An Overdue Art of the Week- Illustrations

Really, it is December already?  Where on earth did this fall go?  It seems like they were just bringing out the Halloween costumes.   Since the stores do that in the middle of August these days, you really know time has flown by.  There's been lots of art happening, whether I like it or not.  This semester, I only took two studio classes, but one is mostly computer work. The other class is Illustration.  I guess you could say illustration is a pretty broad term, but the basis of it is that the image portrays a specific idea, action, or has a specific purpose.  In other words, there shouldn't be a group of scholars squinting at it, reading meaning into every brush stroke 200 years later...

Used in advertising, editorials, children's books, they are supposed to be concise depictions of what the client wants.  Lots of planning, brainstorming, and revisions goes into a finished illustration.  My professor said you should never go with your first idea. So, shhhh...don't tell him I always went back to my first thought.  I personally have to find a balance between planning and just doing when it comes to my artwork.  If I over-think it, it doesn't turn out as perfect as I imagined and I get frustrated.  But if I don't hunt down some reference material, which is often the hardest part, then my work ends up looking unresolved.

Here are some of my better illustrations I've done this fall.  For the first piece, we had to make our own scratch board out with crayons.  It was really easy, just time consuming.  First, your had to lightly lay down the base color on smooth illustration board.  Then you went over that color with the black crayon, building it layer by layer and rubbing it with your finger so it had almost a varnish look to it.  To create this image, we were to take an everyday kitchen utensils and a fruit and depict it as something else.  I had measuring spoons and an apple.  Don't ask me what specific meaning it has, because even I don't know...

For the next set of illustrations, we had to turn ourselves into caricatures.  We had to complete four different drawings that included one that showed an emotion, a close-up, one that put us into a fantastical place, and put ourselves into a famous image.  So, first I want to say that there is absolutely no copyright infringement intended what so ever...

So yes, I'm a bit of a Lord of the Rings fan...this is pen.

Ink wash (basically watercolor)

Black Colored pencil on coquille board.
If you don't know, this is a play on Norman Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait.

 

India Ink 

Art of the Week: Burt the Owl

Well, I guess this is more like, Art of the last three weeks.  To be quite honest, I just plain forgot about posting anything.  It has been incredibly busy the past month between school and the farm.  We've got all our crops out except for a little bit of corn and despite this summer's drought, it looks like we will have enough feed without having to purchase anything.  Oh, and if you are interested in learning more about my family's farm, go to our Facebook page, Nels-Vale Farms.  There's lots of pictures and especially of the gorgeous fall we've had.

"Burt"  Kaitlyn R. Nelson  2012 ceramic

Since I'm always posting art work that I'm good at, I thought I put something that I'm not as accomplished at as I'd like to be.  Last year was the first time since seventh grade that I worked with clay and I discovered it is something that takes a lot of patience and planning.  Unfortunately, neither of those things can be used to describe my artwork.  Let's just say, there are a lot of ash tray-like ceramic pieces sitting under my bed that not even a mother would want.  Nonetheless, I did have a have a few things that looked alright.  This piece is Burt.  I watched an animated owl movie with my nephew one weekend and this was the result.  I had some glazing issues, like the big, old fingerprint on his belly.  But hey, it's all about learning.

Art of the Week - "View Down the Valley"

Kaitlyn R. Nelson "View Down the Valley" 11x14in oil pastel

"View Down the Valley" is a pastel drawing I completed, again, a few days before the county fair.  I really had no idea what the heck I was going to draw when I sat down with my oil pastels and paper, but then I looked over and found my inspiration.

My sister took this picture on New Year's Day.  I realized while drawing it that the grass was actually greener in January than it was in July, thank you drought.  This is my favorite view of the farm and I have drawn and taken my own pictures of it many times, but my sister truly captured the beauty of the valley with this photo and people are always in awe of the unique colors.  Everyone thinks that it is a print of a painting, so I took off our wall and got to work.  The contours of the hills and valley is always a challenge for me because you lose the depth of those hills in a photo.  Luckily, I just had to look out the window for the real reference.  As I said before, my drawing was considered for the top prize at the fair and I will certainly work with more oil pastels after this success.  However, the more exciting news is about the original picture.  My sister entered it in a photo contest through Associated Milk Producers, Inc (AMPI), the company we sell our milk to, and won!  It will be featured in the Sept/Oct issue of their magazine.  Congrats Kirsten!

