What happens when you try...

As a teacher we always will have to wonder what we did different this year?  Why did I teach the exact same material, but this year I got better results.  Was it me?  Did I have more enthusiasm?  Did I explain something better than I thought I usually do?  Did I forget something last year?  Or do I just have better art students this year?

I would like to think that it is all me, and that I had something to do with the fact that we just produced some much better colored pencil drawings this year.  But...I think I just have an amazing group of students this year.  Of course I will still take the credit for these wonderful 6 x 6 drawings of layered color.

Annalicia B.

Kimi K.

Autumn J.

Grace S.

Wobbly the dog

After I introduce how to layer color with colored pencils, this little activity I found online is a great way to solidify what I have just tried to teach them.  His name is Wobby and he is a drawspace lesson that I found years ago.  He uses about 24 colors in a variety of ways and walks each student through the process step by step.

Damaris W.

Grace S.

A little focus goes a long ways

I know I have talked about how to do this technique in previous years blogs.  I call it the John Lebeouf technique since that is the art teacher who taught it to me.  It is still one of my favorites to teach because it gives students that are not always successful at drawing an opportunity to find some confidence and shine.  So even though we were behind schedule I made sure we made time to get this in.  And actually it worked perfect to do it right after Christmas when they were still struggling to come back from break.  All they had to do was concentrate about a few dots and then connect them.

Damaris W.

Andrew C.

Cassie H.

Can you grid yourself?

I feel like a failing Art teacher.  I realized the other day that I had been forgetting to take photos of what Art 1 had been doing and then posting them here and on my website.  So to all parents of Art 1 students, I apologize.  I will try to do better.

SO please forgive some of these are old assignments.  This one happened before Christmas.

To continue working on our people unit, I had the students bring in self portraits, most of which they had on their phones, and print them off.  From there they had to grid their printed image and inlarge it onto another sheet of paper.  I think they came out pretty amazing considering most students hate to draw themselves.

Cassie H.

Damaris W.

Kaitlyn R.

Straight up

So first quarter we looked at horizontal lines in photography so it is only natural that for second quarter we would have to look at vertical lines.  Not sure why this one was harder, but I did not have as many successful student images this go round as I did the first.

Jonah L.

Micah A.