We talked briefly about Impressionism, Expressionism, and Fauvism...as far as color choices and brush strokes are concerned. The students then paint an animal with bright bold colors. This is one of my favorite projects the students do! They are all so unique (except the lions...I get a lot of lions. haha!) Before the students did the above project, we reviewed the Color Wheel. I know they do this every year, so to make it less boring, all I told them was to paint a color wheel by mixing the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) but to be creative with how they made the wheel. Here are some of the results.
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I've done this project with the students every semester and the finished results get better every time!! We study the art of Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein and his Ben-Day dot method. The students then take a picture of themselves and trace it onto another paper to create a "cartoony" look. Then they add dots to imitate Roy's comic book style. I promised more pictures in my last update...so here you go! Loads of new pics and a few new projects we've finished in the last couple months. You can click on the images to make them larger. Enjoy! 8th Grade Impressionist-Inspired Animal Paintings: Printmaking Unit: 7th and 8th Graders learned about the printmaking process. The 7th grade made bird designs while the 8th grade did Endangered animals. First, they had to do a little research (worldwildlife.org) on their bird/animal and a couple planning sketches. We then transferred the image to linoleum and the carved the image out. Colored ink is then rolled over the linocut to make a print on paper! 7th Grade just did monoprints (one color of ink)...but the 8th grade had to make prints with TWO colors, which is much more challenging because they have to line things up just so for it to work.My example of the process is below...and then lots of student work. I think you'll agree, they did an excellent job! 5th Grade Tree of Life Paintings: These were so fun to do create! We talked a little about how the "Tree of Life" is a symbol in many cultures/religions. I then showed them the painting by Gustav Klimt (shown below). Students learned how to draw "Y trees" and turn the ends into swirls. We then painted, added patterns on with pastels, and glued on beads and tissue paper for a pop of color. 7th Grade Watercolor Oceans! We went under the sea for these paintings as all of us were wishing for warmer weather. Students learned some watercolor techniques for these wet wonderworlds. When the display was up in the hallway, I cut out a little Nemo picture and hid him somewhere on the display for people to find. :) Zentangle Drawings and Kandinsky Landscapes: These were nice "filler" projects. We talked briefly about Zentagle Drawings and how to use patterns with thick and thin lines. I let them choose their own subject matter, but they had to draw the whole things with lots of different patterns and line qualities. Students also learned a little about Wassily Kandinsky and looked at some of his wildly colorful landscapes. Then they created their own with pastels and bold black outlines. Post Secret: These are from awhile ago...but some more examples from our Anti-Bullying Post Secret project. 7th Grade Tints and Shades Landscapes: These paintings are also from awhile ago...but I don't think I ever shared them. Color Experimenting Recipe Cards: After we spent a couple days reviewing and paintings color wheels, I figured the students needed a little break to "just have fun" with paint. So I let them just experiment, time to test out any combinations of colors that they wanted. The catch was that they had to create a "recipe card" so that they could make that same color again. They had to give it a name and write down the colors they mixed to make it. Some of the names they came up with for each new color were pretty wacky! :) Magnified Leaf Paintings: Before we started this project, the students learned about the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, an American artist known for her "almost abstract" paintings of magnified objects in nature, particularly flowers and bones. Then they chose a leaf (out of a bunch I had gathered outside) and drew a couple small sketches of different close-up angles of their leaf. We used a grid system to draw one of these sketches to a larger paper and they painted in their leaves. They were strongly encouraged to look closely at the leaf for the different shades of colors and veins to add details to their paintings. They also had to paint the background the complement of their leaf color. "The Scream" Tunnel Books: The project took quite some time to finish. First we looked at Edvard Munch's artwork "The Scream" and talked about the elements/principles of design they saw in it. Plus, we touched on interpretation and what emotion they thought the artist wanted to portray. Before they made their own picture, I had the students type up a two paragraph story of a time that they were scared and screamed. This took longer than I'd planned because I didn't realize they are not as fast at typing as me. :) Whoops! Also, I had some students claiming they've never been scared or screamed before...and since it was around Halloween, I took it as an opportune time to show them this video. So if your student came home going on about how mean Ms. Holcomb is...well, they needed something to write their story about. Haha! I scare because I care. :) Next, the students drew out and colored their own Scream picture, with a self portrait of themselves screaming, in pastels. For a tunnel book, the image was separated into different pages and then assembled so that the picture looks more 3-dimensional. It took awhile to do all the measuring and to glue them together, but overall, they looked very nice when finished. Post Secret: Raising Awareness about Bullying: One week the whole school had a presentation from Mr. Brown about bullying, so I thought it would be a great time to do a project I was inspired by from the Art Conference in Cedar Rapids I went to in October. First, I showed the students a couple videos: We spent a little time discussing the sensitive issue of bullying and how to define it. I then introduced Frank Warren, an artist who did a project where he gathered "secrets" from people as post cards. The senders decorated their post cards and he put them together into books as an art form...and found that these confessions helped to Unite people. I didn't want the students to reveal a deep dark student, but told them to choose a word of phrase and decorate their small poster along that theme, similar to many of the post secrets. This is the example I showed them on the board of an idea I had and my thought/work process. Finished example on the right: Even though some students had been hounding me for a more "open ended" project, a lot of them struggled to think of ideas on their own and I found that many did something very similar to mine. ;) However, there were some awesome things that came out of this projects and I got to have some great revealing conversations with a few students and encourage them. The students were very receptive to the idea of this project and I am so proud of their work! 8th grade also did this project. Bad Hair Day Project: I initially found this idea through my mom as a quick sub plan for a day I was gone. However, it soon became one of my favorites out of the projects we've done. The 7th grade started by making hair/beards with at least 5 different line patterns. I then introduced them to facial proportions and they added the eyes, nose, and mouth. Lastly, they traced their lines with permanent markers and colored them in. The results were very silly, and incredibly creative, wild hair portraits! Too fun! Portrait Unit: Contour Line Celebrities: This was a simple three day project, but the end product was awesome! We reviewed what contour lines are and then the students used acetate plastic film over-top prints of famous people to trace the lines. It was a little challenging to trace just the important lines and not fill anything in. Next the students did a simple Wet on Wet watercolor painting as the background. When they put the line drawing on top they were stunning! I just love how they turned out! The students then cut their photocopy of the celebrity and practiced using facial proportions to draw the "Other Half." Dance Off! This is too funny not to share. I have a reward chart that looks like a treasure map...the whole class can more forward one space each day depending how well they do on following expectations. When one of my 7th grade classes got to the "X" they shocked me by insisting on having a "Dance Off" for their reward day! I figured it would be one of those things that once I got the music on, they'd all chicken out...but I decided to do it for them anyway. I was wrong, they got really into it and it was a blast. |