Portfolio Alignments

All future teachers in Wisconsin must create a portfolio.  In that portfolio, we have to demonstrate that we've met the criteria and understand the teaching standards put forth by the state and the university.  We demonstrate that knowledge by providing artifacts.  Artifacts can include papers, lesson plans, experiences, or test scores that we have achieved throughout our education.  We must provide one artifact per state standard with accompanying reflections describing why said artifacts exhibit comprehension and proper application of those standards.  There are ten state standards: content, development, diversity, instructional strategies, environment, communication, instructional planning, assessment, reflection, and collaboration.  The University of Wisconsin- Platteville has sixteen Knowledge, Skill, and Disposition standards we must also demonstrate.

Did you get all that? That's my fancy, smart-sounding technical writing, which I've been known to get carried away with. I know you've all had teachers whom you thought, who the heck gave them a license to teach?  Well, nowadays schools do their best to weed out those said teachers.  It take an incredible amount of work to become a teacher (which is why I am working on the super-senior college plan), and hopefully, the students will reap the benefits.   Today, having vast knowledge of a subject area doesn't mean you can teach.  You have to know how to create an environment that is most conducive to the students needs so that learning can occur. Basically, you teach students first, subject second.

Here is just a sample of an artifact alignment.  I have to complete eight more of these and get them approved by the School of Education before I can get my license.  Reflection plays a very important role in teaching.  We always have to look back at our experiences as teachers so we can improve our lessons and presentations for the next student.  The artifact is about a nine page paper I wrote two years ago in my Human Growth and Development class.  Unfortunately, my scanner and I are having differing opinions about proper functions at the moment, so I can't show you the actual paper with my professor's notes.  I will brag though and tell you that he gave me an A on it.  That wasn't really big news to me at first because I have never gotten anything lower than a B- and any of my college papers.  However, I later learned that he rarely gives those out...so, yes I am pretty darn proud of it...

Title of Artifact/Experience:  Human Growth and Development Paper

Date of Experience: September 2010 – December 2010

Description:

            This nine page case study paper was written as an assignment for the course Human Growth and Development which I completed in the fall semester of 2010.  The objective of the assignment was to observe and reflect on a group of students’ physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development.  I observed a Biology, Drawing, and Literature class in a medium sized high school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.  The number of students in each class ranged from about fifteen to twenty-five sophomores and juniors.  This artifact consists of the original copy of the case study paper with the instructor’s comments and my final grade.

Alignment:

            Wisconsin Teacher Standard Alignment:

            This experience best aligns with Standard 2: The teacher understands how children with broad ranges of ability learn and provides instruction that supports their intellectual, social, and personal development.

            I believe this experience best aligns with Standard 2 because the course and the act of reflecting as I wrote the paper helped me understand the developmental stages that students of certain ages go through and how those situations affect their education.  Writing this paper as well as taking the course had a profound effect on the way I look at teaching as well as assessing a student’s achievement.  As an educator, I must always be aware of these development stages that can be poignant as well as challenging times for a student.  An example of an important aspect of emotional and social development that had been discussed in class was Erick Erikson’s concept of identity.  It wasn’t until I observed and then reflected on what I had seen that I came to fully understand the impact the ‘identiry verses role confusion,’ the fifth stage of Erickson’s pursuit of identity achievement, has on not only a student’s education, but how a teacher handles the classroom. 

