An unconventional image

For Art 2's first assignment after Christmas I challenged them to create a self portrait out of an unconventional medium.  Some took the challenge and brought in tons of supplies and others went pretty simple with the task.  But either way they needed to do something different.

Alli H. - Tissue paper

Courtney M. - Melted crayon that has been scratched away

Danica H. - Nail polish

Demi H. - Thumbtacks  

Derek E. - Red pen

KaSandra K. - Embossing on foil

Kelsey C. - Toothpicks

I am very proud of the few kids that finished their projects even though they had some serious issues in the beginning.  I am also really proud of the ones who learned new techniques.

What's on the inside?

So last year I found this lesson from Art of the Apex (I think).  It has since become one of my favorite lessons to do with the students.  The day I start the lesson is a little chaotic.  I start by talking about gesture drawing and then I have them draw posed dolls that are all around the art room.  Some get a little creeped out by the dolls, and if you saw some of the dolls I get from other teachers (I only have boys so I don't have any at my house), but I am grateful for the ones that they donate.

After they draw those, I then bring out skeleton bones from the biology room.  Yes I am a scavenger and borrower, you have to be in this job.  I then have them move from table to table to drawing the different pieces of bone that I set out.  Our school skeleton is not fully assembled and comes to me in a big tub.  In some ways that is better than me rolling him down the hall.

Anyways, then I have them have a two minute brainstorming session with the other people that sit by them and they have to name as many cartoon characters as they can.  I usually walk around and tell them to think way back to their childhood or their grandparents childhood if they can.  I always love when they come up with ones that nobody else at their table has even heard of.

To wrap it all up and bring it all back together, I tell them that there has been a method to the madness today and that I just didn't reach into a hat to try to throw several things together that don't seem to make sense.  I then tell them that they will be drawing a cartoon character in gesture and his skeleton.

Here are some of my favorite examples.

Bella J.

Alasia J.

Yeva S.

Jacob H.

Mikayla R.

Bridget B.

Riley H.

I know what you are thinking, how could the last two possibly have a skeleton?  Well that is my only criteria, they can pick whichever character they want, but it HAS to have a skeleton.

Coloring the world

To continue with Art 1's colored pencil projects they then had to pick a picture out of my old magazines and calendars and they had to draw it in pencil and the color it with colored pencil.

 To make it a little bit more challenging, I take away the color black.  This of course creates some of the biggest uproars.  But in the end I love to see what colors they put together to make their darker colors without using black.  It is also a great lead into our impressionism unit which is next, and since they didn't use black I think that is a great way to learn to layer color.

Yeva S.

Mykah W.

Ben S.

Malary M.

Ali R.

Mikayla R.

Hawa M.

Brady B.

Willie H.

Morgan B.

Sierra A.

Riley H.

Blue dog??

Last week Art 1 started their colored pencil unit.  Now we didn't use George Rodrigue's "blue dog", but we did have a couple of short colored pencil lessons and then I did have them draw a blue dog that can be found on the website Drawspace.com.

I liked this lesson because it built up color, showed them how to apply texture and used very little black.  If you are looking for the lesson it is here http://www.drawspace.com/lessons/view/y02 .    If you haven't discovered drawspace, it is a great site for short lessons that allow kids to work and learn at their own pace.  I don't use it all the time, but I do have a few lessons that I really like from there.  I think I will be keeping this one for future use.

Here are a couple of my favorites that the students created.

Alasia J.

Mykah W.

I just love how it was the same lesson, but both girls got fairly different dogs out of the image.

Photo changes

I have been wanting to teach my students about photography for several years.  I started this year by teaching them the basics of a DSLR camera, and I have given them some assignments.  However, they have not been very good about getting those images in on time, so I had to make changes and up the challenge for them.

This semester I am requiring them to take a picture a week.  I would love to make it one a day, and that might still happen as we get closer to the end of the year, but for right now we are trying this.  Last semester I would give them an assignment that had anywhere from 2-6 pictures required and that seemed like a lot to ask every 3 weeks.  So this time I am giving them a photography assignment on monday and I am requiring that it is taken and uploaded to their blog by the following monday.

I had the first one due this monday and I got a better response than I did last semester, but we will see how that energy stays over the next couple of months.\

The first photo was "Winter".

Danica H.

Karly N.

Maggie H.

Talia P.

These were taken awhile ago, but I forgot to show them.  This was where they had to take pictures of food.

KaSandra K.

Maggie H.

Marcelle W.

Ryan S.

Sydney Hau.

Talia P.

Woven together

My Art 3 class was given the task of taking animals and turning them into woven strips.  I have done this lesson a few times and I am not sure where I first saw it, but it is one I like because it makes them stop and think about the contour of every line on an animal.

Chad V.

Kamber L.

Mariah B.

Sammy K.

Sparking Art History

In South Dakota all of our classes are required to do some sort of speech or presentation.  In the past i have always had my Art 1 students give a presentation about an artist from these three chapters in our books.  I used to have all of the questions I wanted them to answer and they just had to fill those in and then also give us a short bio on the artist.  They then put that info into powerpoint or prezi and stood in front of us and gave us the bio (which you hope was short and not copied from wikipedia) and the answers to the questions that I had asked.

 Sounds fun and full of higher level thinking right?  Wrong, it was sooooo boring and I just knew I couldn't handle it another year.  Also I had to ask what were they learning.  I pretty much had given them everything they needed.

 So this year I decided to wipe the slate clean, literally.  I took the artists that I wanted them to present about and put them into an empty googledoc.  I gave them the artist, title of the work that I wanted them to look up, and the year of that work and the picture of the work.  That was it.  I had them draw for an artist and they had to then come up with 10 questions about the artist or the work of art that I presented or some sort of combination between the two.  I then told them that they could present their info to us in any way that they wanted.  Some have created games, some are just going to do a standard powerpoint, some are creating a quick draw and some are making a multiple choice guessing game.  I told them to teach us the way they wish I would teach them.  Basically I asked them to help me find interesting ways of teaching Art History.

We start presenting tomorrow so I will let you know then how things go.  I am excited to see how this works.