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:

Modigliani Inspired Self Portraits

My middle school students worked hard on their oral presentations right before finals, so I wanted to give them art project that was engaging and fun, but also not "super challenge" as my 5-year-old would say. We looked at portraits by Modigliani and found that his style had particular traits: necks are elongated, faces are oval, eyes are almond-shaped, and noses are sometimes twisted. We used Photo Booth on my Mac to take a picture of each student which I then printed out in black and white. Students used these pictures for reference and crossed them with Modigliani's style for their final projects. They had a great time using oil pastel and exaggerating their features!

Aram

Danila

Watts Towers Field Trip - A Great Time For All!

A view of the base of the towers and decorative surrounding wall.

In November we took the 3-5 graders to see the Watts Towers. This was one of my favorite field trip destinations when I was in elementary - I think we went every year or so it seems. Since then things have gotten even better. They have added on an art gallery and a teaching studio. The tour includes a video about the artist who built them by hand, Simon Rodia, a tour of the towers, a tour of the gallery, and an art activity let by a highly qualified art educator. We had 35 kids and I was impressed at how he held their attention as he modeled each step of the printmaking process they were going to do.

On the tour.

Educator taking questions from our curious students.

Work in progress.

After the print the students wait patiently.

Here are some of the wonderful finished prints by our students:

Our art board at school.

Middle School Surrealist "Handscapes"

For this project I showed my students videos about Dalí. They learned how he was influenced by his dreams and subconscious. They learned that many of the anthropomorphic forms in his paintings that resemble large rocks are based on rocks he actually saw in the landscape where he spent much of his childhood.

For the assignment they used their hands in a similar way that Dalí used the rocks - they drew them and then changed them into something else while still allowing them to be hand like.

Here are the terrific results:

Our board!

Afrem

Aram

Danila

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:

Directed Drawing Turkeys!

I really never do directed drawing lessons, but we were done with our unit and I didn't want to start anything new before the thanksgiving holiday week, so I looked up some turkey drawing lessons and found this one to do with my first graders. They drew directly with Sharpies so that they couldn't erase or have to retrace their lines then used oil pastels to color them in. They loved it and their drawings came out so great! Thanks to Art Projects for Kids for posting!

Andy Warhol Inspired Contour and Color Studies Project

My middle school artists learned about Andy Warhol's life and artwork. They found him to be fascinating, especially how he was so shy but became so famous. They were interested in his strange illness, how he stayed in bed for a long time as a child, and how he at one time owned 26 cats all named "Sam". They did have a hard time understanding how drawing a picture of a soup can constitutes "art", but then they did their own drawing of packaged and manmade objects, and I think related a little better to his work.

For their projects they had to choose 4 objects that they owned or used, divide their drawing paper into 4 rectangles, and then draw one object in each rectangle using the contour drawing skills they had just learned. Once they finished drawing they outlined with Sharpie.

I talked to them about color schemes, and they were to apply the following 4 schemes to their drawing, one in each of the rectangles, but in any order they desired: 1) primary colors, 2) secondary colors, 3) complementary colors, and 4) analogous colors. They used colored pencils to complete them. I think they turned out fantastic!

Mason

Jason

Juian

Danila

Afrem

Peter

Nicole

Piya

Solaris

Taylor

Izzie

Our beautiful board!

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:

Water Safety Poster Contest

All my elementary and middle school students are participating this year in California's annual Water Safety Poster contest (see details here). After a lesson on some important things to know about water safety, here are the results! I hope at least one of my students gets their artwork in the annual calendar.

Middle School:

Drawing With Scissors - Matisse Name Collages

For our first project this year I taught my middle school art class about Henri Matisse and his collages. Matisse was a prolific painter whose work is well known. Later in his life he was confined to a wheelchair and was unable to stand and paint. He started to "draw with scissors", making beautiful collages with the help of assistants.

My students made their own collages combining their names with three or more objects that describe them using construction paper. When they were finished we mounted them on a colored background frame and then on black foam core. Thanks to incredibleart.org for the inspiring lesson plan - They turned out great!