O’Keefe Inspired Watercolors

EQ: Where do artists gather inspiration
I’m not going to lie. Watercolors are deceptively tricky.

Over the years, I’ve learned I really need to teach watercolors as a whole unit.
We begin with the very basics. How to get the colors ready, use the palette, use the brush, and not hold the palette sideways when putting away!
Then we move into mixing colors with a color wheel. My students make a color wheel for each new medium. Then we explored various techniques through a guided step-by-step painting where we all painted the same thing.

Then when the students were ready, they picked their own subjects to paint.

Pencil Surrealist Drawing

EQ: What makes Surrealism so Surreal?

TSWAT identify a piece of surreal art.
TSWBAT analyze, evaluate, and interpret a Surrealist Art Piece.
TSWBAT modify, tranform, scale, and distort a pencil to fit the contour of a selected image.

Scale: Changing an object’s scale, or relative size.
Levitation:Floating objects that don’t normally float
Juxtaposition:Joining two images together in 
impossible combinations
Dislocation:Taking an object form its usual environment and placing it in an unfamiliar
one
Transparency:Making objects transparent that are 
not usually transparent
Metamorphosis:Changing objects in unusual way
Natural Laws Reversed: The laws of nature are reversed as in people walking dogs.
Repetition: An object repeated multiple times.

After learning about the surrealist art movement, students used two of the key ideas of Surrealism (transformation and repetition) to create their own spin on surrealism using a No. 2 pencil.


6th Grade Optical Art

LearningTargets:
The student will: 
– Identify and create artwork based on the elements of art and on the principles of art. 
– Demonstrate through their artwork how to use the elements of art to show movement and express feelings. 
– Recognize, compare and use different media to create their artwork. 
– Develop a respect and appreciation for the artwork of artists, including classmates’ art. 
– Recognize and compare differences in several art mediums. 
– Create representational and abstract art. 
– Learn to create proper shading and blending. 
– Communicate thoughts, feelings and experiences to others through art. 
– Understand terms that are basic to art media, procedures and techniques, as well as art appreciation. 

Enduring Understandings:
6th Grade students will develop an understanding of how generating ideas and planning can lead to expressive creations. Students will also have a better understanding of how color theory influences artists. Artists will communicate meaning through the visual arts. 

Essential Questions:? 

How did Op Art change the Art world?
What is composition?
What are the elements and principles of design?
How can artists use the Line and pattern to create kinetic art?


Texture Monsters

The above examples were made by my 12 week exploratory class.

Then we reread the book through the eyes of an illustrator and noted all the rich textures. Finally, I had my students fill out a worksheet with some of the various textures they saw.

Then we created our own monsters. Today the kids made their first monster with no texture. Tomorrow they will be reproducing their monsters four times and applying a different texture to each one. I will be out tomorrow for professional development, so I’m leaving a video of the following steps for them to follow with the Guest Teacher.

Educating for Careers

Presenting at the Educating for Careers Conference in Sacramento, March 2019.

I had the fantastic opportunity to present with our CTE team at the Educating for Careers Conference in Sacramento. We discussed how we grew our CTE middle school program from 1 CTE course to 5.

We now offer courses in Robotics, Coding, Health, Engineering, and of course, my favorite Digital Design.
I also had the opportunity to attend some fantastic sessions, meet other educators, and even pick up some swag.

Word Art – Digital Design Class/CTE

After looking at professional logo designs that used words to create an image, students chose nouns to turn into literal word art.

Students began first with an exploration of thumbnails. Then, they collaborated to refine, modify and edit their designs.

Students took photos of their designs using Photo Booth, imported them into Adobe AI, placed them on their own layer with a transparency of 50%. They then created a new layer and used the pen tool and pathfinder tool to make their words.

One Point Perspective Rooms – CTE Graphic Design

One of the very first things we do in our Graphic Design class after becoming familiar with Photoshop and how to import and download images creates a Dream Bedroom.

What’s nice about this project is that the students already understand how to create perspective from their beginning art course.

This lesson focused on: Importing a photo, creating layers, creating a layer mask, using the transform, warp, and perspective tool.

One-Point Perspective Names

One point perspective can be a challenge to teach. The vocabulary can be daunting, and interest soon fa

One point perspective can be a challenge to teach. The vocabulary can be daunting, and interest soon fades.

I found grid paper a great way to help calm the anxieties of drawing a straight line. Also, names are naturally engaging.