Chess Anyone?

I thought it would be fun to sculpt in the context of making a game, so I had my 7th grade students create chess pieces and boards as part of a sculpture unit.  Most students worked with a partner for this assignment as each game needed 2 kings, 2 queens, 4 rooks, 4 bishops, 3 knights, and 16 pawns.  We discussed how to play chess, which only a handful of students knew, as well as what typical chess pieces look like.  Each group had to have a theme for their chess pieces, some of which include: fruit, the beach, old technology vs. new technology, tennis, music, people, animals, candy/Halloween, Christmas, buildings, and Harry Potter.

The biggest challenge in this project was making the pieces large enough to be understood and small enough to fit on a board.  It was also challenging to make multiple sculptures of the same thing.  Some groups created an assembly line, while others sculpted each individual piece.  The boards required focus and care as well since there needed to be a color scheme and careful application of color.  We will all play chess the last day of art class and test out the pieces.

6th grade exploratory

I meet with all of the 6th graders for 6 weeks at a time, every day for about 45 minutes.  It's not much time, but given other art programs, it's about the same as meeting once per week throughout the year.  Over the course of the 6 weeks, students explore drawing, painting, sculpting, and design projects.

So far this year, my two 6th grade classes have done a cartooning unit, concentrating on drawing facial features and inking their portraits like real cartoonists.  They drew themselves as well as each other and improved their observation skills in the process.  I'm finding more and more that as students use computers at a younger age, their fine motor skills need some practice.  Using pencils and working with clay really helps to exercise these muscles and improve patience and problem solving skills.  The sculpture projects the 6th graders worked on were "squeeze cups" and relief faces.  I took a sculpture class over the summer with Jill Getzan who taught a handful of handbuilding ceramics projects.  One of them was a "squeeze cup" which I thought was a good alternative to the mugs the 6th graders created last year.  To make a squeeze cup, students rolled out a slab of clay, incorporated different textures into the clay and then cut a rectangular shape to create the walls of the piece.  They then adhered the clay using the scoring and vinegar method (vinegar helps bond clay together) and formed a base to fit their cup.  The final step is to squeeze the cup with your hand so it will dry to fit nicely in your hand when you pick it up.

Sixth graders also created relief faces from clay.  I walked them through the steps to sculpt eyes, noses, mouths, ears, and hair.  Following our cartooning unit, students were already in tune with drawing facial features, so sculpting them was the next step.  Students were surprised about their accomplishments and focused well to create the features in their clay portraits.  These will be painted after they are fired in the kiln.

Currently, students are working on a mixed media project that focuses on sign language.  All students learned how to sign their names using American Sign Language and then of course, we drew our hands in each letter position.  We then explored a variety of mediums to add color, texture, and design to each hand drawing using watercolors, watercolor pencils, ink and calligraphy pens, salt sprinkled on top of the watercolors, and even markers with water color brushes to make the color run.  These paintings were collaged onto paper using magazine cut-outs and construction paper.

The final project of our exploratory unit is a Oaxacan inspired animal painting.  With our introduction to painting techniques with the sign language project, we will explore color further while painting animals that students choose to focus on.  This is a new project in our exploratory rotation and I'm very excited to see how it will turn out!

Drawing Skills

In the beginning of the trimester, I always try to focus students on improving their drawing and observation skills.  Everyone is motivated and eager and I find it is easier to introduce some tougher drawing skills earlier in the trimester, rather than later on.  This year, my 7th graders practiced the concept of creating three dimensional space using paper and charcoal.  They folded an accordion with paper and drew their accordion using charcoal.  It was a challenge to see the many shadows and tones in the white paper and for them to learn how to translate the different shadows into different tones of charcoal.  With my 8th graders, they chose an object in the art room to draw using 3 different mediums.  I called this the "triptych project" so we could also discuss what a triptych is, and a diptych, and then we tried to figure out what we would call an image with 4, 5, and six sections...

From this point, my students are ready to tackle more complex artistic problems and able to incorporate shading more easily into their drawings and paintings.  The 8th graders are working on self-portraits next which incorporates their knowledge of shading and observation.

Hillview Design

Last Spring, a friend of mine emailed me a contest google ran where students all around the country visually altered the word Google to express themselves creatively.  This gave me an idea for the first project of the year for my 7th and 8th grade art students.  I had them use the word Hillview to express something about their dreams: what they wish for in the world, what they dream about, what they wish for themselves, or what they wish for the school.  We also talked about the elements of art (shape, form, texture, color, value, line) and principles of design (unity, balance, color, contrast, shape).  I had them split into groups and discuss the definition of one term in their own words.  When we shared out, they had intuitively created very accurate definitions.  They had to incorporate 3 elements of art or principles of design into their Hillview Designs.  Many incorporated color into their designs using colored pencils.