2/1/16: First day of a new month and first day of quarter three in art!
Quarter 3 art has begun! To start off the quarter, students are making their mark on our classroom. Because new quarters and new classes often start off with lots of talking and transitional things (like learning the classroom and about each other) we decided to take the very first day to just make. Get our hands moving and get some movement out of our system before we have to hunker down for a bit of talking...then we'll get back to making, and do lots of it!
So today, on the first day of art, students were asked to make their mark on our classroom, show their piece of ownership before we get busy working on projects. For this one day project, students were asked:
HOW CAN I EXPRESS SOMETHING ABOUT MYSELF THROUGH NON-REPRESENTATIONAL (ABSTRACT) MARKS (LINE, FORM, COLOR, PATTERN, TEXTURE, ETC.) USING PAPER?
Students then cut a 4x4" square out of their choice of colored paper and then added their marks to this square to express something about themselves to hang on the wall in the classroom/hallway and make their mark.
Check back for photos of some of the marks students made today!
2/2/16: Day two in art!
Day two of quarter 3 went well! Today we did a scavenger hunt as a way for students to learn about the classroom and the teachers! Students specifically had to locate certain things/areas of the classroom and not only learn where they are but more importantly come up with a rule/expectation for that particular area. This way, the students themselves are coming up with the rules/expectations and we don't have to talk forever about what is expected. Then we had a fun questionnaire where students had to guess which teacher applied to which fun fact! The students seem to really like this and we have a lot of fun with it as well! As an extra part to this activity, we had students write a fun fact about themselves, then teachers read through the fun facts and the students had to guess which one of their peers applied to the fact! It was a great way for both the students and teachers to get to know each other! Tomorrow, we will be making our art journals and portfolios!
2/3/16: Getting into some art making
Today in art, students made their art journals and portfolios. We make art journals for each student so that they have a place to take notes, write down ideas, sketch ideas, write goals for the day and free draw! After making those, 8th graders got a chance to get into some art making. 8th grade projects this year focus a lot around the idea of layers and how layers can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, you might have a piece of art that has layers of paper, but then you might have a piece of artwork that has layers and layers of paint on top of canvas or maybe you have a digital photograph that has 10 layers of edits (photographs layered on top of each other, filters layered on top of each photo) but when printed, the layers are so well blended that you would have no idea that there are layers!
Today and throughout the term, we will ask students to create square layer studies. Students are given a square piece of paper and then are asked to create a dynamic surface using layers in whatever interpretation that may be. This is sort of a practice project that goes on throughout the term so that students are constantly playing around and experimenting with different kinds of layers. We hope that these square layer studies will inspire students to take away techniques, materials, mediums and ideas from these and use them in their actual projects.
Check out some examples that students made in the 15-20 minutes that they had today to play around with this idea of layers...more to come throughout the term!!
Moving forward, tomorrow we will be introducing our first project, which will be the newspaper project. We will begin by watching a Ted talk video on street artist JR. Click the link to watch the video because it is pretty amazing!! He has made quite an impact on the world fighting to get people's stories from all over heard. We will watch this video and then discuss what students thought about it, so far in both term 1 and 2 students have been really moved by JR (click link to check out his website and all the work he has done) and his work!
JR
For this project, students will be continuing to think about this theme of layering. We will begin by brainstorming a list of current social / world topics / issue. I put topics/issues because last term we used the word issues and we noticed that almost everyone chose a negative issue that is going on in our world, which is totally ok and at the time was very relevant, but we felt like we should broaden the potential for some positive topics that are currently happening in our world as well. So we will brainstorm as a group a list of contemporary social or world topics or issues. Then students will spend a few minutes figuring out which topic they would like to choose for their newspaper project. Next they will search through current newspapers, cutting out articles, text, pictures, etc. that they might want to use in their project. Part of this project has to do with layers, but the other part, is learning about emphasis and editing, figuring out which pictures, text, articles are the most important to emphasize their topic and which parts can be edited out or covered up. Check back for more updates on this project as we move forward!
2/22/16: Jumping right back into making after February break!
8th Grade students jumped right back into their newspaper projects today. Students are at different stages - some are finishing gluing all their clippings down, some have begun the second layer focusing on covering, revealing and emphasizing, and some have reached the third layer where they are bringing in an aspect of their hand. This idea of showing their hand does not mean to literally show their physical hand in their piece. Instead it asks students to add a layer that shows the artist has done something to the piece. The first step is just cutting and gluing, the second step, covering, so the third step is where they can go back into the piece and add details of drawings or painting or adding a three-dimensional aspect to it, something that shows the artist has done something.
For this third layer we have introduced materials such as pen and ink (using the calligraphy pens with the ink), creating your own stencils, oil pastels, watercolor and more! Check back for some images of in progress works!
3/4/16: Some finished newspaper projects!
3/4/16: Continued...
Now that students have for the most part wrapped up their newspaper project, they are moving on to learning about and practicing observational drawing and specifically facial features and proportions. They have begun practicing by making sketches of facial features and are then going to use some of them to make a self-portrait journal page. This journal page is imagined to be a page that represents the students through different kinds of media and imagery. They might use text, images, symbols, metaphors and also some observational drawing. Check out some images of students practicing!
3/7 - 3/11: Progress on our self-portrait journal page project...
8th Graders have been making great progress on their self-portrait journal page...check out some images of their work in progress!
3/21 - 3/25: A week of lots of progress!
8th graders have been hard at work doing lots of different things - some finishing their self portrait journal pages and others have moved onto working on our new project! Our new project is called LAST WORD - last word is a group project where students are working together to decide on one word that describes their overall experience at the Ottoson as their time here is quickly coming to a close! Once they have decided on a word, they will think about how they will transform that word into a single material installation somewhere in the school. Students are encouraged to use the thesaurus to find synonyms of their words to try and find one that really offers a visualization that could be translated into a material installation. Students learned about what installation art is and then were challenged to choose a material that related to the word they chose, then figure out how they plan to manipulate it into an installation and finally figure out a space in the school that will house the installation. These are really exciting projects and the students seem really excited about them, check out some in progress works so far!!
CHECK OUT ART SHOW PHOTOS UNDER THE OMS ART SHOW TAB!
Hover over the 'OMS ART SHOW' tab and click on 2016: Quarter 3 Art Show to see pictures from our amazing show!