Grade 8 line drawing with color pencils

A simple project with nice results. Just put a flower with leaves and stem in an old pasta jar, fill it with water and you're ready to go. Have the students add a baseline through the jar and have them observe that it changes when looking at it through glass it water. Make the initial drawing with a pencil on black construction paper then add white lines on top. Add two other colors (generally a complimentary scheme works better than an analogous one) that lay next to each other to give lines and composition energy.

Beginning Art self portraits distorted.

It is customary for my classes to start and end the year with self-portraits. Beginning art had to chop up their photos into six shapes and reassemble with space between the shape and slightly off, sort of like a broken mirror...maybe I'll do that project next year and hope I don't get 7 years bad luck.

Color pencils it was. Most students were besides themselves at the thought of blending 2-3 colors. They had a choice for skin color and a few brave souls dared to be different.

Grade 8 block reduction prints.

If you want to check out my lino block reduction prints and how to guide from last year you can click on this link:  http://schutzart.blogspot.com/2011/10/block-reduction-printmaking-with-grade.html

Not much else to say except this project focused on color and shape instead of representation.

Lightbulb ink drawings high school

The electrician at school has an amazing colored lightbulb collection hanging on the walls of his workshop. I've been eyeing them for a long time. It was time for my beginning art class to explore their potential as overlapping objects. Ink isn't the easiest medium to control and isn't very forgiving if you make an error. One of the objectives was to create different values of a color by using water to dilute the ink. You might to check out some Raymond Pettibon colored ink drawings.

Dancing

Please take a look below at the various dance drawings, painting, and photos. You are going to create a composition of figures engaged in the act of dancing. I will leave it to you to decide the poses for your figures. You should have the minimum of 3 dancers all in different poses.

I will discuss the materials and process in class by making an example. This page is simply to get you brainstorming by showing you different dance positions and how other artists made their compositions.