Fantastic Apples

After exploring realistic color with colored pencils, I wanted to give my high school artists a chance to get a little more creative. I printed out black and white images of apples and had them draw them in color. They were allowed to make the apples any colors they wanted. Here are the first three finished ones:

Colored Pencil Veggies and Pooh

My high school students started working with color this semester, or more exactly, colored pencils. We started off making a color wheel to understand a little color theory. Then they got to work using their drawing skills to draw a bell pepper. These are some really nice ones:

Expressionist Pastel Drawings Have Feeling

Inspired by a fellow art instructor here at Ribét - thank you Mr. Impert! - I taught a mini-lesson on Expressionism to my high school art class. We looked at Van Gogh, Munch, Pollock, and other Expressionists to see how the line quality, color, and feeling differed from more constrained and realistic paintings. Then the students chose from magazine images and were instructed to make an expressionistic drawing inspired by the photo. Here are some of the amazing results:

Beginning Drawing Still Lifes Are Awesome!

This year my drawing students are not allowed to rub and blend their pencil to do shading. They must use cross-hatching and other line work to show the different values in their drawings. After only a few weeks of learning drawing these total beginners belted out these beauties! I love how each one really shows the hand of the individual artist. Take a look:

One-Point Perspective in the Hallways

One of the concepts we want our middle and high school art students to learn in the beginning classes is perspective. This can be a tough one for even the best artist to master. For this concept I had them take their art pads into the hallways and draw what they saw in one-point perspective. To prepare them I talked about the horizon line (always at eye-level), the vanishing point (where you are on the horizon line), and how all lines moving away from you in space converge on the vanishing point. They also had to keep in mind that any line that is perpendicular to the viewer will not be effected by perspective.

I had them start by drawing the far wall in the hallway (usually with the doorway to the staircase), then find their vanishing point. After that they could draw in the information on the ceiling, floor and side walls. I did end up helping with some of the drawing until they got the idea, but many of them came out pretty well!

Here are some great examples:

The Joys of Painting Fruit

In a color scale exercise, my middle and high school students learned the value of using a color's complement (red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple) instead of black to create different values and neutralize a color. To practice this, I gave each one of them a handout with photos of 3 fruits, each with a good light source and shadow:

I instructed them to divide their paper into 4 sections, and paint a fruit in each one. They would start with using just black and white (and mixing to make gray) for the first one, choosing any fruit they would like. The next three squares they would use each of the fruit one time, and the following paints in any arrangement they liked on the paper. 1) blue and orange (and white), 2) red and green (and white), and 3) yellow and purple (and white). Here are some of the best ones. I am really impressed with how well they did!

High School student Ashley

High School student Beam

Color Theory for Everyone!

So I've started teaching my middle and high school students about color and paint. Their first task was to paint in a color wheel with tints and shades. They have a full range of colors in their art packets but I only allowed them to use red, yellow, blue, black, and white for their color wheels.

Once they figured out how to mix the paint, I wanted them to create an artwork utilizing warm and cool color palettes. I looked around online for ideas and I loved this one posted by Arte a Scuola (thank you!!). I had them choose 5 items from a bunch of containers I set up in the classroom and they could arrange them any way they wanted to on the page.

The next step was to break up the page with lines going through the objects. Each shape would need to be next to a different color than itself. They could choose warm colors for the background and cool colors for the objects, or vice versa. After they finished painting they went over their lines with black sharpie.

Even with such specific rules I still think there is beautiful diversity in the results:

High School student Marcus - this one is exceptional!!

High School student Katie 

Middle and High School Students Work with Line

A while back, at the beginning of the semester, I wanted to focus on the element of Line with my HS and MS students. The assignment was to make a collage out of two colors using only lines. They were allowed to use any two colors they chose. Here are some of the best ones.

High School Student Ashley - she used 3 colors and I think it was a good choice!

High School Student Murat