My suggestion of, “Your paint is too bright, try adding some white,” met with confused looks too many times in a row, and I realized that the difference between “light vs. dark” and “bright vs. dark” was not well understood by the students.Adding white paint will make something lighter, but it will also make it duller, especially in combination with black paint. […] http://dlvr.it/30Lq0l
The “real” mural will be done with paint in the pointillist style rather than tissue paper, and will be installed permanently in the school library. We decided to make the grid angled 45° in homage to the Big Emma piece by Chuck Close. Our reference photo is of a biome (naturally), and one that all of the students have experienced in person. […] http://dlvr.it/30Lbt6
As practice for our final mural, we embarked on a little tissue paper pointillist adventure. I found this picture of a rafter that seemed perfect for this attempt. […] http://dlvr.it/30LbrH
The hardest part of this project is mixing paint colors accurately. One of the largest obstacles is that not everyone can see the same range of color. Some people are color blind in the classically understood sense, but some just have a limited range of color visibility. Throughout our time working on this project, many students have been able to identify specifically their own limitations when it comes to colors they can o […] http://dlvr.it/30Lbtt
Well, pointillism, that’s what. One of this year’s projects focuses on the complexity and detail of a biome (yup, back to biomes and 6th graders again) through studying the whole-is-greater-than-the-parts aspect of pointillist art.One of the most well-known employers of the technique was Georges Seurat, artist of The Sunday Aft […] http://dlvr.it/30LNR0
Time to start creating the shadow boxes! And by “time to start” I of course mean that I’m just now posting this, 11 months later, so the shadow boxes have long been completed and those students aren’t even in 7th grade anymore, but anyway…Each student will be creating a shadow box to showcase elements of their chosen conflict. The boxes will be made of wood, about 3 inches deep, with a plexi-glass front. All parts of the box (id […] http://dlvr.it/30Kkp6
Playing once again with Google’s reverse image search and the visually similar image results. My photographs are on the left, images by others on the right. Click any image for its source. […] http://dlvr.it/2q3PWR
Google has a reverse image search, where you can drag a photo from your computer into the search box, and it will find that image on the web. This is great if you’re wondering if anyone has stolen your images, or used them in a way you don’t agree with on the internet. This would be uncredited instances of you art—impossible to find by simply searching for your own name. I found a few myself.But the really fun part about sea […] http://dlvr.it/2k1Hl1
That’s not an ice rink. I think it’s the top of my car. Tops of cars make for good makeshift tripods in a pinch. This is t […] http://dlvr.it/2XdGvJ
Greg Scheiderer wrote a lovely review of my book in Arches Magazine’s Summer 2012 issue: […] http://dlvr.it/1ygSxb
The following is a rerun of a blog post I wrote during the 2006 Olympics in Turin.:060216: My captors want me to choose a favorite event. I can’t do it. I love them all. It doesn’t matter which event is happening, I love to watch. I can say that some of my least favorite are the team sports. I think this is because of the elimination process. If the two best teams in the world are matched against each other ea […] http://dlvr.it/1wGCFm
Leading up to this year’s conflict project, the students studied conflict through reading Suzanne Collins’s book, The Hunger Games. No doubt you’ve heard of it by now. Students from all three class periods who owned the book temporarily donated their copy to the classroom, so that each period had enough copies […] http://dlvr.it/1NSC71
I have read a bunch of bad books lately. Or just mediocre ones. I’m not too excited about any of the four I’m currently reading, either. I checked my recent reviews, and of the last 17 books I’ve read, I have only really been impressed by one. Steinbeck knows his stuff. But I already knew that. The book 18 books ago that impressed me was […] http://dlvr.it/1JjW68
This winter has been absolutely beautiful. According to the Fox 12 Weather Blog from late January, the long-range weather forecast for Portland is decidedly un-Portland-like: • Little to no rainfall is likely from this Wednesday afternoon through at l […] http://dlvr.it/1Jh3yt
Leading up to this year’s conflict project, the students were shown a variety of images, and asked to generate “non-Google-able” questions about the pictures. For example, for the picture of the space shuttle, a boring, Google-able question would be, “How much fuel does it take to get to the moon?” A much better, high-level question would be “What makes humans want to explore space?” […] http://dlvr.it/1JHwBm
Early Monday morning, two strong earthquakes awakened the Bay Area. At 5:33 am, a magnitude 3.5 quake, followed immediately by a magnitude 4.0 quake shook approximately 5.5 miles below the surface in El Cerrito, CA. Another mild aftershock was felt a half hour later […] http://dlvr.it/1Hhl86
Plugging his new book, Space Chronicles, Neil DeGrasse Tyson appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and nearly made Jon want to beco […] http://dlvr.it/1HGHlr
I just started re-watching 21 Jump Street. You know how when you remember the 80s, it seems like the whole decade is a caricature of itself? Turns out, the 80s really were that ridiculous, and the early 90s weren’t much better. “Graffiti art is all the rage now, sir.” The thing that’s been getting me most about the unfortunate fashion choic […] http://dlvr.it/1FsLgP
This photograph was taken by Desto of Ser Verdadero. Both the photograph and the mural’s message deserve to be shared as often as possible. Muralist Salvador Jimenez created the work with a group of young artists, ages 16-21, as part of the […] http://dlvr.it/1FNfFV
…twice as big as it needs to be.I spent a bit of time this week sitting in on a few middle school classes with which I soon will be working. As I listened to them discuss complex topics of monumental importance, impressed all the while by their eloquence and compassion, I was reminded of a moment in that very classroom two years ago that blew me away (names have been changed).Each morni […] http://dlvr.it/1F4lyM
So there I was, minding my own business (as usual) when I came across an eHow instructional article. The article itself was rather strange and specific: How to Draw Zodiac Constellations. […] http://dlvr.it/1DcjNT
_This week’s Edit Me challenge photo comes from Rosie of Leavesnbloom Studio. I took advantage of this sleepy-sheepy castle scene to try out a new technique: imitating the effect of a tilt-shift lens. […] http://dlvr.it/1CqQXs
_I wrote an e-book:Stargazing for BeginnersHow to Find Your Way Around the Night Sky […] http://dlvr.it/1CbSpH
I’m participating in the first week of Photo Feedback on Mom Tried It. The purpose of this particular blog hop is to give and receive feedback about photography. This chicken photograph is my entry. This is a friend’s chicken. I had a hard time getting one of them to stay st […] http://dlvr.it/1Bq49Q
How do you get your blog fix?My reader-of-choice is bloglovin’. The interface is clean and easy to use. You can follow anything with a feed, and it arranges all unread posts at the top, with a large picture (if there is one in the post) and the first paragraph or so of text. You can […] http://dlvr.it/1BCVLV
