Category: Art

When I was a little tyke back in the ’80s, I loved checking Ed Emberley drawing books out from the library. Mr. Emberley’s style was to start each lesson with “If you can draw this: (followed by a bunch of scribbles that even a trained monkey could do) then you can draw a fish!” Substitute “fish” for “dog,” “cat,” “three ring circus,” etc., and you get the idea for most of his drawing books.

I actually credit Ed Emberley (and a few of my classmates) with instilling in me a love of Art, as my own elementary Art teacher did little to encourage me.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that not only is Mr. Emberley still making books, but he also has his own flash based web site! This gem of online design includes instructions for a variety of activities, complete with written permission to reproduce sections of his web site. I may have to work some of this stuff into an Art lesson later.

When Modernism came about, many more traditional artists questioned whether “Modern Art” was an oxymoron or not. Then came Post-Modernism, Installation Art, Performance Art, and all other kinds of fun things that truly tried to turn that fine line between the works of the masters and the quirks of the legally insane into a grey blur. (This is not to say that it was all bad, mind you.)

Ok, enough of my rambling. How about you take the Art or Crap quiz and find out how well you know the works of the 20th century.

Ok, let’s say you’re having a discussion with your students and it leads to an artist whose work is pertinent to the conversation. Unfortunately this spontaneous conversation means that you have no preparation time, and you can’t find the right picture in your Art textbook (assuming you even have one). What do you do? Why, go to the Artchive, of course!

This gem of a resource, maintained by Mark Harden, lists artists my name and by genre. You’ve got a hunt on your hands if you don’t remember an artist’s name or the name of the artwork, but other than that this site is a gold mine for images that are large enough to make half decent 8.5 x 11 prints.