READING PLAN   FIRST YEAR   

´Tell me a picture´ by Quentin Blake

This is a very extraodinary work made by the British  Illustrator Quentin Blake to help the young students to talk and tell about pictures in general. The most usual descriptions and comments that could be said by them in front of several pictures in Englisg language. Some of the pictures chosen are surprising and awesome and some other much more popular but all of them very interesting by the point of view of the youngest at high school.

Talk about some of the artists who did the pictures .....

 Hendrick Avercamp 

(January 27, 1585  – May 15, 1634)

He was a Dutch painter. Avercamp was born in Amsterdam. He was one of the first landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch school, he specialized in painting the Netherlands in winter. Avercamp's paintings are colorful and lively, with carefully crafted images of the people in the landscape. Many of Avercamp's paintings feature people ice skating on frozen lakes.

Avercamp used the painting technique of aerial perspective. The depth is suggested by change of colour in the distance. This technique strengthens the impression of depth in the painting.

Winter Landscape on ice skating

Michael Foreman

(born March 1938) is a British author and illustrator, one of the best-known and most prolific creators of children's books.

A travel scholarship took him all around the world, drawing landscapes, architecture and wildlife. Although many of his books feature luminous watercolours, it is the drawing that he sees as vital: "It's all in the drawing and illustration. It's a question of creating another world, believable in its own right .

His aim in illustration is to make the worlds created believable, real: "I keep trying to make things more real, not in a literal photographic sense, but in an emotional sense , telling a story by capturing the essence of the situation, giving it some meaning.

Roberto Inocenti 

( born 1940 ) .

He is an Italian painter and illustrator

From the beginning of his career there are two things in his illustrations: his love for History and his respect for the books texts. All the tales illustrated by Inocenti are placed in a specific historic frame which the artist have created with lots of details. Remain loyal to a text means to respect the writer´s work , understanding the story and wanting to tell it.

Pinoccio

Pietro Longhi

(1702, 1785) 

He was a Venetian painter of contemporary genre scenes of life. Many of his paintings show Venetians at play, such as the depiction of the crowd of genteel citizens awkwardly gawking at a freakish Indian rhinoceros.

Other paintings chronicle the daily activities such as the gambling parlours that proliferated in the 18th century. Nearly half of the figures in his genre paintings are faceless, hidden behind Venetian Carnival mask. The puppet-like delicacy of the persons, seem to suggest a satirical perspective of the artists toward his subjects.

Exhibition of the Rhino at Venice

Paula Rego

(born 26 January 1935),

She is a Portuguese born visual artist who is particularly known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. Rego’s style has evolved from abstract towards representational, and she has favoured pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects feminism, coloured by folk-themes from her native Portugal. She lives and works in London.She is a prolific painter and printmaker, and in earlier years also produced collage work. Her well-known depictions of folk tales and images of young girls, made largely since 1990, bring together methods of painting and printmaking that emphasise strong, clearly drawn forms.

Dreaming of Animals

Paolo Ucello

(born1397 – died 1475).

He was an Italian painter and a mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. He used perspective in order to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. Paolo worked in the Late Gothic tradition, and emphasized colour and pageantry rather than the Classical realism that other artists were pioneering.

Saint George and the Dragon

Józef Wilcon

(Born  February 1930) 

He is an illustrator, painter, sculptor, and scenographer. He was in Poland.

He studied panting and art history. Józef Wilkoń is one of the greatest Polish artists in the field of illustration. He has contributed to nearly two hundred books for both children and adults. Works illustrated by him have been translated into more than 20 languages.

The artist most often portrays animals and nature in fast and decisive brush strokes. His illustrations are realistic, they do not embellish nor idealise nature. Wilkoń is rarely interested in humans, but the psychological portraits of animals created by him are essentially portraits of people. Using animals as metaphors, much can be said about people.

Bats in the Belfry

John "Jack" Butler Yeats 

(29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) 

He was an Irish artist and Olympic medallist.

Butler's early style was that of an illustrator; he only began to work regularly in oils in 1906. Yeats was born in London, England. He was the youngest son of an Irish portraitist and his brother received in the year 1923 the Novel Prize in Literature. His favourite subjects included the Irish landscape, horses, circus and travelling players. His early paintings and drawings are distinguished by an energetic simplicity of line and colour, his later paintings by an extremely vigorous and experimental treatment of often thickly applied paint.

From around 1920, he developed into an intensely Expressionist artist, moving from illustration to Symbolism.

Circus Scene