Grade 8 Shoe Drawings Middle Schol Art

First project of the school year. 

Project:
Shoe drawings.
Student will draw three different shoes.
Each shoe will use one of the three different drawing medium (6B pencil for rendering, Color Pencils for color mixing and rendering and Black pen for texture).
Each shoe will be drawn from a different points of view.

Step1:
Warm-up drawing exercise (rendering, texture, and color theory)
a. B&W value scale and shape rending. (6B Pencil)
b. Color swatches, blending, and rendering objects. (Color Pencils)
c. Creating texture swatches. (micro Pen)

Step 2:
Shoe drawings.
1. You will be given a 9"x 18" paper. Use a ruler to divide into three sections. Each section will be 6" x 9"
2. You will place one shoe at a time in front of you and draw it first with a pencil. You will use a variety of shoes; one will be yours and the other two will be from your peers in class.
3. One shoe will be done using a pencil. You will be expected to render the object by creating several different values of gray.
4.One shoe will be done using a pen. The emphasis will be on lines and texture.
5. One shoe will be done using color pencils. The emphasis will be on rending, mixing colors and using complementary colors.

Supplies:
Shoe, paper, drawing pencil, color pencils, ink pen, eraser, and ruler.

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

Middle School Art-color pencil junk food still lifes.

Every once in awhile, there is a surge to introduce healthy food at your school's canteen...it makes sense on many levels. Ideally we want to raise awareness and advocate for healthy eating and create less waste with packaging. Sadly, the idea falls dead to the will of our school's and perhaps country's cravings for packaged processed synthetic material we stuff into our bellies.

During open house I displayed the junk food drawings, one parent commented that it was cool the kids were drawing food they eat and not "old time-y still lifes of fruits and vegetables!" One of the buzz ideas floating around education is to make teaching relevant to the child's life. Here in Egypt there are little shops selling junk food every few meters...you can't walk far without tripping over boxes of chips stacked outside of one. It is relevant for sure-one only needs to look at the spike in diabetes and other diseases caused by what we subject our bodies to.

High School Drawing assignments: Faces

In the process of developing drawing skills in addition to learning how to see and compose, We reviewed and learned basic picture taking skills (rules of thirds, cropping, angles, etc.). I sent my students outside to take photographs of each other for the project. 

The drawing skills they were going to review/learn were color pencil techniques (along with color theory), rendering with a 6B pencil, and brush and ink. 

The results are below. 

1. Make a color wheel and demonstrate shading with color

2. Make value scale with pencil and render shapes.

Student work in progress.

Making different values with brush, ink, and water.

Final Projects

Quick teacher example.

Grade 7 Art: Color pencils and 1 point perspective.

Grade 7 started off the year with a lesson on color theory, specifically mixing colors to create different hues, values, shades, and tones. First we reviewed Primary, Secondary, and Intermediate colors via making swatches and a color wheel. On the reverse side of the paper students drew shapes and rendered them using WARM, COOL, and COMPLIMENTARY COLOR schemes.

Color Wheel and Primary, Secondary, and Intermediate color swatches.

8 Swatches of mixing 2 or more colors together (student choice) to explore. 4 sets of shapes rendered using: Gray, Warm, Cool and Complimentary colors.

Applying color theory and rendering skills into a 1 point perspective drawing.

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.