Finishing Up

Today is the last day of school. Students are finishing up and saying good-bye to a school year that was filled with laughter, learning, and lots of messy moments in the art classroom. To finish out our last day together, students showed their learning through exams. Part of the exam was question based. Students were given a series of matching, multiple choice, and true/false questions that quizzed their understanding of the elements and principles of design, artists throughout history, as well as materials we used to create art throughout the year. 

In addition to a more traditional means of testing, I also asked students to create a composition that expressed their learning over the semester. It is always fun to see how students interpret the directions and all of the various ways they use the skills they have learned to show what they know. Even better, are the artist statements that accompanies them and explains what they made. 

Here are a few examples (the rest can be viewed on Artsonia):

Jewel: I learned a lot of things in art this year and this is an example of just a few. I learned my new favorite media, stippling. It's not just drawing and shading with a pencil. Noli Novak has inspired me to do something different with my artwork and to work to expand my comfort zone. I chose to represent the color wheel in my picture using water color. When I first came into 7th grade, I hated using water color because I didn't know how and what to do with it. Now, I know so many different techniques that I would love to use water color in the future and present. I am showing the color wheel because I never knew what a tint was or a shade, I didn't know the compliment pairs and the primary and secondary colors. Their was so many different things that I learned in art that I could only show the things that I think I grew the most in on one sheet of paper.

Andrew: This piece is a reflection of this whole art semester. It shows some of the many new things that I learned. I came in thinking art would be boring and I would know most of the stuff. I had no idea how wrong I was. There were so many cool and interesting new things that I learned from you. I learned all about elements and principles and the four C’s. I also became familiar with tons of amazing artists that gave me inspiration for my own art like Bansky and Mitchell Feinberg who where probably my favorites. When I first came in I only thought of art as drawing and painting. Over the semester I learned so many new ways to make art that I had no idea existed. Print making, Photoshop, movies, photography, and many others. Now I have a much larger arsenal of art that I can make. I hope to use these great techniques in the future to make over better, more creative art in the future. I learned a ton of new and interesting things in this class and I am very glad I chose to take art this year.

Ana: From the final art piece, I used a lot of shading techniques, but combining a lot of the different shades, then taking Q-tip and rubbing it all over, so that the different would blend in better. I also had perspective in the, but showing a shadow of the mountains and trees. I also had a reflecting lakes to reflect the scene.

Gabby: I learned a lot of things this year in art. I learned many watercolor techniques, as seen on the top of my drawing. I also learned more about cool, warm, and complimentary colors. I tried to add the element of color, which I think I did well, by adding many varieties of color to make my art pop. I really enjoyed this year and learned a lot more about art, such as shading, value, and more about cool, warm, and complimentary colors.

Leah: In this last piece of art I have made for my eighth grade piece there are a few things that did not go as planned. I had the intentions on making a foreground, middle ground, and background landscape piece. For the foreground I made a wave made from oil pastel. For the middle ground I was going to do the ocean made from oil pastel, but in a darker shade to add realism into the picture. Lastly, I was going to do the background as an island to add more interest into the picture. This art piece did not meet my expectations because of a couple different reasons. Throughout the year I have been used to having a week to finish my art pieces and today I was only given 45-30 minutes. Another reason why I did not finish this art piece is because there was not any ideas popping into my head because I have used most of the materials through out the year and the ones I didn’t use would not be done in a day (clay and wilting). I feel that if my intentions went as planned then this art piece would have showed how this eighth grade year has shown how much I have improved. The reason why is because I have done many different things relying on pastel and I have had much practice, also we have learned about the way to set up a landscape art piece and this is what I did. All in all, this year has been a great impact on my art skills and the use of creativity.