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Art & History

How To Look At Art

Have you got a favourite painting? Mine is ‘A Portrait of the Countess Golovine’ painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, sometime around 1797. It is, unsurprisingly, a portrait of Countess Varvara Nikolaevna Golovine, a talented musician and artist from Russia. Elisabeth and the Countess became great friends and I love the way the Countess is smiling in the portrait, with a red shawl draped around her shoulders and her dark curly hair swept up in behind a scarf. The painting belongs to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, which is one of my favourite galleries.

I love going to art galleries and looking at paintings, but at first I found it quite a daunting thing to do. Have you ever been to an art gallery and not known where to start? Or heard art critics talking about symbolism, composition and form but not understood? Sometimes looking at art can sound difficult, and talking about it can be a whole other language!

But looking at art doesn’t have to be complicated. Things like symbolism, where objects in paintings are used to represent something that’s happening, like a skull symbolising death, can be important and the composition, or the way things in the painting are arranged, can tell us a lot about the artist and why the painted what they did.

Home, Health & Style, Written By You

Make Up For Girls – Is It Necessary? Written By You

At school today I was talking to a friend and he was telling me about the random thoughts that he sometimes thinks about. One of the many philosophical thoughts that were swooping round in his crowded head was; ‘why do girls wear make-up and boys don’t?’

Then that got me thinking. Boys have every right to wear make-up just as much as girls have the right not to. Both genders try to make the best of their bodies by doing exercise, being healthy and wearing nice clothes as well as many other things.

Science, Nature and Tech

A Day in the Life of… a Structural Engineer

You might be starting to think about which subjects you want to study at school, perhaps you have even had a talk about careers.

One thing that is quite tricky to assess is what a job is REALLY like. Some jobs are quite easy to imagine, such as working as a teacher, because we see the work that teachers do every day. Some jobs are a bit of a mystery. What does an engineer actually DO? And what do you have to study, to become one?

Today we are introducing a new series of articles, which will show you the typical working life of people in many different professions. If you know someone who has an interesting or unusual career, ask them if they would agree to a short interview with us to show kids a day in their life.

We were lucky enough to interview Tasha Scott, who was happy to explain to us her studies and career as a Structural Engineer.

Toys and Games

The Very Best Minecraft Parodies

We’ve collected some of the best Minecraft parodies for you today – check these out!

Art & History

Great Women You Should Know… Hedy Lamar

You probably do not know who the actor Hedy Lamarr was as her last film credit was in 1958. If you ask your parents they may have a vague recollection or at least know her name.

What they probably don’t realize is that she wasn’t only an actor. She was a philosopher and, most importantly this month as we remember the World Wars and the sacrifices made during those wars, she was an inventor. She and avant-garde composer George Antheil worked together to create the first broad-spectrum frequency hopping wireless communications.

“What on earth is that?”, you’re probably thinking!