Term 1 Week 8&9 2011

A short blogging week for us while the Bio field trip has been underway and we are all working towards the completion of 3.3. Thank you to everyone who has been asking lots of questions.Don't forget, due Monday 28th, start of period 2.
Most of you will have worked steadily on Piero della Francesca's beautiful Legend of the True Cross.
Any of this research that is not quite done will need to be finished in your own time - let's set a due date for that right now............................................................OK then, that's 11th April.

Meantime, it's our last 2 lessons linking the study of mathematics and perspective to invention in early Renaissance painting.
Last up is the dear "little bird" Paulo Uccello. Our main concerns are:
Paolo Uccello: Battle of San Romano (all three of them), St George and the Dragon 1440, St George and the Dragon 1456-60, The Hunt, and his work on perspective.
On a slightly trivial note - here's a new way of looking at Uccello's St. George and the Dragon, written by Fanthorpe.

Term 1 Week 6&7 2011

Welcome to week 6 & 7, half way through Term One already :-)

Thank you to you all for working so hard on understanding the whole Brunelleschi perspective idea. For those of you who are still a bit confused watch this.

Our primary focus is Task 2 and 3 of Examine Media and Process, for 3 credits, that's a chart and venn diagram, then onto the final 500 word summary - eeek.

By now your Task 1 Flow Chart will be handed in and you should be getting 'up close and personal' with your 3 chosen paintings.

We will be using some of what we have already learned and researching these renaissance works to demonstrate how the materials and techniques the artist used, determined what the art looked like. Big brush = big picture (duh).

Don't forget to use the links in earlier weeks for Oil (and it's history), and Tempera painting , plus the History of Colour. In class we'll be watching a DVD soon about how frescoes are painted, but here's two great links also.

For Task 2 and 3 you must really appreciate the size of the works -
use information like this to help.
You also need to get the whole 'wow' factor -
use information like this to help .Don't underestimate the power of the image in real life.
Using journalist's blogs like this one, can also give you a good insight into other opinions about your works.

One more for the road - here's a link about panel painting - using historical background information will enable you to show the understanding required to get beyond Achieved in this standard.

As far as the rest of the lessons are concerned, here goes.............

• Masaccio, (with a little bit of Masolino), is still our main man this week. Those of you using him for 3.3 might find this short lecture useful.
• Masaccio the master of storytelling in The Brancacci Chapel starting with Explusion
• The role of Narrative Painting, specifically Masaccio's epic The Tribute Money
  
• Closely followed by St Peter Healing with his Shadow and Distribution of Alms
• Finally in this topic, The Baptism of the Neophytes
  
• Also we begin an investigation of perfect perspective, mathematics, Phi and proportion in Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ.
• Continuing with the perspective theme we'll consider the evidence and apply this to The Flagellation - ouch, that hurt :-( and watch the evidence of Piero's superb mathematical brain.
  
• We'll also be familiarising ourselves with the history and context of Piero's painting and looking at the rest of his amazing work, plus the areas of Italy portrayed in his work.

So as you can see, busy, busy, busy. If you missed a key element last week let me know and we'll get it fixed so you don't fall behind. Enjoy.