The Start of STEAM- String Art Design

This semester, 8th grade students are part of a collaborative course between a STEM classroom and the Art room. This is a new approach for us at BMS and so far, it's been a great adventure.

We started off with Drawing Challenges, exploring the Design Thinking Method and geometrical string art. All of our learning experiences are discussed and reflected on through the students' individual blogs.

Take a peek at our string artwork below. Students were asked to create curve in their design (although no curved lines are actually sewn). We discussed symmetrical, asymmetrical and radial balance of course, as well as the idea of how changing the slope of each line just slightly, creates the curve.

We are still here! Abstract Value Portraits

It's been a while since we've posted updates about our class doings but we are still here! Check out our Value Portraits that 7th graders completed last week.

We started with practicing facial features and proportions, but it was up to the students how much realism would be included in the final piece. Value shading was also a big concept as we worked on this through a class demo and individually through a value study worksheet. We discussed different ways to apply value changes (hatching, cross-hatching, scumbling, blending, etc). In the final work, students chose how they wanted to represent value within the abstract shapes.  

Oil Pastel Landscapes

Landscapes are one of our major areas of focus in 7th grade, especially when we take a more abstract approach when creating them. 

 

After practicing a variety of landscapes (mountain-scape, seascape, desert-scape) we create are own version on black construction paper. The concept of atmospheric perspective is used to help define space without using linear perspective. This quarter, we used both oil pastel and chalk pastel and the results were dramatic. Before the pastel goes on, we outline our landscape drawings with glue to create a fluid and bold outline.

This project was based off a popular method we've used here.

Welcome 7th grade! Zentangle Animals

We are currently wrapping up week two of the new school year. We are almost done completely our first project, Zentangle Animals. We have had a some great experience in class with watercolor techniques as well as creating complex patterns known as Zentangles. This project focused on the Studio Habits of Develop Craft, Envision and Reflect. Beautiful work 7th grade!

Techniques we covered in class:
Graded wash
Wet in wet
Dry brush
Blotting
Scraping
Rubbing alcohol
Resist
Salt 

STEAM Enviromental Trailer and Infographic Project

As a cumulative project for both science and art class this quarter, 7th grade students made infographics using the online site and app, Canva. Each student was asked to choose a environmental science topic to research and use that information and data to show graphs, facts and illustrations within their infographic.

Canva allows students to create a free account and access a number of free templates to plan their work. We spent some time looking at what makes a strong infographic (such as contrasting font color on the background, organizing layout of information, etc) before actually sitting down with our iPads. We also used some guiding questions/statements to help organize our work. 

Our three essential questions/statements: 

Why should we CARE? 

What can we do to HELP? 

We need to know MORE!

The infographics will tie in to a larger, overall STEAM project of creating an environmental issues trailer iMovie. See more about that here:
Becker Middle School 7th Grade Science Trailer Project

It's been a while- Periodic Table Sculpture is complete!

The Periodic Table Sculpture is complete and ready to be installed. We are moving forward with an artist-in-residence next fall to create an painted environment around the sculpture in the media center. To see more about this collaborative STEAM project, please watch the video below.

Tin Foil Relief- Lesson Plan Update

If you are interested in seeing the lesson plan for this project here (originally published back in March of 2014) please check out this link to the Art of Ed's Lesson Plans.

http://www.theartofed.com/2015/04/09/yarn-and-foil-relief-free-lesson-plan-download

Original post-

7th graders have been working on a low relief sculptural project using tin foil, yarn and cardboard. We stressed the idea of varied line and spent a day discovering color schemes such as monochromatic, analogous, complementary and triadic and how limited color can affect our artwork. Colored Sharpies were used to fill in the foil areas between the yarn sections, while sandpaper and Rub n' Buff were used to slightly age our projects. 

The results are something between stain glass and closinae. Art on a budget!

