Letters Due Tuesday

Students in Art 1 are finishing up their perspective letters, and are adding value to enhance the depth of the drawing. The final drawings will be due on Tuesday, since students will not have school on Monday (professional development day for staff). The students have been doing a wonderful job with value! Here are a few photos from this week in class. 

Art 1 Perspective Initials

Welcome back for the 2014-15 year! Art 1 is starting out with their perspective initials project. This project is a great way to start the course because math minds seem to really identify with it, boosting their confidence for the rest of the semester. Here are a couple images pf the grids students have made in perspective. The next move is to transfer their initials in a chosen font, and to add value.  Students have been breezing through this project! I'm excited to see what they do for the rest of the course!

Watercolor Portraits

As we near the end of the year, students are completing their watercolor self portraits, our final project.  With this project, we focused on color theory and representation of emotion through color.  Students were randomly assigned an emotion, and had to represent that emotion in a "selfie".  There was a focus on expression, framing, and angles when students took the images.  Using photoshop, we then edited the images and transferred them to watercolor paper.  Students were required to include 3 analogous colors from the color wheel within their painting, and have even transitions between all colors.  Here are some examples of student work:

Completed Value Portraits and Upcoming Watercolor

Students have turned in their value portraits, and are starting the last project of the semester- watercolor self portraits. For this project, students were randomly assigned a descriptive word such as frantic, elated, etc. Today they had time to take a "selfie" depicting that word. There was a focus on pose, camera angle, and framing. On Friday we will edit the images in the photo lab and prep them to transfer to watercolor paper.  The depiction will continue to hold importance in the artwork, as students will focus on color implications to continue their meaning in the portrait. Until Friday, we will get familiar with these color implications through analysis of advertisements and photography.

Before jumping ahead, here are some images of the finished value portraits. They turned out hilarious, realistic, and very nice! 

Spirit Animal Value Portraits

Students have been working on a quick project after finishing up their sculptures. For this unit, we began by discussing the concept of spirit animals, a shamanistic belief of a spiritual guide in the form of an animal. The animal will represent elements of it's human's personailty. So in other words (when we simplify a bit)...

If you were an animal, what would you be??

Students focused on their interests in climate, activity, company, and energy level as a jumping off point, and spoke with their peers to continue the process.

Once decided, students found an image of the animal and printed it iut as a reference. We discussed proportion and reference points in the face, and animals began drawing their images on a fresh sheet.

We are taking these in a more goofy direction, and students are adding accessories to emphasize their personality in the portraits. As the project continues through next week, students will begin adding backgrounds and frames to the artworks.

I am super excited to see the portraits progress, and am having fun along the way! Who knew that so many freshmen boys would put tuxedos in their portraits? So classy! 

Here are a few images of portraits in progress:

Completed Sculptures!

Our clay song sculptures are officially finished, and are coming out of their last firing this week. For this project, students altered a cube with inspiration from a favorite song. They focused on using the Elements and Principles of Art in their planning and design. Many students took risks and tried new techniques, something I always like to see! Here are a few images of finished sculptures.

Firing Clay Sculptures

Students are finishing up their sculptures! They are being fired in the kiln, and we will glaze later this week. 

For the sculptures, students analyzed a song of their choice, and thought specifically of visuals for the song. They used Elements and Principles of Design such as line, movement, pattern, etc. 

Everyone in the class began with a hollow clay cube, and the cubes were then altered to incorporate the visuals of the chosen song. 

Students have done such a great job critiquing songs and planning their sculptures, and it shows in their products!  Here are some photos of the sculptures before or after firing.

As the sculptures are fired, we are moving onto our value unit. Students will be drawing a self portrait...as an animal. Students have been practicing and planning as we begin the unit, and I will post photos soon!