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In the Art Room
JULY 2012
Issue 26
Greetings!
Challenges are part of every homeschooler's experience. While we love what we do, we are often faced with new and unexpected situations that demand that we become the student for a time. Dan recently had to learn about how websites get hacked into and it took over a week to gather the information needed, as you may have noticed if you visited our site in early July. I learned some great tips on password security and what you need from your website host. Since many of you have home businesses that depend on web sites, like ours, I want to share what we've learned. See the article titled, Site Safe and Secure! For those who just want to learn a bit more about art, I've included my regular discussion on a topic especially fitting for summer months, how children incorporate local features into their art. Finally, you won't want to miss our August Newsletter due to arrive in your e-mail on August 6th. We've got something special planned. Meanwhile, enjoy the summer sun, but make art in the shade!
- Brenda Ellis, author of ARTistic Pursuits
 
In This Issue
The Importance of Locality in Children's Art
Site Safe and Secure
Facebook
Recent Awards
New Blogger Review
The Importance of Locality in Children's Art
boy for sign


The art of children will most often be a reflection of their community and local features. If children are asked to make art from what they know, from their experiences, then most often you will see pictures of backyards, local playgrounds, and baseball fields. Having taught art for twenty years in the Rocky Mountain region, I often see a ragged row of mountain peaks in the backgrounds of children's works. I imagine that those living near coastal areas will see ocean backgrounds. The midwest feature of glowing red or orange partial sun setting behind rolling hills is common.

Visits to art museums can expand what children think of as art. A child living in downtown Denver may be faced with romantic scenes of cowboys on horseback on the flat plains or Indian portraits. If intrigued by this subject, she may try to reproduce it. But, without feeding herself extra knowledge of the subject through books, websites, and other visual resources, the interest will be exhausted quickly. Her knowledge is too limited because it does not come from her surroundings of modern city living. Limited knowledge is the problem with drawing and painting cartoon characters from games, shows, and other media. All a child knows of this different kind of world, the world of the character, is what can be found in the place which the artist has created for the character. Since cartoons aim to simplify, there is little depth from which to draw. Drawings from imagination are encouraged at times, but there again a child needs a vast source from which to draw. He needs to understand and know what animal life, culture, including dress, plant life and physical features of the land that will surround his imagined scene. The beauty of art is that the artist brings all of what they know to the piece. Knowledge comes from experience and so it becomes highly desirable that children gain many and varied experiences within their surroundings. A child may also fixate on a specific subject that is not available to him locally, through photographs, which is understandable in today's rich graphic world. Giving children visual information in real world situations of local wildlife and land features will give them what they need to be confident in their art. We should expect that what goes into a child will come out through art since art is an expression of ones thoughts, ideas, and interests. 
Site Safe and Secure

 Our site was hacked into on June 28th by machines that install malware onto the code. When Google spotted the malware they shut down the site. I want to inform you of what Dan and I have learned so that you can avoid the misfortune we have just experienced - having the site closed first by Google, and then by our web site host- resulting in a loss of income stretching over a week. There are two things needed to maintain a secure site. #1 Redo all passwords related to setting up the site and website server to 12 digits including capitals, lower case, numbers, and special characters with NO WORDS. An 8 digit password, or one that uses words recognized in a dictionary, can be broken into within minutes by machines that systematically go through passwords in order to hack sites. A 12 digit password with no recognizable words would take years to break and the machines aren't going to stay at it that long. Malware (inserted code) was put onto the Java Script in our site and Google spotted it and flagged our site with an "attack site" warning. We were able to remove the malware by uploading fresh copy of our site again and requesting that Google recheck the site. Google did so, and OK'd the site as safe within hours. Dan then needed to reset the old passwords and the real trouble started. #2 If your web site server company cannot be contacted by phone, get a new one right away! Ours changed from having phone access to only being contacted by email. That did not seem like a bad thing, until we had a problem. Dan requested that they find out why he could not go in to change his passwords. New, larger passwords were the final step in getting the site in top shape. They took 24-48 hours to reply to each of his questions, then did something with our site so that he could change passwords and in so doing created a username and password box for our customers to see before going past the home page. Our dear customers were asking what the password to our site is!! There isn't one. We would never set up a barrier to get into our site. The web server company created a block for our customers, then were very slow to respond and never did fix the problem they created. We wasted a further week in an email conversation, where a 30 minute phone conversation could have resolved the problem. We decided to get a new server or host for our site, one that Dan has had phone contact with and called several times as he set up the new site and passwords. I hope this helps those of you with web businesses so that you never experience a business shut-down like this one.

Because we use PayPal, the safety of customer information was not ever at risk during the recent shut down of our site. ALL information is stored on the PayPal site and much of it, such as phone number and credit card information, never reaches Artistic Pursuits Inc.
E-mails and other contact information are not stored on the Artistic Pursuits Inc. site.

 

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Quote of the Month
On creativity and ideas:

"Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need." 
                                             - William McKnight, 3M President


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ARTistic Pursuits is one of Cathy Duffy's 101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. Read about her new 2012 edition, released in July.
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ARTistic Pursuits won the Blue Ribbon Award for Favorite Fine Arts Product 2011-2012!
 
New Blogger Review

See what this homeschool Mom had to say at:
 Sam Kelley's Review of ARTistic Pursuits, Grades K-3 Book One
ARTistic Pursuits Grades K-3 Book One