Thursday, October 15, 2015

Materials Based Portrait Presentation

Today in class, 8th graders learned about artists whose work will influence our new project. Check out the Prezi created for this project below. *Project inspired by the work of Olivia Gude and UIC's Spiral Workshop*


Tuesday, October 13, 2015

What's going on in the art room?

So much has gotten covered since the first post. It's hard to keep up, time seems to go by so quickly! 
I will try to summarize what's been going on in each grade level with pictures.


Art Journals are now placed in the art room. I don't know why we didn't think of this last year, so much easier to get a hold of this way. Now, if I could only figure out how to get the 8th graders to bring in their journals! Looks like I might need to send some notes home...

Artopoly is a new addition to the art room. I haven't taken a more up-to-date photo of this yet but so many rooms have moved almost halfway through the board! This game is all based on classroom behavior and the winning class will get to earn an ART PARTAAAY! Photos of our first ART PARTAAAY will definitely be uploaded when they become available.

Another new addition to the art room is this set of folder organization. I have created a set of 3 giant folders for each room and they each serve a purpose. One folder is for work 'In-Progress', another is for 'Completed Work', and the last is for 'Art Show Work' **more info on our first annual Art Show to come** 
Students are still getting used to the routine of placing work in the correct folder but hopefully by mid-year it becomes a habit. 


Here's an image of our first class project across all grade levels (K-8). Students created a collaborative rainbow mural of portraits and it turned out beautiful! I was super proud of all their work. Unfortunately everyone's portrait wasn't included but I hope to have more collaborative bulletin boards that the students can all participate in. I'm currently working on posting up a new bulletin board so look out for that soon! 



Here's a few process photos of Kinder working on their first major project after the Monochromatic Portraits. Students learned about cutting thick and thin rectangles to create these paper arches. They turned out really great. I'll upload better images of their final works in a future post.

Next up, 1st grade!
For our first project we jumped straight into some paint! Crazy, I KNOW but students did great and no one left the room splattered in paint. For this project students reviewed line types and created their own abstract compositions using 7 different types of lines: 
horizontal, vertical, diagonal, thick, dotted, wavy, and zig-zag
Check out their process below!








After finishing up our Abstract Line paintings, students applied their knowledge of line, pattern, and color to create these lovely paper flowers. 

2nd Graders
A few process photos of our first major project which also included paint. I have to admit, painting projects get me anxious but it's because I didn't have a good grasp of procedures last year. I am so proud of my younger students, they know exactly what is expected and how to handle the materials appropriately. Below you'll see students working on their Reversible Dot paintings. We reviewed line types and students also learned how to mix tints or 'light colors' as they referred to them. 




3rd Graders
Students reviewed their knowledge of line and pattern with this mixed media project. We used non-traditional art materials such as styrofoam plates and foil along with sharpie markers and neon crayons to create some awesome pieces of artwork! 




    



 4th Graders

Students learned about the work of John Baldessari and created a portrait inspired by his work. We went over color theory and focused on complementary colors.






5th - 8th Graders
For our first major project we focused on observational drawing skills. Students learned the history of still life painting and learned about the work of contemporary artist Amir H. Fallah before embarking on their own still life drawings. Each student was asked to bring in a personal object of their own to create a unique set of objects to draw from. I'll post more of the final creations in a future post. For now here are a couple process shots.




Phew! Hopefully my next post will be a lot shorter. Thanks for reading! 

Monday, September 14, 2015

We Got This!

I am very excited for the new year and hope you are too! This is a brand new site I will be using to post projects and artwork by all my K-8 students at Henry Clay. Hopefully this will provide more insight into what's going inside my art room. I am inspired greatly by other art teacher bloggers so I'm excited to be a part of the growing online community. I will post as regularly as possible to keep everyone up-to-date with whats going on in the art room.
Welcome and get ready to be inspired!