On this web site, designed as part of a Virtual University course, I'd like to examine various forms of art, such as painting, music and literature. In particular, I hope to establish connections between the more traditional art forms and Nature itself and to develop the notion that a garden is a work of "living art."
The page you are now visiting is my Virtual Notebook, which contains assignments and experiments done in connection with the above-mentioned course. Here I keep my ideas and practice techniques which are new to me. Feel free to ask questions about what you find here and to offer suggestions.
Asked to examine pages already on the web and to name one I like a lot, I chose the web site of my friend Jeff Rubin (http://www.put-it-in-writing.com) because it's simple and refined. Positive factors are the caricature of Jeff and his dog, the general layout, the background color and texture, the guest counter and the movement of the feather pen from the ink well. Other good things about this web site are its lack of silliness and the fact that it contains no grammatical errors.Another web page I find interesting is that of Jim Schwartz (http://www.jimshostas.com), which has some beautiful photographs and moving text in the banner at the top. It also shows the current time and temperature in Dubuque, Iowa, and has shimmering water, a revolving letter and flashing lights on his Open for Business sign.
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a. <P><B><I>This paragraph contains bold, italicized text.</I></B></P>
William Shakespeare grew up as a country boy and never lost his love for flowers.
(The preceding sentence shows some techniques learned in Lesson 2. The "strike" tag set puts a line through the center of the text, while the "subscript" tags place the text slightly lower than the rest of the text on the line and the "superscript" set places the text slightly higher on the line.)
If you would like to see some tables designed using the information provided in this week's lesson, there are four on my home page. Others reside on the pages entitled "More Painters to Add to Our Collection" and "Turning Over a New Leaf."
This is an example of a broken image. Permission to use the image, which represents a painting by Claude Monet, has been requested from the Art Institute of Chicago, where it 
hangs. (I am still waiting for the reply.) I would like to use many paintings on my web site, in particular those of some of the lesser known artists.
It was another painting by Monet (1840-1926) that gave its name to the movement known as "Impressionism." That work was entitled "Impression: Sunrise," and I've seen it in Paris. I've also seen Monet's garden and pond (full of water lilies) at Giverny, France.
As great as Monet is, I prefer works by his predecessors of the Barbizon School and by Corot. Moreover, I find many of Van Gogh's paintings exquisite, especially those containing a blue he used that has rarely been duplicated. Other groups of painters I admire are the Pre-Raphaelites and the German Expressionists.
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Composers to Evaluate
Painters and More Painters to Appreciate
Authors to Analyze
E-mail me: camorris@dpc.net
Art work courtesy of Orchid's Free Clipart, Starstogether and Cottage Row Graphics.