Completed still life's

I'm so impressed with the skills the sixth graders showed on thier still life's. After the students completed the observational drawing, they each had to break the negative space with patterns. I was so happy to see one student challenging himself to draw his neighbor.

Here are some of the other gems.

Sixth graders are digging deep into still life drawing.

Still life's are a fundamental part of drawing from observation. The sixth graders are digging deep and doing thier best to capture what they see.

On this day we were practicing drawing objects together, so each group designed a still life and drew from two different student set ups.

Penguins in the Desert?

Henri Rousseau was our inspiration for these sixth grade drawings.  The students were incouraged to use thier imaginations like Rousseau to draw animals in an enviroment.  Rousseau enjoyed going the zoo and looking at pictures of animals to grasp how animals looked, but he didn't always get the landscape correct.  We completed these drawing on 18x 12 paper with color pencils.  The emphasis was on layering and blending colors and creating changes in values.

The Monsters Have Arrived

My sixth graders had a fun time creating clay monsters using a hollow sphere as a starting point.  Their imaginations really showed up during the process.  We used under glazes for the colors and finsihed with a clear glaze. I heard a lot of stories being formed that were adventurous feats of the mind.  It was fun to see them so excited.  I think next time, I add in a writing portion.

Ahhhhh Monsters!

To help us brainstorm and plan, each sixth grader is making a monster from their imagination.  We will use these fabulous creatures as inspiration for our clay sculptures. They are sooooo excited!

We found the Zen in Zentangles

These were really fun. So much so that some kids made two! I have recently come to the conclusion that the elements and principles of design are not the end all be all of Visual Arts learning and that writing the definitions of them isn't really learning.  By making these zentangles we discussed and applied most of the E's and P's in a creative way.  

Retablos to Diego Rivera

Our sixth graders went from retablos to Diego Rivera and Cubism.  We looked at Diego's early work as an artist in Europe during the days of Cubism.  Still life's and observational drawing were our focus, along with how to use a split complementary color scheme.  When we do these I like to set up several still life's and allow the children to choose one that works for them.  This also helps to not have to grade 60 versions of the same drawing.  

What are you thankful for?

We have been creating Retablos for the past couple of weeks, each art student created a drawing about what they are thankful for, here's one in progress.

Retablos are coming along and getting finished!

Perspective Line Practice Drawings

This week the sixth and seventh grade eagles practiced using linear perspective to show deep space on a flat surface.  Though they each had a basic model to follow, you can see how some students really took off with the tool.  They will use the skills learned with these drawings in their first project, Mexican retablos.

Comedy Enlarged

The sixth graders worked very hard last nine weeks making sculptures of an original character for a comic strip. They worked in groups to write a story and then illustrate it in the form of a comic strip. They each built the head of their individual character using papier mache.