ARTS

Group Name: The Mark Makers Adult Leaders: Liz, Pat O. Visiting Artist: Margaret Phelan

Student Participants: 1. Umar K. 2. Joel A.  3. Tiara Y.  4. Dewi S.  5. Ahashan A. (student documentarian; responsible for wiki maintenance) 6. Ashley M. 7. Anabelle M.  8. Nicolas M.  9. Tenzin S. U.  10. Tamia W. 11. Brianna R. (student documentarian; responsible for photography) 12. Nusrat U. 13. James M.

Our Photo Page
Goals/Objectives: To do art! To draw and paint, use spray paint, create graffiti, to leave a mark on our school. We would like to make murals and t-shirts and signs and cuffs. Timeline:
 * Monday will be our introduction to design. We'll be working with our consulting artist from Children's Museum of the Arts, Margaret Phelan, to decide on our project(s) and figure out what resources and permissions we need.
 * Tuesday we start work! We may watch a documentary on graffiti artists.
 * Wednesday morning--prep for trip to museum (create the design) and then we'll take a trip down to CMA for a workshop. We also hope to get to see some subway art along the way.
 * Thursday will be another day of work. We need to finish up our project today!
 * Friday will be our day to work on our presentation, and then we present in the afternoon.

//MONDAY, May 7th, 2012://

Brainstorming
Mural: We looked at Margaret's art and books of murals. Most students are interested in doing this. Others want to do graffiti (smaller pieces, on t-shirts or canvas). We looked at samples of trompe l'oeil paintings, including 3D chalk art.

Sketch book: Brianna will bring in an example on Tuesday.

Museum: Could create t-shirts. Silk-screening. We could make a design before we go there...it could be graffiti (tags of our names) on the shirts.

Mural: Tile mosaic? Tile frame on border of auditorium? Abstract, natural (grass or tree), Romeo and Juliet, comedy and tragedy masks. Both paint on wall and tile?

In the afternoon, we watched a documentary on graffiti, //Getting Up.//

// Tuesday, May 8th, 2012: //

In between yesterday and today, we learned that the area we want to use--the school lobby above the trophy table--can't be used as a work space for us to paint directly on the wall because there's too much traffic and it would be unsafe. So we had to get canvases to paint separately that would be mounted on the wall later.

This was a productive day!


 * We looked at what's near the school and went across the street to sketch the school, stores, trees, vehicles, the avenue.
 * We separated into groups--graffiti and background (cityscape) sketchers.
 * We learned about color scheme (primary, secondary, tertiary, complementary) and about value (tone, tints, shades and gray scale) and mixing paints on palettes.
 * We discussed what would be sketched on the canvas. We looked at all the sketches we did outside to see what they had in common. We added the seven train to our mural, and we used images from the internet to help visualize the train. We mixed the colors on the palettes. It was time-consuming, trying to make the lines perfect. We had to be careful not to go over areas that someone had painted. Margaret taught the group how to add highlights and make the colors "pop." We also worked on shading using slightly different paint colors.

The mural looks cool so far! We've talked about using tiles, but we don't know whether they'll stick to the canvas.

// Wednesday, May 9th, 2012: //

We went to the the Children's Museum of the Arts, where we did hands-on workshops. We all brought t-shirts on which to print our designs. We spent the morning at school creating designs we hoped to use.

On the way to the museum, we checked out some mosaic tile murals in Times Square.

There were many different stations: silk screening, book binding and linoleum carving (Nusrat cut herself with a carving knife). Saw a big pink dog sculpture, we also brushed the pink dog. Joel slipped and fell on the train when we were coming back. After we came back we painted a little.

//Thursday, May 10th, 2012//

Margaret brought in silk screening supplies for us to finish the t-shirts. She also brought blades that we used to make stencils. We finished the bottom of the mural; we also added small touches of details to it. We ordered Chinese food for lunch and ate in the common area. After lunch, we managed to finish most of the mural. There are still a few details and final touches to fix up in the morning tomorrow. We cleaned up the room at the end of the day (lots of paint, paper towels, and scraps of paper where we were carving stencils), and then we decided on who would be responsible for what during the presentation.

//Friday, May 11th, 2012//

PRESENTATION DAY: Final finishing touches on the mural and practicing our presentation.