Friday, March 27, 2015

"Pose"terized self

Have you ever watched how often your students stop and take selfies?  I have a few that do it all of the time.  How many pictures of yourself do you really need?

Anyways, I decided to make them use one of those selfies and turn it into an art project.  I have them pick one (some have a hard time with this step) and open in in photoshop.  Once in photoshop they need to posterize themselves.  Now if you've never done this, it can be a heck of a process.  I would explain it, but I had to go find a you tube video (and ask the computer teacher) to figure out how to do it, and I think you can find those resources yourself.

Now that they have themselves posterized, have them print it so that they can see the different levels of color that will appear on their picture.  I then had them focus on the shapes that the different layers of color make in order to draw themselves.  I had them do this on an 18x24 paper so that they get really large and almost uncomfortable with the size of themselves.  After they draw the different layers I have them color in the picture with oil pastels and baby oil.

 If you haven't learned about the baby oil/oil pastels trick you are missing out.  It is amazing how easy it is to dip q-tips into baby oil and then run it over the color to help smooth out the oil pastels.  It actually extends the life of your oil pastels because you don't need to use as much.

Brooke A.

Eli H.

Emily H.

Mikayla R.

Paige Q.

Sierra A.

Yeva S.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Animals in cubism

Who doesn't love studying the cubist artists?  Picasso, Braque, Duchamp and Hockney are some of the greatest artists of this field.  We started by looking at Hockney and how he used photography to create a modern cubism style.  So I had them take cameras and using 15 images they had to piece together a work of art in the style of David Hockney photography projects.
Connor K. 

Jacob G. 
After working with cameras and computers, we switched gears and moved on to working with cubism and oil pastels.  I tried something new this year, you know us art teachers can never do the same project year after year.  So this year I had them find the image of an animal online, had them copy it and paste it into a word document and blow the image up as large as they could, and then hit print.  I then had them lay the image over a 12x12 piece of paper and had them trace it with a pen.  We found the tracing worked easier if you put a magazine under the project.  After they traced the image I had them use a pencil to find the indented lines that the tracing had created in the paper under their copy.  Then I had them shift the copied image and made them trace it again.  Again they found the indented lines and then I had them move it again and do the tracing process all over again.  We found that three tracings was plenty.

After they had found all of the indented lines, I had them break up the background with whatever lines they wanted to use.  I then had them color each area with gradation color like the cubist artists used.  We used oil pastels and the majority of them used baby oil and qtips to help smooth out the color when they were done.


Nikole K.

Heidi S.

Abby K.

Holly S.
These are the best examples, but we did learn that you have to be careful how you move or rotate the image as to not get it too busy in the middle.

Also, some of them had to print the picture twice, because they would trace so hard with the pen that they would pop holes into the copied paper.


Monday, March 23, 2015

We Are the Champions!

Some of the team with myself and the Championship trophy
I need to give a big Congratulations to my students on their State A Visual Arts Championship win this past saturday.  This was the first EVER state art competition and to walk away with the title has been a pretty amazing experience.  I have some amazing students and I am so proud of them and all of their hard work.

Drea Boer - 3rd place Colored Drawing
Drea B. - right
 

Kamber L. - watercolor

Kamber L. - Acrylic Painting

Kelsey C. - 1st in Photography

Malary M. - Crafts

Sammy K. - 1st in Multimedia/Graphic Design

Sammy's 1st place Thriller video


Sydney H. - 1st place in 3D 
Octomug - 1st place in 3D and "Best of Show"
Sydney and myself with her Best of Show Award

Sydney H. - 2nd in Drawing

Sydney H. - 2nd in Drawing



Yeva S. -1st in Printmaking

Yeva S. - 1st in Printmaking

Yeva S. - Mixed Media
They did an amazing job and I am so proud of them.  Thanks to all that have sent congratulations.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Photography in the new year

I know it is March, but here are some of the best from our photography assignments for the 3rd quarter.

Jack G. - shadow photo

Sammy K. - bird's eye view

Eli H. - Close up

Hannah S. - Leading lines

Riley H. - Shadow

Alli H. - Winter

Sammy K. - Winter

Monday, March 9, 2015

Time flies when art is happening...

So I see it has been forever since I have talked about what my advanced classes are doing.  So I am sorry if this is a really long post, but I thought I would just give a little bit of everything.  If you want to see more examples I will have them on my website https://dewittart.shutterfly.com/ in the Art 2 and Art 3 classes.

Alasia J. - The minions meet Munch's "Scream"
 So here are a few examples from Art 2.  They have been working on drawing pos/neg images and mixing famous works of art with modern movies/book characters.
Alex - Lego movie moves in on Davinci's "Last Supper"

Emily H. - An m&m man eats humans.

Mikayla R. - Monkey mama with her negative baby image

Yeva S. - The "Notebook" meets Monet's waterlilies.
Art 3 has also been working with famous works of art, but they had to take a famous work of art from one artist and recreate it with the style of another artist.  They have also been working on pop-up pop art and large realistic drawings that focused on a reflection or foreshortening.

Brooke K. - Art in another style

Erin S. - pop up cat

Sydney Hag. - reflection drawing

Jozlynn P. - Foreshortening drawing

Kamber L. - Pop up pop art

Malary M. - Miss Piggy pop up

Marcelle W. - reflection drawing

Sammy K. - Monet meets Lichtenstein