Facts

Donatello

Donatello

Introduction:  (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, c. 1386 – 13 December 1466) was an Italian sculptor during the Renaissance. He lived in Florence. He worked in stone, bronze, wood, clay, and wax with several assistants. His reputation as a great artist was stated by Vasari, and has always stood well. He worked in Rome, Sienna and Padua as well as Florence, and worked for the Church, for Cosimo de' Medici, and for various city authorities.

History:  He was the son of Niccolo di Betto Bardi, and was born in Florence. His mother's name is not known. When Donatello was older, he studied with Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect. He also helped the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti to make statues for the Battistero di San Giovanni.

Art:  Donatello's work was inspired by ancient sculpture. He was the first sculptor of his time to celebrate the human body, an idea that had died out after Greek and Roman times. His life-size statue of David is his best-known work. The David is the first known free-standing nude statue made since antiquity. Much of his work was done for display in grand churches. Between 1415 and 1426, he made five statues for the Florence Cathedral, also known as the Duomo.

Donatello was a realist: an artist whose sculpture showed the subjects as real people. Naturalism and the showing of human feelings are his influences.

Other works:  Donatello did not confine himself to stone and metal as media for his sculptures. He produced a carved wood statue, Penitent Magdalene, around 1450, for the Baptistery of Florence. The statue was groundbreaking in Renaissance Christian art for its realism and the unique vision of Mary Magdalene as one who is wasted away from fasting rather than healthy and beautiful as she appears in earlier art.

Contrary to today's conception of the starving artist, Donatello enjoyed fame, acclaim and financial success during his lifetime. While this is largely due to his own talent, artistic vision, and love of innovation, his close relationship with the Medici family didn't hurt, providing him with a reliable source of commissions.

Despite being a celebrated artist of his day, Donatello was not generally well-liked as a person. He was known to destroy a sculpture sooner than allowing someone he didn't approve of to buy it. He highly valued his artistic freedom, and he earned a reputation in society for being abrasive. Under the protection of the Medici family, the artist did not have to worry about the repercussions of his antisocial behavior.

Source: kiddle.co & donatello.net

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci

Introduction:  Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian man who lived in the time of the Renaissance. He is famous for his paintings, but he was also a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and a writer. Leonardo wanted to know everything about nature. He wanted to know how everything worked. He was very good at studying, designing and making all sorts of interesting things.

History:  Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the valley of the Arno River. Leonardo's parents were not married. His father was a Notary, Ser Piero da Vinci. His mother, Caterina, was a servant.  Leonardo's full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, the son of Messer (Mister) Pierdaom Vinci".  He was trained to be an artist by the sculptor and painter Verrocchio. He spent most of his life working for rich Italian noblemen. In his last years, he lived in a beautiful home given to him by the King of France.

Art:  Leonardo started painting while he was still a boy. At an early age his father took his son's painting to Florence and sold it to an art dealer.  In 1466, when Leonardo was fourteen, his father took him to Florence, to be an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio.

Two of his pictures are among the best-known paintings in the world: the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He did many drawings. The best-known drawing is Vitruvian Man. Leonardo was often thinking of new inventions. 

In about 1503 Leonardo began painting the portrait of a woman known as Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait that has ever been painted. He continued working on it for many years. It is a small picture, painted in oil on a wooden panel. It shows the face, upper body and hands of a woman. She is very plainly dressed. For a portrait, a woman would usually put on her best clothes and jewellery.  Mona Lisa has a dark dress and a fine black veil over her head. Leonardo often left symbols in his paintings that give clues about the person. The unusual thing about this picture is the smile. The smile is the clue to her name: Mona Lisa Giacondo. Giacondo means "the joking one". (Mona is short for Madonna which means "My Lady".)

The reason why the painting is so famous is that it seems to be full of mystery. Mona Lisa's eyes look out at the viewer. But no-one can guess what she is thinking. Her eyes and her mouth seem to be smiling. This is very unusual in a portrait painting. Most people in portraits look very serious. It is hard to tell what Mona Lisa's exact expression is. When a person wants to read another person's feelings, they look at the corners of their mouth and eyes. But Leonardo has painted soft shadows in the corners of Mona Lisa's mouth and eyes, to disguise her expression. The soft shadows are also found on the sides of her face, her neck and hands. The way that Leonardo uses shadow is called "sfumato" (which is an Italian word for "smoke"). Vasari said that the picture was so beautifully painted that every other artist who looked at it thought that they could never paint so well.

Leonardo's other important painting in Milan is the Last Supper.  The painting shows the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples, before his capture and death. Leonardo chose to paint the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray me". Leonardo tells the story of the surprise and upset that this caused to the twelve followers of Jesus. He tells the story through the actions and faces of the people in the painting. Some of them are talking, some of them have stood up, some are raising their hands in horror.