Adolescents are very concerned about how they are being perceived by their peers.  This became evident to me while observing the Literature class.  Students were asked to participate in a class discussion about a piece of literature and demonstrate the use of formal operational thought.  The students were very wary to voice their own opinions in front their fellow classmates because they are still unsure of their identity and it is hard to be confident in voicing you own opinions when you yourself are still unsure of who you are and where you fit in amongst your peers.  As a future teacher, I must be aware of this personal dilemma and adapt my instruction accordingly to create a comfortable, accepting atmosphere that will encourage the students’ confidence and help boost their self-esteem

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            Knowledge, Skill, and Disposition Statement Alignment:

            I believe this experience best aligns with KSD1.b.-  :the candidate displays knowledge of the typical developmental characteristics, learning styles, skills, interests, developmental background, and cultural heritages of students and is always aware of the broad ranges and variety present for each of these student characteristic and lifestyles.

            The experience of learning about human development best aligns with this statement because I learned an incredible amount of variables and factors influence and shape the personality and lifestyle of an individual.  I also learned that no one individual develops the same way or comes away from the same experiences with the same interpretation as another person would.  Factors such as socioeconomic status, heredity, environment, and cultural background play a huge role in the application of a student’s education.  No one child learns the same way, and I believe that is the most important challenge a teacher will face throughout his or her career.  Not only must a teacher keep up with evolving information and education standards, he or she must also keep up with changing times and adapting mind-sets of students who are experiencing different situations and events than those of their grandparents and the same teaching methods may no longer be as effective. 

When new information is introduced to a student’s schema, the structure in which a person mentally categorizes and cognitively assesses information, he or she will categorize it differently than another student if the factors in their life are on opposite ends of the spectrum.  An only child from an upper-middle class household with both parents actively involved in their education will assimilate information differently and perhaps perform better academically than a student living below the poverty line with five other siblings and a single parent who works the night shift.  Because of this, a teacher must take the time to learn about his or her students and their unique and differing learning styles.  This experience allowed me to understand the complexity of these factors.

This experience also aligns with:

            KSD3.e: Demonstrates flexibility and responsiveness

Personal Reflection

What I learned from this teaching/learning experience:

            I learned an invaluable amount of information from this experience that I will refer to frequently during my career.  Not only did it teach me about what my future students will be experiencing, it taught me about myself and helped me understand some of my own personal experiences in my own physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development.  The course and the act of writing this paper taught me about the vast amount of factors that play into these important and natural developments that all humans go through.

What I learned about myself as a prospective educator:

            As a future educator, I learned that I must be flexible, understanding, authoritative, patient, and willing to learn new things myself from the world around me as well as my students.  Since I myself was once as student going through the same developmental process, I realized from this experience that I must always be aware of the stages of development.  I learned that students are at times challenging beings that adults don’t always take the time to see things from their perspective.  When I was a student, there was nothing I feared more than being embarrassed in front of my peers because I myself was struggling to find my identity amongst them.  As a teacher, I will encourage my students to grow and develop together in a comfortable environment.  

Art of the Week- " 'Til the Cows Come Home" and "Summer Preserved"

"Til the Cows Come Home" oil on canvas Kaitlyn R. Nelson

Hello, hello...no I didn't fall down a hole or give up on blogging.  I just had a very busy summer with very little internet access.  I'm currently working on writing up a longer explanation for my absence, but for now, here's a little of what I was up to this summer.  I'm even throwing in an extra!  This first oil painting is one that I've been meaning to do for quite awhile.  My sister took a picture of the cows returning from pasture one evening when she was home on leave from the Air Force.  It was somewhat of a grainy photo, but it looked neat with all the layers of color.  It already looked like a painting, and of course I thought 'easy!'.  Was I wrong.  I started it towards the end of June with hopes of finishing it before the county fair.  I decided that I was going to paint it the way I wanted to, and not how the voices of my professors in my head were telling me to paint.  I got about two good days of work, and then I didn't touch it until the end of August when I suddenly realized the fair was less than a week away.  I've always been better under pressure, I just wish that translated into my studio work as well.  Still, I agonized over it, totally reworked areas, took things out, but stuff in, and so on.  Several times, I threw down my brushes and called it quits.  I didn't want to send it to the fair because I didn't like it, it was bad, not at all how I wanted it.  Then I'd step back from it and think, hmmm, maybe if I just did this quick...  Before I knew it, I had a tag on it and it was set very carefully into the car with the jars of tomatoes, bags of hay samples and 3x3 inch brownie squares...

