Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Grade 7 & 8 Mixed Media project Middle School Art

If you are looking for a multi-learning objective project to satisfy all your power standards to appease your folks in the central office so they can check it off and send it to the state auditor, this might be your bag of tricks. 

You can hit drawing, printmaking, design, etc. with this project. I came up with this idea because a couple of teacher before me was really into linocuts and there are truckloads of battleship linoleum stashed in the closet. Also in the closet were trays of square tiles. I thought why not make a cocktail of the two. I asked the woodshop folks to cut me masonite pieces for our base of the project. 

Supplies: Masonite, erasers, battleship linoleum, markers, gouge, brayer, silicone (hot glue doesn't work well), paper, pencil, acrylic paint, brushes.


Step 1: Introduce contour drawing. The students spent one class making 4 drawings of various hand positions. See student outcomes:









Step 2: The student will choose one drawing and transfer it to the linoleum. Students tend to draw small, encourage them to draw larger. Once teacher and student are both satisfied, trace lines with a marker – this is to help them when they cut.


Step 3: Begin cutting with gouge. I would strongly encourage having the student draw the lines  (patterns) on the lino block before they cut. Also best if used a no. 2 cutter. 


Step 4: Paint masonite board.


Step 5: Create and carve a design on the face of an eraser. Use flat brush to apply acrylic paint to the eraser – make sure the paint doesn’t clog the lines. Stamp the dried masonite board.  


Step 6: Use the silicone to adhere the lino block to the masonite board. The use a brayer to ink/paint a color onto the lino block.  
    

Step 7: Add tiles. In total this project will take 4 x 50 minute sessions. 

Student outcomes: 








Tuesday, February 18, 2020

MS Junk Food Collage project


Friday, February 7, 2020

Grade 6 Semester 1 Art projects, Middle School Art

One of the lowlights of teaching at my current school is the lack of contact time I have with my Grade 6 classes. I meet with them on average of 70 minutes/week for a semester (18 WEEKS) equaling about 1.5 classes considering I'm on a 12 day rotation schedule... In Egypt my contact time with Grade 6 was either 180 minutes/week for a semester or 90 minutes a week for a year. But then again the Grade 6 in Egypt was around 15 students because that was size of the entire Grade 6...our current Grade 6 had around 90 students. It's all about the numbers.

Below are examples of 4 of the 6 projects we did in a semester.
1. Oil Pastel mood self portraits (color mixing/theory/texture/lines)
2. Printmaking - insect linocuts 
3. Color Pencil fruit drawing (geometric shapes/color mixing/theory)
4. Drawing eyes and mouths (rendering/value/shading)
5. Ceramics (coil/slab/glazing) NOT PICTURED
6. Digital Photography (rules of thiirds/lines/texture) NOT PICTURED

Selected student outcomes (meets standards examples and exemplary examples) :