Van Gogh Skull Portrait

This year the 7th and 8 th grade students will contribute artworks towards the NCS Dias de Los Muertos Exhibit. One of the 8 th grade projects will be a skull portrait using oil pastels and applying color and technique in the style of Vincent Van Goh.

Back to School

We thought it would be fun to start a Pinterest account to gather ideas for teaching Art. Over the course of the summer we had pinned a ton of ideas including ways to "Jazz Up" the classroom! We kicked off the year super excited about our new ideas and classroom additions.

Quilling

Mrs. Shane piloted a Quilling project that turned out awesome and reinforces our goal to incorporate more paper folding projects into our curriculum. Check these out!

Pop Art Exhibit

We showcased the 7 th grade plaster food sculptures and the 8th grade kinetic gears in the Pop Art Exhibit in May. Nice work, students!

Painting Unit

The 8th grade students wrap up the year with a paint unit where we cover value, monochromatic schemes and surreal landscapes. Their art final is a monochromatic portrait. Shown below are some examples!

Social Issue Collage

This year we modified the collage unit and had the kids create collages around social issues. The students created a visual that symbolized their issue and used key words to create a border around their symbol. Will definitely use this approach next year as it produced a lot of creativity.

Kinetic Gears

The 8th grade kinetic Unit includes an exploding box which I would have liked to include pictures of but most of these were taken home by the kids as soon as they were grade. Based on how much kids wanted these boxes back affirms the project meaningfulness! So I got smart and took pictures of the Kinetic Gears project before they were graded to ensure we would have footage.

The Kinetic Gears project was VERY challenging for the students in a mechanical way that they were not used to. Designing the gears was seamless, but the assemblage of all the moving parts, creating the pulley system and troubleshooting to make the gears spin required patience and perseverance. I think we had about 75% success rate of students who got their gears to spin.

At any rate, the level of engagement despite of the frustration involved coupled with the teamwork resulting in this flashy, interactive sculpture project it a keeper in my book!

Mehndi Hand Messages

The 8th grade pen and Ink unit culminated into a sculpture of a hand filled with Mehndi Designs. Students used radials designs and symbols to fill the space on the front and back of a non latex glove, then stuffed with poly and secured onto a base.

When the sculptures were finished they grouped up with  their hands to create inspirational messages using American Sign Language. They created videos of these messages that were sent to Ms. Hanson who is battling breast cancer.

This project was really meaningful for all and something we will definitely incorporate next year!

Aluminum Tooled Bestiary Ornaments

After visiting a local museum earlier this fall, Ms. Shane and I gleaned the idea of making aluminum tooled ornaments. Since we were teaching the kids about medieval Bestiary, we figured we would use some of the most intriguing beasts as subjects for the students to design their relief sculpture. Students could choose a griffin, dragon, unicorn or gargoyle. Once students finished their sculpture, the applied and antiqued stain around the negative space. They are hanging across our ceiling now and are very cool to look at!