At least once a year, I like to do a self portrait project. If I do one at the beginning of the year, we might be able to fit another one in at the end of the year and see how they have changed and improved. Students had a mirror to look at themselves. We […]
For our first project of the school year, we drew and painted urban neighborhoods. We drew our neighborhoods with Sharpie markers, beginning with the objects closest to the viewer and working back to the buildings farthest away. Students were encouraged to make each building unique and to add lots of details. I taught this project […]
If you haven’t hear of Rex Ray, do a quick Google search. You will see a ton of beautiful paintings and collages. For the past two weeks, we have been working on a project based on his amazing work. The first week, we focused on creating painted papers to use in our collages. The big […]
Paul Gauguin was a French, post-Impressionist painter. He spent many years painting in Tahiti. His landscapes done during this time were our inspiration for this project. We looked at several of Gauguin’s landscapes and discussed how to create the illusion of space. After drawing the landscape with oil pastel, we used acrylic paint to add […]
Last week we did charcoal portraits of Surrealist artist, Salvador Dali, equally famous for both his unique paintings and his flamboyant, eccentric personality. We looked at his most famous painting, Persistence of Memory. But, our main focus was on Dali’s expressive face and mustache. We discussed facial proportions, and students were given a variety of […]
For the last couple of weeks, we have been working on drawing and painting tropical fish. The older students worked in pencil and Sharpie, drawing from detailed illustrations of fish. The younger group used black oil pastel and drew from simple, stylized illustrations of fish. Both groups used liquid watercolor for the water, adding salt […]
William H Johnson was African American artist from South Carolina who lived from 1910-1970. After graduating from the National Academy of Design in New York, he traveled to Paris to paint for several years. His work gradually transitioned from expressionism to primitivism. Our lesson focused on his later works which depicted his rural southern […]
For the last couple of weeks, we have been working on painting flamingos. We broke the flamingo shape down to a circle and an oval and then drew the basic outline. This project was really about painting and mixing colors. We used tempera paint, and for most of the colors, we mixed right on the […]
I saw this project on Cassie Stephens’ blog, In the Art Room. I loved the bold, bright colors and the contrast of the strong black lines. Cassie was inspired by the art of Dean Russo. I wasn’t familiar with his work but enjoyed checking his work out. Cassie used india ink in bingo daubers to […]
Students who finished early this week were able to make Valentine Prints. We drew our designs on styrofoam sheets with a ball point pen. Then we colored them with washable markers. After a quick spray of water, we printed them on watercolor paper. Printmaking is always so much fun. I love the moment of anticipation […]
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