Tag: technique

Google Art Project: Virtual Art Museums

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Google Art Project: Virtual Art Museums4784 views

What it is: Google never stops amazing me, this time they are amazing me in the form of a partnership with art museums around the world.  Art Project is an incredible collaborative project that is powered by Google to bring art museums into your classroom.  Art Project lets students discover and view more than a thousand pieces of art online in incredible detail with Google street view technology.  Students can virtually move around the museum’s galleries, zooming closer on works of art and navigating through interactive floor plans where they can learn more about the museum and explore.  Artwork view lets students view the art at high-resolution, expanding the information panel lets students read more about the art, find more art by the same artist and watch related YouTube videos.  Students can act as curator and create their own artwork collection by saving specific views of the art and build a personal collection.  Comments can be added to each piece of art and share with families and friends.

How to integrate Google Art Project into the classroom: Google Art Project brings art museums from around the world into your classroom.  Take a virtual field trip to the museums using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard.  Let students take turns acting as a museum tour guide by clicking on the extra information and reading it out loud for students while they look at the artwork. After the class tour of the museum, students can use classroom computers or a lab to create their own collections.  Students can comment on each piece of art and share the collection they curated with family and friends.

Use Google Art Project for a compare and contrast activity. Students can compare and contrast the type of artwork they see in the various art museums, compare and contrast styles of art, or compare and contrast the work of different artists or time periods.

Use the artwork as the base of a creative writing activity, students can choose a piece of art and write a story about the artist, or about what is happening in the work of art.

Need help demonstrating a technique? Art Project lets students view artwork in such detail that the techniques are easy to point out and describe.

Tips: Due to copyrights, some pieces of art will appear a bit blurry when students zoom in.  The majority of the pieces can be seen in very high levels of detail.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Art Project in your classroom.

The Pre-Raph Pack

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on The Pre-Raph Pack4994 views

What it is: The Pre-Raph Pack (don’t you love that name?) is a brilliant site about artists, the techniques they used, a timeline that spans 100 years, and a collection of images from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.  First students discover the Pre-Raphites (that is artists who were before Raphael).  Students will learn about the influences, the different styles that emerged, the early and late style and the lasting influence that these artists have.  Students can learn more about the individual artists which are easily categorized and searched by last name.  Next, students can learn about the different painting techniques that were used from the wet-white technique to the use of bright and vivid colors.  The timeline lets students explore each time period of the almost 100 year Pre-Raphaelite movement.  Finally, students can see the collection of paintings themselves.  The collection is easily searchable by category.

How to integrate The Pre-Raph Pack into your curriculum: The Pre-Raph Pack is a comprehensive look at the Pre-Raphael art movement and the collection at Birmingham.  Students not only get a peek at the artists themselves, they learn the history, technique, and what the movement meant to art.

This is a well put together site for use in any art class, but the in-depth look at the artists and the history makes it a great site for any classroom.  Art is a medium that can absolutely hook a child on history. They begin to see that art has gone through evolutions and that it is deeply reflective of the times.  If you have a student who is struggling with history, introduce them to a little art history and see if you can’t help them make different connections with the stories.  I have said this many times before, but history was a hard subject for me.  I saw it only as a collection of dates, facts, places, and names that I couldn’t get to relate to each other.  It wasn’t until I met my husband and he started talking history, that I realized that history is all about story.  The Pre-Raph Pack is a site that can help your students begin to connect the pieces in history.

Use the paintings on this site as writing prompts, ask students to write about the story they think is happening in the painting.  The collection includes everything from history and medieval, to religion and myth, to portraits, literature, and landscapes.  Each of your students will be able to find a painting that speaks to them.

Tips: The Pre-Raph Pack was created for the Birmingham Museum and Art Collection.  They have several excellent websites that I will be reviewing.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Pre-Raph Pack in your classroom!