Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great for adults and kids, January 4, 2003
There are 30 different modern art masterpieces represented here, so it is definitely worth the price. All pieces are shown in color on the front and back covers, and each individual page has the name of the artist (years of their birth-death), title of the work, date created and type of medium used. So, it's educational and fun. I recommend it for all ages. Some of the artists included are: Picasso, Miro, Klee and Mondrian.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Modern Art Reproducibles, January 28, 2001
This is a fantastic resource for any children's art program. Whether you are writing your own lesson plans or connecting art with literature. This inexpensive resource is a must for your collection.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thorough Exploration and Imagery, July 25, 2008
I bought this book for its completeness and thoroughness, the very nature of which provide variety, for use in an applied study of color theory for people who work with color and are not necessarily graphically/two-dimensionally oriented. The line drawings are well done and "relevant," in that they are neither of the color-by-number variety nor are they too broad and general drawings of shapes.
Personally, I prefer to color on a smaller scale with prismacolors, just for fun (and do academic experimentation with color just for fun), and like to have a lighter line than black indicating the shapes and color areas, as it shows through the prismacolors. The paper is, however, thick enough to be painted on with opaque paints. For my purposes, then, I scan these, reduce them in size, and then lighten the black to a light grey.
This review started out as a shocked response to a post below, in which the reviewer states she/he had been "looking forward to using this with . . . art students" and didn't give it 5 stars because it didn't "provide a brief intro before each piece:"
Her/his review was mitigated by later posts from "amiemv" and The First Lutheran Church "Bookfairy" who got it right: the information is there, the teacher should have the background already and be able to provide the connections by integrating it into lessons/lesson plans.
These are reinforcement activities and/or enrichment activities when applied in an educational setting. For home use, they are those same kind of activities as well as springboards to finding out more about the artists. It is not an illustrated book, as that first reviewer might want; it is a collection of images made ready to color and to be used by people who have a use for those images for reasons of their own.
For that reason, no introduction to each artist is provided; it is assumed that people buying this book would already have that knowledge or would be motivated to find out the information.
A generic introduction to an artist and a coloring sheet for one of his/her pieces is no more than busywork if they are employed in the "art" classroom or in the general classroom for an "art activity" without connections to other knowledge bases being made, the least of which is the background knowledge of the artists and pieces being a part of the teacher's understanding, or a part of research assigned to accompany the busywork.
As mentioned at the start, these can be used as springboards to the exploration of design elements, color theory being an application I have found for them, the details of which are too long to go into here.
However, in response to that surprising 4-star post, I went on to suggest a use to which one of the images might be put in the art classroom, in the hopes that it would stimulate her/him to think more about how to use these, rather than see a fault in the lack of text. The "you" in the paragraphs below are, then, the personal "you" directed toward that poster; the content, however, of the use to which one image in the book may be put, is addressed to the general "you," as in the more formal "one" or as a substitute for the passive voice.
If anyone does apply this lesson plan, please contact me and show me some process images and finished product images.
This is a very fun activity to use in the classroom; I have used it in varying forms from 5th grade on up (I wouldn't go into the pointillism detail for students below high school level; other images with other ways of producing color -- even artist-specific in terms to technique (van Gogh and oil pastels, for example) and color selection -- would be more appropriate, and the research step might be a presentation by the teacher after the initial "free-style" approach, dealing with the artist's focus, followed by the grid/scale activity as reinforcement of that artist's choices in technique, color, paint application . . . .)
Here is what belongs more in this review than as a response to that post, and remember, don't take pointed comments personally: they are specific responses to one particular reviewer, and meant to be helpful:
For some ideas on how to apply artists' coloring sheets in the classroom, see back issues of _School Arts_ (your school library should have them; if not, at least one school in your district will have them), and by all means, secure yourself a subscription to this number one art educators' resource.
Just for one example, if you were to use George Seurat, would you introduce him as a pointillist and then suggest the students follow suit? Would you hand out the sheets first and have them color them, pin up the group, and then assign them research on Seurat after completion? Would you then, after completion, ask them to do another, using what they learned? Who knows.
What I would do, after completing individual images and pinning them up and having them do research, is explain the concept of pointillism and its relationship to the impressionist's concepts (light, changing light, and perception of light and color), grid and cut the coloring image up into squares, one for each student (or two -- depending on the number of students you have; if you have a lot of students, perhaps you would need to grid and cut up more than one copy and divide the class into two or three teams for this project). After the grid is cut, glue each square to the center of a square white paper or a 5" x 7" white index card and pass them out to the students, along with a blank white square 4" to 6" big. Then you will ask them to duplicate, in pencil line, the abstract image they have on those small squares on the larger square. When they have done that, tell the class that they are to color the abstract image they have using pointillism to make the colors.
When everyone is done, have them paste their squares onto a heretofore unveiled master grid (one for each team or for the class), making sure the top is up and the letter and number match the letter and number on the master grid. You will have a large pointillist painting of "Sunday Afternoon on the Grand Jatte," which is the image in the book, I believe.
Alternately, after they have made the line drawing that duplicates the layout on the uncolored line square, you may have made a color copy of the painting in the exact size and scale of the line drawing, and you can grid and cut this out into squares that exactly match the little black and white ones, and then you can hand out color squares pasted on index cards for the class to duplicate in pointillism: it will give them a starting point. Better yet, you could color in one of these yourself, matching Seurat's colors exactly, but in prismacolors, blended in the traditional color pencil blending technique. Then you could cut this (or those, if you need more than one for your class size) into squares and have the class duplicate the colors on their larger white squares, using pointillism to give the impression of the colors there.
If you are teaching art, you should have a working knowledge of all the artists and works in this book, from only your three general Survey of Art History classes: Prehistoric through Pre-Renaissance/Early Renaissance/Renaissance, Renaissance/Baroque through beginning of 20th century, and 20th Century/Contemporary Art History. These classes would have been completed before you received your B.A. in Art or in Art Education. If for some reason* you managed not to take them, go back to a community college and take them just for yourself; the knowledge you gain from these classes will serve you well in all fields throughout your life.
As to devising lesson plans, you should be able to pull these out after your two practical Art Education classes, in which you have had practice devising lesson plans. These classes would have been completed in your fifth year, before your student teaching.
*(some reason being perhaps being having taken Art Appreciation as a substitute or a specialized area of art history, Women's Art, for example, or even attending a school with a lack of oversight and stringency in standards)
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by Muncie Hendler
by Muncie Hendler
