at the first look, one could notice that the horse was pretty fat, that was why we had to look at it from below in order to appreciate properly the effect it had on it. 

All in all, I have to admit that doing the tour with a tourist helped me a lot to understand the intentions and the background of the works; although we did it quickly it was better than going by ourselves. Of course in the Velazquez one we could go in our rhythm, but I missed some kind of explanation and aid to comprehend it. 

Portrait without looking + portrait looking

 In this lesson we did two drawings of the classmate we had next to us, in my case I had to draw Laura's portrait. First of all, we had to draw the portrait without looking, so he had to follow our instinct and draw it, without knowing what exactly and where we were drawing it. While I was doing it, I was looking at Laura, trying to draw with the pencil all the features that I was looking at that time. It was a fun experience, I hadn't done it before and it was quite challenging as it is not as easy as it may seem. I admit I used my finger to mark where I was drawing previously so I could know where I was, as I lifted the pencil every time I had to draw a different feature. Here you have the final portrait: 

Later on, we had to do the same thing but now we could look at the drawing, so we would be able to see the difference. Thus, here you can see the other creation: 

                                     

By looking at both drawings, I can see I was not that far with the first one, knowing that it was difficult and it had to be done quickly. 

Hybrid

The elaboration of this drawing was directed to create an element, composed by two diferents objects included in a first brainstorming. The brainstorming had to include ten ideas related to our hobbies or things that we liked from which we had to choose five afterwards.
This hybrid created comes from two of my hobbies: music and football. The music concept is represented by a pan pipe and the football concept was represented by, no less than, a football ball. In order to create a new shape, I played with the different shapes: the pan pipe has cylinders which some of them are ended with the black figure (hexagon) that appears to the typical image we have of a ball of football. Apart from that, one of the ends of  the pan pipe is kind of round as to represent the round shape the ball has. Additionally, the cylinders have no straight lines, their lenght is represented with long and curve lines.
Once I had the shape, the painting part was about to start. One condition that we had to paint our creations was to use well the shadows. I decided to go with warm colours to attract the attention of the people looking at it. The shadows were build by using dark colours from that spectrum and also black (as it might be expected); and the ligthest colours to represent the lingth coming from one of the side of the picture.

Finally, to finish this work I needed to find a cool and attractive name: Bougan, which comes from the words: bounce (related to the football ball) and pan pipe (from here the last two words were taken), the g was chosen to be better to pronounce it. The name was also painted with the same colours in order to get the attention of people. In addition to this, it was stuck with sellotape to create the sense of being in 3D. The creation was first called Flall by combinating the names flute and ball; however, I changed it to create more attention.

Here you have some other pictures that show the process:

 

                                                   

Reading Heike Freire: Arte infantil y transformación social + Conference+ Reading El dibujo infantil y adulto

READING: Arte infantil y transformación social

From this reading I extracted many significant ideas that I found quite important to reflect on. Here I present some.
First of all, the field of artistic education is coming to its extinction, since people misunderstand in what it consists, undervalue it and do not comprehend the relevance of offering children a decent artistic education. Art does not only focus on the aesthetic and beauty of things, but it also promotes emotional regulation and creativity. Art also involves the intelectual, physical, afective and social dimensions. Art is a source that helps us to understand our world and ourselves, to create our lives. We are on our right to express anything we want freely. So why don't we take it seriously and trasmit it to children? As an aspect that got my attention, many artists like Miró or Picasso have taken the inspiration from children's drawings! That is amazing but at the same time sursprising, why did they do that? What did they find interesting in their creations? What is really shocking is that there is a kind of connection between childhood and art, a reciprocal one indeed. Children have the essence of art, their art is pure and real, nothing has come across their art, no influences such as prejudices or specific opinions. That is why many artists get their inspiration from children's art, it hasn't been polluted in any way. Thus, our job as teachers would be to guide them, motivate them and help them in their process of creation, and, of course, do not intervene in the process, just let them draw freely, let them feel their emotions and create through that feeling. "Art by itslef does not evolve, what really do are the ideas people have, which change along with their ways of expression".

CONFERENCE

From the conference, what I really learnt was that we don't have to bring the nature to the classroom if we have the possibility to bring the students to the nature, since it's senseless. Nature, in fact, has a huge impact on our lives, it promotes the sense of community and it motivates emotions to emerge. That is a topic that has been discussed for a long time: do we need to teach students how to deal with emotions? The answer is YES, not only because it gives awareness about how we really feel, but also because it helps children to develop the emotional intelligence and emotional competence, which can be a meaningful aid for them in the future. 

Reading: El dibujo infantil y adulto

Related to the Heike Freie reading, in both it is explained that we have an innate capacity to draw, to create art. For children drawing is the expression of their perspective of how everything works. However, what this reading adds is that "drawing can also be a communicative source, help us to sole problems, visualise our ideas, analise them, criticise them, improve them, create new ones and share them with others". Images have also meaning, it might not be explicit or easy to understand it first, but involves some ideas. As it has been proved by many researches, sometimes is easier to memorise or remember some concepts and here images come to rescue us! In an image one can include differet concepts or just one, the thing is with just one look we can get the main idea in an easier and quicker way than by words. Thus, teachers must include visual support, encourage children to use drawings, since it may help them to study, express some ideas that maybe they cannot still express with words, among other uses. 

MACBA Museum: Exhibition of Melanie Smith

The work Farse and Artifice of the English artist Melanie Smith arrived at MACBA. On the 3rd October of 2018, we went to her exhibition which was formed by different stages. Here, I'll highlight some aspects about some of the works we had the chance to see. In her works, she tends to mix fiction and reality, between of which there are no barriers. Apart from that, she plays with the concept of abstraction which, she believes, is utopic and she reflects also on the absurd. 

First of all, we watched her film called Aztec Stadium: Malleable Dee in which a work of Paul Klee appears. The action happens in the Aztec Stadium of Mexico, where the artist moved out. Students from Secondary Schools show their papers that create a major picture, a work. Smith collaborated with Televisia in order to achieve the final product. With this performance, she wanted to express the idea of group, everyone constructs the images which represent the reality and the fact of deconstructing the picture shows the reality. For her history is cyclic. In this work, she plays with the self (own) and the globalisation wich represent the modernity, shown for example with the Cocacola sign. 

In addition to this, we went to a different section of the exhibition in which we found a TV playing a salsa dance video in which we could see a cuban man dancing and teaching a woman (who wasn't Smith, but who represented her). This video was meant to express the shock between cultures and it was accompanied by different elements related to the culture or the environment we can find in that country, such a palm tree. This creation reminded me my culture from the Val d'Aran, since we also have traditional dances and I know it can be difficult to teach those dances to people sometimes. It also recall my experience in the USA school exchange programme, because I know it can't be much easy to adapt yourself into the culture.

Moreover, the next work confused me, not only because it had different ideas and objects mixted that between some of them there wasn't any connection. What really got my attention was an ear, gigant ear appearing in the work. Then, I kind of understand from the guides explanation that it was meant to be strange, artificial and exaggerated; although I did not understand anything at first. 

These were some of her works, mainly the ones that surprised me the most, whether it was because of its elements or because of the way she presented it. 

From this museum visit, what I'll remember is the creativity of such a modern artist, her capacity to use different sources, not only the expected ones like paintings, sculptures, among others, and be able to combine them to show people how she understands the world, which is kind of impressive and difficult to acomplish.