For the 6th Grade perspective Unit, the students drew cities in "Bird's Eye" point of view and made their building look 3-D using a technique called 1 Point Perspective. They used watercolor pencils and added Pop-Up superheroes to fly over their city. You can see the creativity of the store names on the tops of their buildings. :) One of my goals is to continue teaching the 7th and 8th grade how to draw from real life and make their drawings look more realistic and 3-D. I find they have a hard time looking at something and drawing it accurately; so I walked them through a series of steps for how to draw a "Still Life" set of objects. The students then picked out a seashell and drew it on their own. Last, they added chalk pastel for a pop of color in the backgrounds.
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Here we go!! First quarter done and feeling like this blog is very delayed...but better late than never. I can't believe it is almost November!!. We have accomplished so much this far and I will try to sum it up briefly...with tons of pictures. :) Also, in case you didn't know, there is a place where you can leave a comment if you read this blog post...especially if you are a parent. I would love to know that you visited the website. Thank you!! ~Ms. Holcomb OH...and other news I'm excited about. I just confirmed with the library in Hubbard that we will be having a SHMS Art Show the week of November 17th - 22nd!! Mark your calendars! I will let you know more details as the time gets closer. Sketchbooks!To start off a new semester, the students designed their own sketchbooks. They use these just about everyday in art class for small drawing assignments and art vocabulary notes. The students covered their sketchbook with textured paste paintings. Later, they drilled holes through the hole stack before sewing up the binding. Duct tape AND power tools in art class made my male students very happy! Great way to start the year. You can click on the photos to view them larger. Minion ManiaOnce again, the middle school minion army took over the school the first month of school. This was definitely a favorite project! One and Two Point PerspectivePerspective is a drawing technique that helps artists make an image look 3D on a flat surface. This year the 8th Graders made 2 Point Perspective City Corners (which turned out wonderfully!!!) and the 7th Graders drew their "Fantasy Room" in 1 Point Perspective. Check out these awesome finished projects: Enrichment: Art Club The end of each day is one of my favorite times because I have a group of students in "Art Club." These students choose their own art projects and I get to be there to guide them along the way. Most days I have very different projects all going on at once, from crayon meltings to recycled records to popsicle stick art...it can get pretty crazy sometimes. But I love to see these students get creative and do things they wouldn't normally get to do in art class. Artist of the WeekSomething new in the art room is the "Artist of the Week" wall. Every week I change whose artwork is displayed. The students look forward to seeing who is on the wall...especially if it is their own work! I try not to have any repeats so that each student can experience being an Artist of the Week at least once.
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: 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: 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!) 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) 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) 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! 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! Just a quick update. I haven't been at BCLUW for very long but we've gotten off to a great start! I gave the students a "Fun Friday" project where they each had to draw their own minion. They loved it! There were definitely some unique ones that came out. I'll never forget the "Miley Cyrus" or the "Justin Bieber in Jail" (which happened the night before) minions! haha! Sketchbooks: I had each grade make sketchbooks, which they will use for small drawing assignments at the beginning of each class. The 5th and 6th grade made simple ones, but the 7th and 8th grade spent more time making theirs. We started by making "paste paper"...which is basically paint mixed with paper mache paste. The students painted paper and then used popsicles to make designs. The next day they cut their paintings and covered cut pieces of cardboard for their front and back covers. The students then applied duct tape to one side (I brought in different kinds of duct tape with different designs) and I helped them drill holes through the whole stack (the boys loved that part! Power tools!) for them to sew up the binding with yarn! The whole process took about a week. I took this lesson directly from this great art teacher blog: http://creativendeavors.blogspot.com/2013/11/handmade-creative-journals.html?spref=fb Perspective: Each grade is starting with a Perspective Unit. The 8th graders are currently working on Two Point Perspective Treehouses (I had 7th grade do this last semester and I thought it was a smidge too difficult for them). 7th Graders are drawing a city from a "Bird's Eye" view using One Point Perspective. They'll use marker to trace their lines and paint water over the top to create a watercolor-styled look. They'll also cut out superheroes to protect their city and add them to the top! 5th and 6th graders are also doing One Point Perspective projects. 6th graders are designing their "Ideal/Fantasy Room" and 5th graders are drawing landscapes (inspired by the tulip fields of the Netherlands) and will color them in with chalk pastels. So fun to get messy! Crayon Melts!
This is something I'm excited and nervous about. Every few weeks we have shortened classes so that students can spend an hour at an "Exploratory". I've decided that I will teach my exploratory how to make crayon melts on canvas! I had never actually made one myself...so here is my 1st try at it! My first Exploratory is tomorrow (if the weather doesn't give us issues)...so we'll see how crazy it is to try and do these in an hour! Wish me luck! |