Amate Bark 3D Paintings

We began this lesson by sketching three different types of traditional landscapes: a mountain-scape, a seascape and a desert-scape. We focused on creating three distinct areas by showing the foreground, middle ground and background. By making sure our landscape details progressively got smaller as they went back into space, we created depth and perspective. The idea of how artists show atmospheric perspective was discussed at length as well.

Once we had a good understanding of how to create a realistic landscape, we decided to switch it up a bit and use unrealistic, florescent color. By using a dull background like our gray bogus paper, the colors pop off the page. Outlining in black Sharpie also adds to the 3D effect, especially when viewed through 3D glasses.

Reflecting Architectural Printing

We have been spending a lot of time this quarter drawing, printing and sculpting architectural structures. We started with our reflection watercolor prints of famous architectural wonders and then moved onto large-scale paper mache Gothic cathedrals. Photos to come soon!

Paper Mache Gothic-Inspired Cathedrals

Over the last couple of weeks we have been working on architecture design- drawing, printing and now over-sized paper mache relief sculptures. This was a feat for us since we only created 7 works, one on each table in the classroom (more about that later).

To begin we watched an amazing NOVA-produced video called the Building the Great Cathedrals. It was a perfect introduction to these engineering marvels. Students were then asked to draw a Gothic style cathedral using a shape tracing method shown in Deep Space Sparkle's Architecture Made Easy PDF. These drawings became our blueprints for how were were going to construct the cardboard and paper mache sculptures.

The plan was to have each table create a cathedral. That's right- one project per table...all day long. As each class came in for the day, whomever sits at that table would continue to add to that work. This was a challenge in itself; we worked the best we could with what was left after each block. However, this turned out to be a very successful large scale project challenge. Not only was it engaging but the transfer of skills from collaboration, to communication to just plain ol' perseverance was hard to ignore. Nice job 7th graders!

Zentangle Watercolor Animals

Update: Check out the Art of Ed's post today about watercolor techniques. We used many of these techniques in our lesson.

What could be better than intense color, rich pattern and funky animal drawings? Well...if you add a QR code that shares a recorded student reflection with who ever scans it, that will top it!

Here is the outline of our most recent work- Zentangle Watercolor Animals (with QR code reflection)

1. Begin with demo of/practicing watercolor techniques

The techniques we focused on were:

• Dry Brush
• Wet-in-wet
• Rubbing Alcohol
• Salt
• Scrape
• Crayon Resist
• Wash

Great video demos here if you need a refresher on basic watercolor techniques.
 
2. Practice drawing a large scale animal or animal head. Outline in Sharpie- remember to vary the thickness of the lines! 

3. Break up the animal shape with lines to create multiple spaces. Paint various watercolor techniques within the spaces.

4. Draw Zentangle patterns over the dried paint spaces. Discuss why it's important to put contrasting patterns next to each other. 

5. Use Croak.It! app to record a 30 second reflection about art making process. The questions we answered were as follows:

6. Use QR Code Maker app to turn the Croak.It! recording into a scan-ready QR code. Print and post on completed artwork.

Students enjoy all the aspects of this project- especially practicing all the various watercolor techniques. Adding the QR code was a nice way to wrap up the work and reflect in an unconventional way.

Graffiti Mola Names

7th graders started their quarter off with a project inspired by this Blick lesson as well as the work of Andrew McCormick's students. To introduce the idea of graffiti, we talked about street art (the ethics behind illegal and legal street art) as well as the idea of reverse graffiti and it's implications.

We also used many resources from http://graffitidiplomacy.com/ to help up along in our name designs. Value shading with colored pencil  and pattern design (with the metallic sticky paper in background) was a big focus of our work and reflected on our rubric.

These were a great first project to begin with since students names were so obviously drawn into the work. Hopefully they help me learn names faster this quarter! 

Check out this graffiti generator for ideas on how to get started drawing names in graffiti styles. 

http://www.graffiticreator.net/

Very cool!

Check out some of our finished work below...