He kept notebooks with notes and drawings of these ideas. Most of his inventions were never made. Some of his ideas were a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, a parachute, a robot, a telephone, evolution, and solar power.

Source: kiddle.co

Facts

Comic Art - Raina Telgemeier

 Comic Art - Raina Telgemeier

When Raina Telgemeier was a kid in the 1980s, she fell in love with comics. “They were the perfect combination of all the things I liked: characters and stories and humor and artwork,” she told TIME for Kids.

But she had a problem: a shortage of reading material. Two types of comics were widely available to kids. There were comic books about superheroes. But those weren’t her thing. She wanted comics that told stories she could relate to as an ordinary kid. And there were newspaper comic strips. Telgemeier loved some of them, especially Calvin and Hobbes. But she wanted more.

At around 10, she started drawing her own comics. Twenty-three years later, she published Smile. It’s about Telgemeier’s middle school experiences with braces and dental surgery.

Before Smile was published, in 2010, it wasn’t clear the book would succeed. People in the publishing industry had doubts. They figured kids wouldn’t enjoy a graphic novel about an average girl.

They were wrong. Smile became a Number 1 best-seller. Since then, Telgemeier has published several more popular graphic novels. There are more than 18 million copies of her books in print. Telgemeier’s success has made a big impact. Industry experts say she paved the way for many more graphic novels for kids.

Comics have been around since at least the 19th century. Traditional comic books are short. Often, they’re about adventure or superheroes. “Comics have this history . . . of either being very funny and silly or having a lot of punching of things,” Gina Gagliano says. She works on graphic novels at Random House. That’s a publishing company.

Today’s graphic novels are different. Authors use comics to tell a book-length story. It can be any genre. It can be realistic.

In 2018, sales of graphic novels for kids and teens jumped by more than 50%. Compare that to sales of printed books across all categories. They increased by about 1%.

As sales boom, attitudes about comics are changing. This year, New Kid became the first graphic novel to win the Newbery Medal. That’s a prestigious award in children’s literature. 

New Kid author Jerry Craft says that when he was a kid, he read mainly comics. He knew some adults didn’t approve. “In certain schools, if they saw you reading a comic, they would confiscate it, because they thought it was rotting your brain,” he says. “They didn’t realize the amount of imagination and storytelling and vocabulary in those comics.”

New Kid’s Newbery shows what many kids already understood: Graphic novels are real books. “It’s a victory for all graphic novels,” Craft says.

Source: timeforkids.com

Pointillism

Pointillism

Pointillism is a way of painting in which small separate dots of pure color are used to form images. The artist paints the picture with hundreds of tiny dots, mainly of red, yellow, blue and green, with white. The eye and mind of the viewer mix the colours to make different shades of these colours, as well as orange, purple, pink, and brown depending on the way the dots of colour are arranged.

Georges Seurat, at first an Impressionist painter, and Paul Signac, developed this technique in 1886. Other important artists were Camille Pissarro and, in some paintings, Vincent van Gogh. Art critics who saw their work, laughed at it and called it "Pointillism" as an insult. This name is still used, but is no longer thought of as an insult.

Traditionally, artists blend pigments (mix colours) on a palette. Pointillist painters do not mix the colours on the palette at all – they just use the colours straight from the tube.

Traditional painters, and also impressionist painters, use many types of brushstrokes, and many textures of paint. The surface of the painting may have flat colour, lines, squiggles and dabs of paint. 

In a pointillist painting, every part of the picture is done in tiny dots, and most of the dots are about the same size.

Pointillism is usually done in oil paints, because they are thick and do not run into each other when they are painted on the canvas. 

Printing and television: Many colour printers and large printing presses use four colours to print in tiny dots of cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black. Televisions and computer monitors use a similar technique to show many different colors using only red, green, and blue.

Source: kids.kiddle.co

History of Stenciling

 History of Stenciling (Stencil Art)

The use of stencils dates back over 37 thousand years, as seen in Neanderthal cave art found in Spain. These paintings are outlines of hand prints; it is thought  that Prehistoric man or woman would place their hand against the wall, and then blow finely crushed pigment (e.g. charcoal) around it. These stencils also included shapes from the natural world and daily life: animals, hunting scenes, and ritual all figure prominently.

Over time, the use of stencils spread throughout the ancient world. Many of the detailed drawings and intricate (detailed) art found in Egyptian tombs or along the walls of the city of Pompeii were results of stencils. Stenciling was a simple and well-thought-out way to reproduce (make) the same pattern over and over again.

The Chinese were the first to develop a paper-based stencil, around 105 AD, and used the invention to advance their printing techniques. Soon, stenciling made the transition to cloth and colorful patterns were transferred onto garments. The Japanese improved upon the technique by bonding delicate stencils together with human hair or silk. Their method of dyeing fabrics with stencils is known as Katazome, and uses the paste resist method. With this technique, a paste (usually composed of rice flour) is pushed through a stencil, defining a pattern on cloth. The places where the sticky paste adheres (sticks) to the cloth resists color in the dyeing process, therefore creating a negative stenciled design on the fabric.

