Wednesday was the first day of 2nd quarter. This quarter in 7th & 8th grade we focus on digital art. Using technology to create art. We will experiment with Photoshop, iPad drawing apps, Photography, and Animation. Stay tuned to see some great digital art from some talented students!
In the last few days in 8th Grade Drawing and Painting, we did a quick exercise in Stippling... drawing with dots. They were given notecard size paper and they chose an animal or object to recreate in tiny dots. Here are some in progress:
After completing their large charcoal drawings, students starting prepping their canvases for their last painting project. They were allowed to use my letters and numbers stencils to create an abstract composition. The letters and numbers they chose were supposed to have some personal meaning like initials, birthdate etc. We are using techniques like famous artists Jasper Johns(top 2 images) and Jim Dine (bottom 2 images). I tried to push the students to think outside the box a bit when choosing where to put their stenciled letters and numbers. I let them know that creating full words or writing out their name was unnecessary and would even take away a bit of the abstraction from the piece. Even those students who still chose to write full words etc. were able to overlap and change the angles of the letters enough to keep an abstract element to their composition.
Today we started painting the first layer, the background. We talked about choosing about 3 colors that worked well together and would still create other interesting colors when mixed. 8th Graders are wrapping up one of my favorite projects of the whole year. The students are taking an 8 x 10 high quality photo of a celebrity and blowing it up to an 18 x 24 black and white drawing.
I teach the gridding system to set up the pencil drawing portion of the project. This is a way to blow up a picture proportionately by drawing one box at a time. The students have to focus on lines and shapes and not about drawing a nose, ear, or lips. Breaking down the complex facial features into basic shapes is what makes the students successful in the drawing stage of the project. Once the students have mapped out all the necessary features and outlines of hair, neck and clothing, we can start the shading process. We are using charcoal sticks, white chalk pastel, as well as charcoal pencils (white and black) for details. I talked about the importance of shading in the direction of the facial feature to help make it look more three dimensional. Depending on the photograph of the celebrity, the students will layer the black charcoal and white pastel to create the various gray values. Students use their fingers to blend the chalk and charcoal where smoothing is needed and use less blending in areas where texture is needed, like hair. The portraits will hang outside the JH art room until Thanksgiving break. They are ooooed and awwwed over the entire time they are up! Enjoy!! |
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