"Summer Preserved" acrylic on canvas Kaitlyn R. Nelson

This second painting in an acrylic still-life.  You see, fair entries are usually due at the beginning of August and   sitting down with the book is a lot like going shopping without a list.  You see all these wonderful things and think, I could get that done by fair.  Well, sometimes the entry list get a little carried away. Every year, I thumb through my stack of entry tags, I asked myself, why the heck did I enter that?  This painting was one of those.  I started this around two in the afternoon on the Tuesday before the fair, and finished it the next day before I left for the evening milking at four.  I don't know how it turned out so well, but it did all things considered.

As I said, I almost didn't take this cow painting.  Thankfully, my mother convinced me otherwise because I am now the only person so far to have won the Dorothy McNeill Art Award three times.  I was up against some professional, established artists and both these paintings, as well as my oil pastel drawing, were all considered for the top award.  So, just goes to show that you can never count something out...

The world is one bright smile dimmer...

As you may have noticed, it’s been a quite awhile since my last post.  Since my car turned off of the pavement of Platteville and onto the beaten down gravel of our driveway, I haven’t even sat down at my computer.  Between graduations, field work, family visits, milking cows, job searching, nephews to babysit, and Memorial Days services to attend, I haven’t found the time to write, paint, or get enough sleep.  I’m writing now, but I’m not writing because I’ve found the time, I’m writing because I had to find it.  I just wish the reason I am making time was completely different.

Wednesday morning, an avoidable car accident took the life of a wonderful, young woman I was privileged to know and call a peer.  Katie Binning was not only an incredible artist, but one the most intelligent, motivated, and enthusiastic college students I’ve ever encountered.  I first came to know Katie in a Fiber Arts class during my second semester at Platteville.  She was unapologetic in her individuality and proved that you could not judge a book by its cover.  The first time I saw her I thought ‘Great, another moody, gloomy, Goth-Emo person with a mohawk who is self-absorbed and writes a 10 page artist statement about the deep, depressing meaning behind the three scribbles of black paint…’ 

Did I ever learn my lesson.  Her infectious smile and happy-go-lucky personality instantly brightened even the sleepiest, caffeine deprived 8am classroom.  Her bubbly laughter and giddy excitement while she told a story that would sound boring coming from anyone else was often the highlight of the class period. Plus, she wouldn’t write a ten page art statement full of BS, she’d write thirty pages and write it so well, those scribbles would become the most powerful piece of artwork you’d ever set eyes on. 

She was proudly quirky, but enduringly pleasant to be around.  It was impossible not to like Katie.  Even if you only met her once, you’d always remember her.  Whether it be because of her tattoos of her own design, her constant smile, or her unique sense of style.  You would think she came of some urban Mecca of cultural progression, but she grew up in a small, rural town in central Wisconsin, a couple miles from the birthplace of Colby cheese.  Her grandmother started teaching her to draw when she was very young and ignited her passion and talent for art.  My oldest sister actually worked for her hometown’s local newspaper and took many pictures of Katie for her achievements in high school. Katie liked to read my sister’s column and articles and we often discussed and joked about the quirks of the North Woods towns we were familiar with.

Her boundless energy was the envy and awe of everyone who knew her.  This was a girl who woke up at 6am just so she could drive half an hour to volunteer, attend class from 8am to 5pm and pre-student teach sometime between, run ten miles in track practice, and then stay up until two in the morning to finish a project that wasn’t even due for another two weeks.  Needless to say, she was quite the coffee and tea expert and the only way you could tell she was tired was by how many times she refilled her travel mug.

Just like her wardrobe, Katie’s had a drawing style all her own.  It was beautiful, interesting, and Gothic-like. She was by far the best draftsperson in the art program, but she never set herself above any of the other art students.  She encouraged and praised everyone around her.  She loved all forms of art and was always willing to learn something new.