Stenciling eventually spread to Europe, thanks to the trade routes from the East. The technique of stenciling became quite popular, and was used to add color to master prints. Stencils became handy in mass productions of items, including manuscripts, playing cards, book illustrations, fabrics, and wallpaper.

Immigrants brought the use of stenciling with them to the New World, and once again the technique was employed in a variety of ways and new styles were developed. Stencils were used as decoration in the home, on furniture, and in works of art. Stenciling once again became popular for architectural designs in the early 20th century. This stenciling style can still be found in public buildings, churches, and homes.
With today’s technology, it is fairly simple to produce stencils. Stencils are carefully composed (created) by design and graphics teams and then laser cut onto Mylar, making them durable and long lasting. Patterns are transferred onto fabric using an airbrush. 

Facts

Response to text

 What type of artist was Jack Kirby?

a) Painter                                         b) Musician

c) Comic Book Artist                       d) Photographer

2. Jack Kirby helped to create iconic characters such as….?

a) Dragon Ball Z                             b) Kermit the Frog

c) Peppa Pig                     d) Captain America and the Hulk

3. The comic art style of using dots to show explosions and elements in space is known as the

a) Kirby colours b) Kirby Krackle

c) Kirby lines          d) art of pointillism

4. List some of the characters that Jack Kirby helped to create for Marvel and DC Comics

• The Fantastic Four .

• X-Men . 

• Thor . 

• Hulk .

• Iron Man .

5. True or False: The ‘Black Panther’ was originally going to be called the ‘Coal Tiger’.

1. True b) False

6. Many comic books are about

a) Superheroes                    b) Celebrities

c) Planets                                             d) Animals

7. Who is your favourite comic book character? 

→ Joker

Facts

Jack Kirby - Comic Artist

Jack Kirby - Comic Artist

Introduction

Born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, Jack “The King” Kirby is considered one of the most influential American comic book artists of all time. Having worked for both Marvel and DC Comics, Kirby is perhaps best known for creating or co-creating now-iconic characters such as the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Thor, the New Gods, Iron Man, and the Hulk. 

History

Jack Kirby’s childhood in America inspired many of his characters. Kirby grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Witnessing fights amongst his peers and friends, and even getting involved in some brawls himself, Kirby’s time on the streets later seeped into many of his comics. He went on to create a variety of “kid gang” characters, both heroes and villains, such as the Boy Commandos, the Newsboy Legion, and the Yancy Street Gang.

Art

The “Kirby Krackle” became one of Jack Kirby’s signature artistic elements. In addition to taking advantage of double-page spreads and eye-popping splash pages, Kirby was known for being an innovator of many illustration techniques, including the use of collages and incredibly complex technical sci-fi drawings. However, one of his most unique artistic flourishes was the “Kirby Krackle” (or “Kirby Dots”), a stylistic convention that he used to depict high-energy phenomena such as explosions or certain cosmic elements in space.

Jack Kirby originally had a different name in mind for the Black Panther. Kirby sketched a new character named Coal Tiger, a Black superhero decked out in a colorful costume. The concept was reworked before it was ever published and eventually became Black Panther, who debuted in 1966's Fantastic Four #52.

Comic books are books with comics, with pictures that make a story. Comics were started in the 1900s. Some famous examples are Spider-Man and Batman. Some comic companies are Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Many comic books are about superheroes, but many others are about other things. Very often, characters in books, video games, movies and television appear in comics, and sometimes comic book characters are used in movies, TV shows or video games.

Source: mentalfloss.com

My Rangoli Design

Cobra Description

 Hamadryad snakes (King Cobra) are very fascinating creatures. Their eating habits are unusual. The name king cobra itself is pretty weird. Are King Cobra’s actually dangerous?

This snake is a King Cobras variety that feeds mostly on other types of snakes, poisonous and  non-poisonous. King Cobras also like to feed on lizards, eggs, and little mammals. Sometimes king cobras feed on baby king cobras, the king cobras favourite food is, shockingly, other snakes, reticulated pythons, tree snakes.

Mongooses are able to chase, track and kill these species of King Cobras. Sometimes when King Cobras get spotted by sizable birds they get picked on by their predators, the large bird. The predators of the king cobra are bigger and smaller, because mongooses is much bigger than it's second predator which is the sizable and huge bird.

King cobras are magnificent venomous, large snakes native to Asia. Hamadryad are called King Cobras because they can kill and eat cobras. The Hamadryad personality came from it’s name King Cobra which is to kill, hurt and eat.

As you can see King Cobra’s are dangerous creatures. They eat their own kind, they are highly venomous and have very small that would dare go against them. They are very vicious creatures.