Sorry for so many posts

I know that this will add another post, but I thought I should send a short apology for not keeping this up, but our weather here has been horrible.  We have had so many late starts and early dismissals over the last few weeks that it is not only taking me forever to get things done, but also my students.  Hopefully we will have some improved weather so we can get some project going.

I am excited about what we have going on right now.  Art 1 is doing a new watercolor project that I found on Pinterest.  Art 2 is working with sticky or messy subjects and Art 3 is learning to deal with new perspectives.  So we are keeping really busy and I hope to show you more artwork soon.

Here are some of the practice watercolor projects that Art 1 has been doing.

Mrs. DeWitt's sample

Brooke K.

Yeva S.

Dylan B.

Carter H.

Mikayla R.

Find the curves and lines

For this week's photography assignment, I challenged my students to find curves and/or lines in the world around them.  I was very surprised by what some of them turned in.

Alli H.

Sydney Hau.

Karly N.

Kelsey C.

Lexi B.

Maggie H.

Kenzie R.

Sammy K.

Moving through art

So the first assignment after Christmas for my Art 3 class was the theme of movement.  Either their project had to have movement in it or they needed to use movement to create it.  I was really surprised by all of the different ways my students interpreted the theme.  I have even more that I would love to show you, but they have not posted yet.

Brandon S. - Axe hitting a target

Brooke O. - Windmill

Jon C. - Charcoal sketch

Kamber L. - Gears out of Clay

Kenzie S. - Finger paint

Sabrina L. - Marker

Mariah B. - Angel falling in pencil/charcoal

Sammy K. - Captain America in paint splatter

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.