7th Grade Celebrity Portraits

There are two words in the art language that really give me the "ughs" and the eye rolls, "grid" and "portrait." It really amazes me how little ruler skills my 7th graders possess... I mean we're talking down right pitiful. My co-worker friends know, that when I say I am going to do grid portraits, that they are supposed to try to talk me out of it... but I must be a glutton for punishment. 

First we talk value, drawing pencils, blending stumps and proportion via a powerpoint, prezi or other type of slide share. Next students complete value practice:

After the practice creating value, they practice using it while utilizing a grid:

After all that practicing... they are "ready" to draw a grid. First I ask them which celebrity they want to draw and we find a picture they like, then I print it in gray scale. I record myself creating a grid on the paper and show that to them:

I try to video my demos, which is new for me because after 13 years, I finally realized that gathering the students around a demo table was not as successful as I'd always thought. They tend to pay much more attention when they are in their seats, and are watching them projected on a screen. 

After they draw the grid on their printed portrait, they watch another demo:

After the demos, they jump right in. After a lot of "ughs" and eye rolls, (from me) they are well on their way to creating a portrait in correct proportion, that actually looks pretty good. Here are a few of the completed portraits:

***end "ughs" and eye rolls***

Lion's Club International Peace Poster Contest 2017

When I first started at my current school, there was this older gentleman who came to visit me one day during the work week. He was talking to me about this peace poster contest as though I knew exactly what he was talking about. Turns out that our local Lions Club, sponsors our school to participate in the International Peace Poster contest. 

We are incredibly fortunate to be able to participate in this contest, for it holds so many opportunities for us to talk about peace and how it effects all of us (especially in today's world) 

When I first started participating in the contest, I had all of my 7th and 8th graders participate which seemed like a good idea at the time, but then I realized that not all of them wanted to do it, and therefore I lost a lot of class time for something they were not invested in. Eventually our school system adopted an intervention and enrichment class time (its 30 minutes Tuesday-Friday, I'll make a blog post all about that soon) and I realized that I could use one of those sessions to really get some quality posters for the contest.

Our local Lion's Club sponsor offers a $200 first prize, $100 second prize and $50 third prize, which is crazy generous.  This year I had 18 students turn in a poster and the winners did an excellent job.
They were able to use any 2D material to complete their entry. 

This is my first place winner.. a 6th grade student! I do not have her in class yet, but she has some serious potential! She used copic markers mostly, to complete her poster. Her poster will continue on in the competition and will go against the other SCPS winners, from there it would go on to the state competition.

 This is my second place winner, she is an 8th grade student. 

This is my 3rd place winner, another 8th grade student. 

These are a few of the other more impressive entries :) 

If you have a local Lions Club, perhaps you might be able to reach out to them to ask if they would be willing to sponsor your school and your students! 

8th Grade Graffiti

Something magical happened today... my 8th graders actually loved a project intro.. and I mean LOVED it! 

There was excitement, laughter, and smiles galore. That. Never. Happens. I feel like in this day and age, as art teachers, we have to go above and beyond to get our students engaged... they used to get excited about art.. but here lately Ive felt like a failure because it seems like no matter what I come up with, they couldn't care less.

Until today....

They came in and immediately began designing their own Tag, or signature. They were given 10 minutes to design their tag. 

Then each student was given an envelope that looked like this:

Their card either said "Legal" or  "Illegal"  It had a location, a quote and if they were Legal, who they had to request permission from. 

The idea was that they write a positive message on a window in the building, using a window marker. If they were "Legal" they had to request permission. If they were "Illegal" they had to sneak up to their location and try not to get "caught." Teachers around the building were given 'tickets' to hand out if they found a student who did not have permission to write on a window. 

When they returned to class following their graffiti adventure, they were excited and winded! We had a big class discussion about legal vs. illegal graffiti, playing into our own graffiti experiences. The bathrooms at our school are filled with graffiti, we talked about how it is pointless and what were some of the things that we could do to make it stop. They sat, they listened, they were engaged, and it was WONDERFUL! 

Next we will play with www.graffiticreator.net to learn about different graffiti styles and flourishes. Each student will create their own name in graffiti style using various materials including watercolor-colored pencils, markers, paint, etc. 

Early Finishers

In a middle school art class, I have students who have completed the project on day two, and students who won't finish until day seven. 

This leaves a lot of down time for students and after 13 years of teaching (currently my 7th in middle) I've finally devised a plan. Some options students always have are to play board games that I have purchased at goodwill over the years, or they can read, free-draw or just sit and talk with their friends. However,  I do have some more anti-social students who would rather do something on their own but are not creative, nor self-motivated enough to come up with something to do, so I have created the "Early Finisher" notebook. 

Inside the notebook, the lesson ideas are organized by medium:

These projects are images that I found on pinterest.com, that I thought students would be able to complete independently with little to no help from me. Thus far it has been largely successful. I write a little bit of info to help guide the students, but they understand that these are extra projects that are not graded. 

As far as material management goes, I find that students who have "free" time because they have completed their work, who actually want to do more art, will be respectful of the materials. 

I hope this will be useful to some of you :)