Start of 4th Quarter

Back from Break

In addition to motivational messages written on my whiteboard in the hall to meet students that included "It's the beginning of the end" and "Be like the Patriots this 4th Quarter," I welcomed students back from break with some quick creations that exercised their understanding of a variety of media. 

I thought this would be a good way to ease back into the swing of school after a little over a week away from the grind and it would help students focus on successfully completing the skill-building tasks and use that to springboard into a successful 4th quarter and end to the school year. 

Photoshop Challenge 2

Before we left for break, students spent time with on a Challenge and STEAM collaborative that both looked at spaces and places as their subject. I decided to welcome students back from break by continuing that subject into four possible Photoshop Challenges for students to select and complete over the course of two days. Students had the opportunity to create a landscape, perspective drawing, altered graffiti name, or space image and in the process learn more Photoshop tools and experiment with ideas and their understanding of how to create images digitally.

​Here are a few of the results: 

Ruby: My work is of one part of Mount Everest, in the background you see snowy mountains, and in the foreground theres a part of the mountains without any snow. The tools I used was only the brush tool. I used a lot of the different textures to create shading and make it look more realistic.

Sophia: In my artwork I used a picture of this hallway in our school and I used the pen tool to trace over all of the lines. I also used the gradient tool to create the color across it. I like the work I created because I think it challenged me and it ended up very cool with the colors and all of the lines.

Arianna: The style I did of my graffiti name is I chose the Kodiak style off of graffiti creator and my name ended up looking like this. I decided to use bright colors like lime green, hot pink, and turquoise. I also decided to put 3d bubbles and make them yellow to make the letters pop even more. In the end I put it on a brick wall and turned down the opacity so it would look more realistic in the picture. I also decided that was not enough and I could do more. So then I figured out I could add a shadow holding a spray can that made the graffiti and then I also turned down the opacity on the shadow so it wouldn't be so bold.

Riley: it is a picture of two planets that rotate around each other and will eventually merge. also they are separated by a star belt.

Observational Drawing

The middle of the week transitioned from digital work to more traditional drawing methods. We spent one class period this week simply working on our observational skills and thinking about how our eyes work when we are using them to help us draw from life. One of my favorite exercises if to just simply walk students through a looking/seeing process and verbalizing how to really examine what is in front of you before you start to draw it. 

Observational skills are important and can be fostered, just like any other skill can be. During our day of observational drawing, we practiced non-dominant hand drawing, dominant hand drawing, and abstraction through enlargement. Students used their shoes and strings to do this and then worked on turning one of their smaller drawings large on a bigger sheet of paper for our Mixed Media experimentation. This is a great lead into our next challenge, where still life can play an important role. 

Mixed Media Speed Dating

As I did with students last semester, I set out materials at each table group with introduction cards to using collage, watercolors, ink, pastels, and sharpies/gell pens with stencils. Students then rotated in 5-7 minute increments around the groups until their observational drawings had each of the media processes on it. 

It is a really fun way to introduce students to new media (or even old media in new ways) and they ended up with a work that many enjoyed as a finished piece. I think the best part of this process is that the emphasis is really on experimentation with media and the end product is secondary; however, many students will use their experience to help formulate choices for their upcoming project Challenge that brings the focus in on objects. 

Here are some results from the process: 

Chloe: We used observational drawings to first draw our shoe and then we tested out different mixed media. We tested out watercolor, chalk and oil pastels, different types of ink, different sharpie ways, and then collage. My favorite was spraying the watercolor everywhere for the background.

Ella: With this piece I fell in love with all that we got to do around the room. I was new to calligraphy but fell in love with the way the pen moved and the way in which if you added more pressure you got thinker lines. This project was short but fun to use all the new types of materials in which we got to used chalk pastel and a ton of stencils. It was amazing to watch all the connections come together that I have never tried before. I would do this all year long if I could.

Oliver: In the art I used for the first time a Quill and Ink to make stitches on the shoe.

Ashtyn: In this piece of art I used multiple things I have never used before like the quill, the blow technique, oil pastel, and paint. But out of all of those the one I liked using the most was the quill, I liked the quill because it was just easy and fun to use. I also liked using the oil pastel and the paint.

​Light and Shadow

My Dual Enrollment students focused on Light and Shadow as a subject matter for their 4th assignment in our Intro to Photo class. It has been really exciting to see students advance their understanding of how to adjust the settings on their camera and how to frame their images to get a variety of effects. 

Here are a few of their solutions to capturing the idea of light and shadow: 

Kennedy

Anna

Elise

Emma

Kathy

Krista

There are only a couple of weeks left before Dual Enrollment is over and I am very excited for what students have been working on for their final thesis. It will be fun to share what their solutions and ideas were as we close out the term and I look forward to seeing what my 7th and 8th graders do as we finish the 4th quarter strong!