It is definitely time for an update!
First and foremost...we have an art show this week at the Albion Municipal Library and Heritage Center!!! Open House is tomorrow (Monday 24th) night from 5-7pm! Come join us to support our middle school students and Youth Art Month. :)
Here's just a sneak peak of the Art Showcase:
First and foremost...we have an art show this week at the Albion Municipal Library and Heritage Center!!! Open House is tomorrow (Monday 24th) night from 5-7pm! Come join us to support our middle school students and Youth Art Month. :)
Here's just a sneak peak of the Art Showcase:
So I've been busy busy busy selecting student work, matting them all onto black paper, labeling, and sending home letters to parents! Whew! On a side note, this guy even thought he'd try to help out when I spent the weekend at my parents and brought some artwork along. I'm not usually the kind of person to put pictures of my pets up...but this was too funny.
What's Been Going on in the Artroom?
We've just finished 3rd quarter and the bulk of our 2-D projects. Here's a quick look at the past couple months.
Some Pictures from our Perspective Unit...students hard at work on their 2 Pt. Watercolor Treehouses and some finished student work:
Some Pictures from our Perspective Unit...students hard at work on their 2 Pt. Watercolor Treehouses and some finished student work:
Art in 3-D!
Every Grade has learned about drawing the illusion of depth and space on a flat 2-D surface in one way or another. Students have been learning about the Elements of Design and have practiced drawing forms (cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, pyramid) 3-dimensionally and then shading according to the direction of the light source and value scale. 8th Grade used these forms to design a 3-D castle and shade it in. 7th Grade designed 3-D robots/transformers. Taking a different route with 5th grade, they learned about foreshortening and then traced their hands and feet to create drawings that make them look like they are falling towards us (a lesson I learned from a cooperating teacher! Thanks Mrs. Hardman!)
Every Grade has learned about drawing the illusion of depth and space on a flat 2-D surface in one way or another. Students have been learning about the Elements of Design and have practiced drawing forms (cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, pyramid) 3-dimensionally and then shading according to the direction of the light source and value scale. 8th Grade used these forms to design a 3-D castle and shade it in. 7th Grade designed 3-D robots/transformers. Taking a different route with 5th grade, they learned about foreshortening and then traced their hands and feet to create drawings that make them look like they are falling towards us (a lesson I learned from a cooperating teacher! Thanks Mrs. Hardman!)
Hubble Telescope:
I was super excited about this unit and I think the 6th graders really enjoyed it as well. Incorporating science in with art class, the students learned a little about the Hubble Telescope and outerspace. We browsed around this website http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/ to look at images taken from space! After I demonstrated how to blend the colors to make a cloudy image, student used chalk pastels on black paper to recreate their own space pictures. (This idea comes from this great art blog)
I was super excited about this unit and I think the 6th graders really enjoyed it as well. Incorporating science in with art class, the students learned a little about the Hubble Telescope and outerspace. We browsed around this website http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/ to look at images taken from space! After I demonstrated how to blend the colors to make a cloudy image, student used chalk pastels on black paper to recreate their own space pictures. (This idea comes from this great art blog)
Anti-Bullying Posters:
I loved doing this project so much last semester, that I had to do it again! It's great getting students to think about deeper issues and social justice. Bullying is something they've all witnessed or been affected by in one way or another and the ways that they bring that into their art is incredible! If you want to read more about this project, I wrote about it in an earlier post. (click here)
I loved doing this project so much last semester, that I had to do it again! It's great getting students to think about deeper issues and social justice. Bullying is something they've all witnessed or been affected by in one way or another and the ways that they bring that into their art is incredible! If you want to read more about this project, I wrote about it in an earlier post. (click here)
8th Grade Impressionist Unit:
The week of ITBS, I thought the students needed a break from our "intensive 3-D" unit. :) So...I taught them about impressionist painting and let them paint animals using loose brush work like impressionists! The results were amazing!! So very colorful and unique! Loved it! Just two pictures below...but they were all beautiful, more pics to come!
Before we really got going on the paintings though, we spent a few minutes doing Gesture Drawing to depict the "impression" of a figure within a short time. Some students volunteered to be the model and struck a pose...students then had just one minute to draw them. What fun!
The week of ITBS, I thought the students needed a break from our "intensive 3-D" unit. :) So...I taught them about impressionist painting and let them paint animals using loose brush work like impressionists! The results were amazing!! So very colorful and unique! Loved it! Just two pictures below...but they were all beautiful, more pics to come!
Before we really got going on the paintings though, we spent a few minutes doing Gesture Drawing to depict the "impression" of a figure within a short time. Some students volunteered to be the model and struck a pose...students then had just one minute to draw them. What fun!
Exploratories: Crayon Melts!
Call me crazy for attempting a whole class crayon melt lesson...but the students loved it! Perhaps a bit chaotic and definitely noisy will all the hair dryers going...but I'm sure it will be memory the students won't forget. haha!
Call me crazy for attempting a whole class crayon melt lesson...but the students loved it! Perhaps a bit chaotic and definitely noisy will all the hair dryers going...but I'm sure it will be memory the students won't forget. haha!