Because of the ability, she was already an incredible teacher.  I was lucky enough to have both of my required teaching methods class with her.  During the second class, our final project was to do a practice teach.  We had to plan a lesson and teach it to our other classmates as if they were elementary or middle schools.  Katie played the misbehaving, chatty student brilliantly because of her child-like energy and eagerness.  All of us cracked up at least once because of something Katie said or did while playing a first grader. 

Where Katie truly shined and thrived was in front of a classroom.  Her enthusiasm and ability to convey her vast amount of knowledge in an understandable manner was incredible to watch.  She made learning truly an enjoyable experience.  Art History was her forte and could rattle off names and dates from any period.  Because of her own acceptance and appreciation of individuality, she encouraged creativity and originality from all her students.  She was born to be a teacher.  She even planned on teaching at a college level one day.  She was one of those determined people that worked hard at everything she did, and did it well.  If she didn’t do something right, she learned from her mistakes and tried again until she succeeded.

This last semester, Katie had been student teaching at a rural school that neighbors my hometown.  She took more than the maximum amount of credits so she could graduate in four years, something unheard of in the Art Ed program, and she did all this while coaching track.   It seems as though she made quite an impact in the short time she was there.  The small school is located on one of the busiest two-lane highways in southern Wisconsin as it is a major commuter route into Madison.  Katie was waiting to make a left hand turn into the school parking lot when a semi rear-ended her car and sent it into oncoming traffic.  This all happened right as students filtered in for the morning. 

I always knew I’d end up seeing Katie’s smiling face in the news.  However, it should have been there because of her achievements over the next 50 years, not because how all that potential was tragically taken away.  More than ever right now, Wisconsin desperately needs good teachers, especially in the arts.  We were robbed of our brightest prospect the other morning.  Katie was handed her diploma less than three weeks ago and was just starting to pave her way in this world.  I not only mourn for Katie and her family, but for her students and colleagues.  Both who knew her and had to privilege to call her their teacher and friend, but also for those who will never get that chance.

Art of the Week- Band of Brothers

 
Whew...it has certainly been a busy, slow week. One more class this afternoon, and I'm done for the semester. All I have to do is finish a few papers and sit through a few art critiques next week and I can call it a summer. I came close to completely forgetting, but here is my art of the week.

The HBO series, Band of Brothers, is one of my all time favorite movies, or TV show, whatever it is considered. Even though it came out in 2001, I had never seen it until I happened to catch it on TV a few years ago. Once I got over the initial draw of the handsome, dapper soldiers in uniform, I became fascinated with these men’s true story and the history of World War II. We've all know at least enough about the subject to get through a high school history test, but I believe the personal stories of people who actually lived through the devastation is where the true history and facts lie. The series was based on Stephen E. Ambrose's book, Band of Brothers, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest and I highly recommend everyone read it. I also recommend Dick Winters', who was portrayed in the series by Damian Lewis, autobiography about his time as an officer in Easy Company. Anybody who is in any type of leadership position will learn so much from him and his keen perspective on the subject. Oh, another good, and incredibly entertaining, read is June Wandry's Bedpan Commando. In the last few years, women comedians, such as Kristen Wiig and Tina Fey, are being celebrated for proving they can dish it out just as good as their male counterparts. However, after reading this petite Army Lieutenant's journals and letters home, you'll see that there have always been hilarious women, even in the darkest of times.

Alrighty, now that I've plugged all my favorite books, back to the art. I guess you can classify these as fan art, well, since I am a fan and I won’t do anything else with these beside hang them on my wall and go “hey, look what I did.”    It’s funny how the things I do ‘just because’ turn out much better than the things I have to draw for class. 


The graphite drawing is of my favorite scene from the first episode.  I could probably do a bit more work on it.  Tortillions, or blending sticks, were my best friend in this drawing because they gave me the soft lines and shadows needed, especially in the faces. 

The pen drawing was one of my first successful experiments with non-erasable media.  I cheated a little bit and worked some of the contour lines out with a light pencil, but all of the shading was done with a ballpoint pen.