Sunday, February 10, 2013

High School Photography Unit part 1

If you're an old man like me you might remember having a photography lab in high school full of wonderful chemicals that made your hands all stinky. The days of over exposed paper and making out with your boy/girlfriend in the darkroom is long gone. Love it or hate it, digital photography has made the process easier to teach, or has it...

The downside to digital photography as my wife states has created lazy photographers. There isn't that set limit of 12, 24, or 36 shots on a roll, therefore you don't really have to think about composition. In my experience, I found this to be true. Many people think that just because they have a nice camera qualifies them as photographer.

For this assignment I asked students to turn-in 2 compositions of each theme: Close-Up Portrait, Portrait, Stop Action, Light, and a Freeze Scene (drama class inspired). Prior to releasing the kids on their own we spent a couple of days covering all the jargon and rule of thirds...did the concepts sink in, a little.  

Example: Close-up Portrait
Example: Portrait
Example: Light
Example: Stop Action
Example: Freeze Scene

Below is Student work


























Mola Project reprise 7th grade Art

It has been a year and some change since I last taught the paper mola project and seeing that I'm teaching 7th grade again it was time to bust out an oldie but goodie. For some reason several art teachers have pinned and re-pinned this project on pinterest.com. Thank you for liking the idea.

If you would like to see the original post from 2011 click here it describes the process and lists vocabulary for your students.

In this post I broke down the sheets so you can see the layers. Enjoy.

















Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Newspaper paintings high school art project

Painting and drawing on book pages, in books and on pages of a newspaper seems to be the rage the past couple of years if not decade. I tried not to give it but some art teachers out there have really done a nice job with their students. One art teacher, Miriam on her blog arteascuola has posted some fine examples. I asked myself what could I add to this trend, not much other than the effect of using Arabic newspapers as the canvas (note: some of the newspaper stories mention the recent protests and violence going on in the country at the moment.)

The students worked from photos they shot during our current photography unit. Photos coming soon.


adding lines
inking