Paul Klee Inspired Cities

The 6th grade recently completed a city scape painting in the style of the artist Paul Klee. Pictured above is his painting, Kingdom and the Sun. The students observed his painting and had a gallery discussion about how he used geometric shapes and learned that his work was classified as cubism.

To create their own Kingdom and the Sun, my students created a pre planning paper.  On this paper the students wrote a few guided notes about Paul Klee and his life and they also did a presketch of their painting. The students were also challenged to choose a color theme and stick to it for their painting. This proves that the students really do understand the difference between warm and cool color families as well as what the primary and secondary colors are.

Next, the students drew, in pencil, the outline of their city, using geometric shapes, on a piece of recycled book paper. Then, the students painted very carefully the buildings they drew. Lastly, the students traced over their pencil lines with a black marker to create bolds outlines.

Negative Silhouettes

The students in 6th grade have been practicing their painting skills for over a month now and I feel that their efforts are really shinning! For this project, the students learned about negative silhouettes. They played games to identify silhouettes and created their own negative space silhouette by cutting out a magazine image, tracing around it, and then painting in a color field around the image. The students were instructed to choose warm or cool colors to complete their projects, and they did a fantastic job doing just that.

American Gothic.

This week the students in my digital art class and going to be studying Grant Wood and his painting American Gothic.

The students are going to use pixlr.com in order to recreate the painting into an interersting or silly spoof. I can not wait to see the results!

Contour Line Portraits

My 7th grade digital art class has been working on creating contour line self portraits this week. It has been difficult to find free software for the students to use, as my school does not have any Adobe programs, but I did find a pretty great site called pixlr. In pixlr you can accomplish a lot of the same processes that you might use in Photoshop.

The students and I learned about cropping, rotating, color changing, and focal blurs last week. This week I had them focus on taking a self portrait, adding a layer, and drawing on that layer with the sketch tool in order to create a contour line portrait. The results are pretty great!

This project came out so great because my students had computer mice to use thanks to a grant for my art room. In the beginning of the year I wrote a Donor's Choose grant and asked for a class set of computer mice. Friends, family and strangers all donoated to the cause and now my students can create awesome, inspiring artwork with the right tools!

6th Grade Watercolor Tone Grids

The 6th grade has been experimenting with watercolor and how to mix tones, tints, and shades. With their mixed colors, the students are filling in a grid, using great patience and care. This lesson teaches the art students how to mix colors neatly and clearly as well as how to use fine motor control with their painting process. I love the outcome so far...and the students are SO focused!

6th Grade Color Wheels

Today the 6th grade began painting their own color wheels. This lesson is great because it shows students how the colors are placed on the color wheel as well as how to use fine control of their paint brushes in making two different values of one color.

We viewed a great video of an artist painting trees and how he used value [going from light to dark] to create depth in his painting. The students learned to make two value shades of a paint color today on their color wheel. They will use this skill of value painting to create depth in their own projects over and over again in the next few weeks as we continue our current unit; "Paint like a Pro!"

Andy Goldsworthy

Last Friday my students and I discussed the sculpture artist Andy Goldsworthy. He is British and works entirely with natural objects. We viewed a great video called Rivers and Tides that showed how Andy made his sculptures and also observed some of his work on his website. The students thought that his art was hard to make and tedious, but fun to look at. They loved the ice sculptures and the floating leaves the most.

One student made a great observation by saying that all of his art materials were free! [he just had to hunt them down and gathering them in nature]

Visuals of a 6th grade and 7th grade student reactions:



Sketchbook Update

My middle school students have been working so hard on their sketching! The first five minutes of every class is dedicated to sketching. It is either an observational sketch [something placed on their table to draw] or a challenge! Here are some of the students sketchbooks in progress.

Gesture & Figure Drawing

The 6th grade has been leanring about gesture drawing. On Thursday of last week, the students got to read about gesture drawing and then we able to model in front of the class and draw in that style. It was a lot of fun as we had students stand on a table and pose for 45 seconds in front of the class.

The 6th grade learned that gesture drawing is quick, has very little details, shows a body in a pose, and uses broad swift strokes. After practicing gesture drawing, the students then went on a magazine hunt. In the magazines the students had to find one figure in motion and cut it out. After they cut it out, they had to redraw the body in motion, using the gesture drawing skills they just practiced and then the value scales they learned to color in the bodies. The results have been awesome!

Discovering Typography

My 7th grade students have been studying typography the last few days. I am always inspired by modern type and I thought that my students might be too. We watched a video that introduced the students to typography and how to use tracing paper, magazines and a nice sharp pencil to recreate typography in a "cloud" design. This exercise was a precursor to their next project which is a magazine lay out page. I am excited about the results to this project, I can't wait to see what they create for a magazine page.



Aaron De La Cruz

Every Friday my students and I explore a new artist. This past Friday the students and I watched a short video of Aaron De La Cruz painting a mural. The students and I talked about how the artist uses thick, black lines to create murals. My students also wrote in their sketchbooks a reflection about Aaron De La Cruz by either responding with a sentence or drawing a picture. The most exciting part of the artist study was when my students made the connection between Aaron's line and the types of lines they are  currently using to complete their Van Gogh Style landscapes!

Here are two student examples of the Van Gogh style line landscapes that we are working on.