Your perspective is NOT a dream

I wanted my Art 2 students to do something with perspective, but that all seemed too easy.  So to add a layer of difficulty or interest (however you want to spin it) to the project, I asked them to incorporate surrealism.  To up the level even more, I had them spin for the type of perspective that they needed to create.  The catagories were; Bird's eye, Fish eye, Worm's view, 3Pt., 2Pt., and 1Pt.

After they spun for their perspective type then I let them do anything they wanted to create a surrealistic image.

Emily A.

Paige Q.

Aboriginal inspiration

I wanted to bring in some cultural projects to my advanced classes.  So after searching for a little while I decided to check out the art of Australian Aboriginal people.  I showed several works of art and a few youtube videos of how this art is made before the students started their own projects.  We learned that there is no set way of creating this art and that it is actually started really different from what I thought it would have been done.  See even I learned something.

Brock N.

Morgan L.

Sommer B.

Tunnel vision

I wanted to do something with paper sculptures in my Art 2 class.  I wasn't sure what until I stumbled onto an old post about tunnel books.  I thought that was the perfect lesson to incorporate paper and images all into one.  I left this lesson a little open-ended since I let them choose between a real book and using paper with accordian folds on the sides to prop it open.  For a few students it was really hard to visualize how to pull their chosen images apart so that they could make a flat image go 3D, but in the end I think the results were quite interesting.

Abbie B.

Emily H.

John S.

Jonah L. 

Laura L.

Mercedes F.

Remington L.

Sommer B.

Tearing up the art scene

Since their legacy ceiling tiles, see yesterday's post, took my Art 3 class so long to complete I knew I had to throw a fairly quick assignment at them to help finish out the quarter.  So I turned to torn paper images.  They could use anything from magazines to construction paper to textured paper that they made, I didn't care.

The only rule was that they could not use scissors, they had to tear all of the paper that they needed and then glue it down with either a water/elmers solution or modge podge.

Emily H.

Kayla E.

Nikole K.

Leaving a legacy?

I have been letting kids paint ceiling tiles for 17 years now.  So needless to say the hallways of the building are getting quite full.

That being said, I like usual, gave the option for my Art 3 students last semester to paint their senior ceiling tiles.  It wasn't until the project was taking them forever this year that I asked why, and their answer was that they wanted to make sure that they were perfect since it would be the legacy that they were leaving behind.  It turns out some of them have been thinking about what they were going to paint on their ceiling tile for years.

I guess I never really knew how much of an impact these tiles had on these kids, but it is good to know that they wanted to take them seriously and continue to make an impact on future generations.

Bridget B.

Jacob L.

Jaikob D.

Mikayla R.

Nikole K.

Playing with our paint

I love to make art messy, fun and really beautiful at the same time.  Cause let's face it, if you are getting messy you are usually having fun and if you are having fun the artwork shows it.

So for this project my Art 2 students needed to paint an animal in watercolor and then either drip or splash or do a little of both around the animal.  The animals did not need to be normal color and so this left them a pretty wide open category.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Abbie B.

Emily H.

John S.

Micah A.

Paige Q. 

Sommer B.

Large Colorful Selfies

I find it extremely amazing that all of these kids can stop and take constant selfies, but then the second you ask them to draw one of them they have a cow!  You would think a generation like this one who loves to take their own picture (and tons of them) (all of the time, sometimes) would be thrilled with the idea of then drawing one of their favorite shots of themselves.  I don't get it.   All of a sudden they become embarrassed of these selfies, of course they sent the image out to thousands on snapchat and other sites, but to draw it on a large scale scene is mortifying.

  Of course like any good art teacher I tell them to get over it and draw themselves.

For this particular project I have them upload one of their favorite selfies into photoshop and then they have to put it under the cutout filter in the filter gallery.  After they have selected that, I then have them play with the different levels and the intensity of the cuts and all of that until they have a picture that looks like them with a bare minimum of at least 5 layers.  If they had their way they would do as little as possible.  I try to push them farther.

Then I tell them they can go and play with either the hue/saturation options or they can try color balance to see what they would look like if they changed their coloring.  When it comes to the final product I don't care what colors they use, as long as they look good together.

When they finish playing in photoshop I have them print it out and then draw it on an 18x24 sheet of tagboard.  Some of them will grid it and other will freehand it, I have no problem with either method.

Once all of the cutout areas are drawn they they color it in with oil pastels.  We have learned that if you apply baby oil with qtips over oil pastels it fills in the spaces and smoothes out the coloring with less waste on the pastels themselves.

Abbie B.

Remington L.

Sommer B.

Jack G.