Art

Art Courses

Visual Art I

Curriculum Overview:
For students to develop their skills in observation and become familiar with different styles of artwork as well as various processes for making two-dimensional and three-dimensional artwork. California State Visual Art Education Content Standards are met.

 Visual Art I Goals:

• Develop perceptual skills and visual arts vocabulary by being able to identify and use the principles of design to discuss, analyze, and write about visual aspects in the environment and in works of art, including their own.
• Demonstrate the ability to apply artistic processes and skills, using a variety of media to communicate meaning and intent in original works of art.
• Demonstrate the ability to identify and describe trends in the visual arts and discuss how the issues of time, place, and cultural influence are reflected in selected works of art.
• Demonstrate the ability to respond to, analyze, and make judgments about works in the visual arts.
• Demonstrate the ability to apply what has been learned in the Visual Arts across subject areas.
• Demonstrate competencies and creative skills in problem solving, communication, and management of time and resources that contribute to lifelong learning and career skills.
• Demonstrate knowledge about careers in and related to the visual arts.

Visual Art II

Curriculum Overview:
This is an advanced Visual Art studio course that is offered to students who have completed Visual Art I.  Students will engage in a great deal of art making studio time in which they will develop their own artistic style within their projects.

Visual Art II Goals:

• Demonstrate the ability to analyze and discuss complex ideas, such as distortion, color theory, arbitrary color, scale, expressive content, and real versus virtual in works of art.
• Demonstrate the ability to create two-dimensional and three-dimensional  original works of art of increasing complexity and skill in a variety of media that reflect personal feelings and points of view.
• Demonstrate the ability to identify contemporary artists worldwide who have achieved regional, national, or international recognition and discuss ways in which their work reflects, plays a role in, and influences present-day culture.
• Demonstrate the ability to describe the relationship involving the art maker (artist), the making (process), the artwork (product), and the viewer.
• Demonstrate the ability to apply what has been learned in the visual arts across subject areas.
• Demonstrate competencies and creative skills in problem solving, communication, and management of time and resources that contribute to lifelong learning and career skills.
• Demonstrate knowledge about careers in and related to the visual arts.
  

Digital Photography

Core textbooks: Mastering Digital Black and White Photography

Curriculum Overview:
For students to learn the basic knowledge needed to develop an understanding of how to shoot a correct exposure using basic photography techniques. In addition, students will gain knowledge of Adobe Photoshop: organizing, editing and printing images.

Course Goals:

• Demonstrate basic knowledge of vocabulary in photography technique.
• Participate and understand activities giving opportunity to identify and apply the technique learned.
• Demonstrate knowledge of photography techniques and photography styles applied to learning and developing digital images.
  

Foriegn Films

Curriculum Overview:
This class will examine of the methods and conventions of several international (European) films. Students will consider the artistic structure, as well as study practical approaches to film outside of Hollywood. Although students tend to begin this class with a strong sense of what they like or dislike about a given film, our individual tastes will be put aside in order to focus on specific methods of analysis. This will be what can we learn from a film, from the type of camera angle, framing, and sound, to specific genre, identity, as well as film theory. In addition to viewing each film, students will address relevant issues (history, politics, social conditions, world cultures, etc.) in order to get a better understanding of the auteur’s (director) vision. Students will also learn how the cinema of today was influenced by the great movies from the past and how film portrays and responds to cultural shifts and changes.

Foreign Film Course Goals:

• Using films, students will be able to analyze plot, point-of-view, characterization, setting, theme, and figurative language.  They will sharpen skills in close reading by perceiving patterns in film as text, such as symbols, images, motifs, etc.
• Students will write both formally and informally through the completion of a journal notebook and several well-developed compositions, which demonstrate an understanding of process writing.
• Students will understand and appreciate the cultural factors inherent in filmmaking from a variety of eras and cultural/ethnic backgrounds.
• Students will master good skills in discussion -- speaking and listening -- through the daily discussion of cinematic works and the completion of a series of reaction papers.

Modern Music

Curriculum Overview:
Modern Music is a survey class focusing on much of the music from the mid to late 20th century and into the 21st. We also learn the basics of song writing.
 

Modern Music Course Goals:

• Understanding how the different music of today relates to each other in theory, performance and structure.
• Constructing songs and compositions of the student’s own design.
• Performing said compositions in school talent shows.
• Learning how to use music software to create beats, loops and songs.