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 

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.

(Mini) Zentangle Landscapes

With all the "freeze" days last week, our Zentangle Landscapes became smaller to adjust for the time loss. The small composition has created very intricate pattern and incredible detail. I think we'll continue with the reduced size in future years! 

Project updates- Zentangle Still Life

Zentangle Still Lifes

What a successful project! We used Sharpie for our Zentangle backgrounds and chalk pastel for our still lifes. Focus was on variety of pattern as well as varied line thickness and value blending. At the beginning of the lesson, the still life image was projected on screen to allow for large classes to view it in detail. We also saved the image on our Edmodo class page for easy access anytime!

Zentangle Animals

We switched out our Zentangle Landscapes for Zentangle Animals this quarter and the results were amazing! Most students were very successful with this project after we practiced Zentangle patterns as well as watercolor techniques. Great job 7th graders!

Zentangle Landscapes

This project proved to be both very challenging and a lot of fun. Creating pattern isn't as easy as it looks. Zentangle patterns can be difficult to think up. We used some 4-step Zentangle pattern hand-outs to get going but most of us created our own complex patterns as well. The landscape format gave this "doodle" drawing a new layout and scratch-art and tooling foil gave the project some varied texture. Varied line thickness was also highlighted.

Zentangle Landscapes

After a day of practicing landscapes and zentangle patterns, 7th grade students were asked to combine the two ideas into an abstract drawing. Tomorrow we'll be adding a couple of scratch-art collage pieces to create contrast and emphasis.

Check back soon for more progress!

Book Advertisment Posters

7th graders learned about different print advertising techniques in both English and Art this quarter. Some of those techniques included Emotional, Problem/Solution and Testimonial. Since it is "I Love to Read" month, students were asked to make an advertisement for a book that they have read. We "greened-screened" ourselves into the book cover to create a poster that hopefully attracts some new readers! We also added a zentangle drawing for a splash of pattern.

Zentangles for Ad Project- check here 7th graders!