Carnival Masks!

Yippee! For the last several weeks our 6th, 7th and 8th grade students have been working hard on the creation of masks for their celebration of Carnival around the world. I am happy to finally begin sharing the results. Parents, you should be proud of your students, they all put in their maxium effort and we have many gorgeous masks to show for it. For those of you who missed the mask display on Carnaval night, you have a another chance to see them right here.

Before beginnning the lesson in the art room, students spent time in their Spanish classes studying Carnival celebrations and culture in the various countries around the world who celebrate the pre-Lenten event. Just as cultures and celebrations differ widely, so do mask designs. After choosing a photo of a favorite mask students set about creating their own in a similar style. Many chose to build their masks in paper mache, which was then painted with tempera or acyrylic paints. Others created their designs with layered poster papers and foil. Feathers, glitter and whatever was available in the art room was utilized to make their masks as authentic as possible.

Click on any image below to get to the gallery. I'll be adding more masks next week as they are completed.

The Starry Night Collaborative Project

"This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big."
- Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo,
describing his experience painting The Starry Night.

Vincent Van Gogh completed The Starry Night, one of his most well known paintings, while at an asylum in Saint-Remy in 1989. After reading and writing about the painting in their Language Arts class, grade 8 students created the collaborative project shown above. Each student reproduced a part of the painting in oil pastels on paper, emulating the swirling brushstrokes so prominent in this painting and many others of the prolific artist. When the students' pieces where placed together they created this gorgeous version of Van Gogh's masterpiece.

Jewelry Fun

In their last few art classes before heading off to high school, our 8th graders had some fun creating these jewelry pieces. The crosses were made by wiring beads onto an aluminum wire armature. Found rocks, sea glass and even seashells were wrapped in wire then hung on string to create one-of-a-kind necklaces.

Click on any image to get to the picture gallery.

  

 

The Scream

Recently, the Edvard Munch oil pastel entitled "The Scream" sold for a record-breaking amount at auction in New York City. Our seventh grade class studied this iconic example of German Expressionism then created their own versions, complete with the source of their own greatest fear lurking somewhere on the page. Click on any image to get to the Scream Gallery then decide, what makes YOU scream?

 

CD Etchings

Unwanted CDs were put to good use in this project in which grade 8 students explored etching, with an emphasis on line variation and a balanced composition. Acrylic paint covered the shiny side of the CD, then the dry surface was etched with the pointed end of a nail or a screw. Even within the limited scope of the materials, we see some nice creative work. The addition of silver glitter complimented the shiny surface of two designs. See the gallery by clicking on any image.

Elements of Art Cubes

The seven Elements of Art are line, shape, form, value, color, texture and space. These are the “building blocks” of all art, and whether you realize it of not, you use at least one of them whenever you create a piece of visual art.

To review our knowledge of these elements, our grade 8 class created cubes made from heavyweight paper, with each side depicting a different element. The cube itself represented “shape”. Different media were used for different elements, and you had a choice of depicting or applying texture. The cubes were a nice way to review and reinforce knowledge, and fun to create as well. Take a look and see if you can tell what each side represents. You can click on any image to see more.

Winding Perspective Drawings

Our grade seven class is completing an interesting project using one point linear perspective. Linear perspective is a system of drawing in which the artist attempts to create the illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. The invention of linear perspective dates to the early 1400s, with the Italian Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi's experiments in perspective painting. Click here for a bit more about him from the National Gallery of Art.

Here our artists chose five shapes whose sides had to converge on a central vanishing point. They had to wind a thread-like object of their choice through the “floating” shapes and create an environment or setting for them. Click on any image to see more drawings.

More Mandalas

Sixth and seventh grade classes are completing their versions of mandalas, the traditional circular, symmetrical design with Buddhist and Hindu origins. I love how they follow the "rules" for mandala design but are unique reflections of each student artist's personality. Click on any image to get to the picture gallery.

 

Mandalas

To explore art from other cultures and understand radial symmetry, students in grades six, seven and eight have been creating mandalas. Mandalas have their origins in Buddhist and Hindu cultures, in fact the word "mandala" means "circle" in Sanskrit. Each student is designing their own mandala, the only rules are they must be circular, show radial symmetry, and be unique to each artist.

The mandalas shown here were done by grade eight, aren't they terrific? If you click on any image you'll go to the picture gallery and see more of them.

 

We Are Art Smart!

 I'm going back in time a bit to talk about our very first art project this year. Seventh and eighth grade students colored individual quarter-sized sheets of paper I had preprinted with outlined letters. The students had no idea what letters they were working on, but were instructed to use complementary colors and their imaginations to decorate their pieces. When we put the pieces together the letters spelled "We Are Art Smart." The project gave me a chance to assess the skill level of each student and discuss what it means to be "Art Smart." My students had fun working with their favorite colors and patterns, and as a bonus, the banner looks great hanging in our art room!