We used playing cards as the inspiration for this project. We looked at images of playing card art, both historical and recent. Each student chose a face card to work from. The advanced students gridded their playing cards and enlarged them, copying each square of the grid onto larger paper. The younger groups used the […]
For the past few weeks, several of my classes have been working on a project based on the illustrations in the book, This Jazz Man. The illustrations depict famous jazz musicians using mixed media collage. Collage looks deceptively easy. It actually requires a lot of planning ahead and thinking of shapes in a different way. […]
This project was based on the book Drum Dream Girl by Margarita Engle. This story was inspired by the true story of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a Chinese-African-Cuban girl who broke Cuba’s taboo against female drummers and went on to become a world renown musician, even playing for President Roosevelt in New York. We drew our […]
Last week we did charcoal portraits of Surrealist artist, Salvador Dali, equally famous for both his unique paintings and his flamboyant, eccentric personality. We looked at his most famous painting, Persistence of Memory. But, our main focus was on Dali’s expressive face and mustache. We discussed facial proportions, and students were given a variety of […]
William H Johnson was African American artist from South Carolina who lived from 1910-1970. After graduating from the National Academy of Design in New York, he traveled to Paris to paint for several years. His work gradually transitioned from expressionism to primitivism. Our lesson focused on his later works which depicted his rural southern […]
Chalk pastel is so messy but so worth it! Last week we learned about Edgar Degas. We read Degas and the Little Dancer. Then we drew our ballerinas on colored paper with a light colored chalk pastel. Degas used diagonals a lot in his compositions. So, we created a diagonal floor line. Students were free […]
A workshop on Mexican art wouldn’t be complete without a lesson on the Aztecs. We began by reading The Sad Night by Sally Schoffer Matthews. This is a longer story than I normally read in class. It gives a brief history of the Aztec civilization and then tells of their encounters and subsequent battles with […]
I forgot to post these last week. My apologies! Last week, we learned about Paul Klee and his painting, Senecio (1922). We first painted our backgrounds with tempera paint, using a mat board scrap to apply the paint. While those were drying, we drew “Senecio” on yellow-gold paper using oil pastel and added color with […]
Several classes just finished a project based on David Shannon’s “David” books. David is always getting in trouble. My goal was for students to show action and emotion in their drawings. They certainly accomplished that! We used illustrations from Shannon’s books for inspiration. Students were encouraged to add their own details or other characters to […]
This week, the K-5th grade classes drew scarecrows and learned about mixing secondary colors. I did a guided drawing of the scarecrow on the board to get them started. They were only given the primary colors, white and black. Their assignment was to mix all the secondary colors to paint their scarecrows. Some students really […]
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