Birds Eye View

This was a really fun lesson that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  What a great math/art lesson!  This lesson challenged their conceptual understanding of parallel/perpendicular lines and right angles. although the lesson was quite challenging for my students, most of them persevered.  I was very active during the first few days, buzzing around trying the help them understand.  The hard work payed off and most students were able to create a 3-D city.  These make me dizzy!

I think we will take a break from rulers and rules :-)

Keith Haring triptych

We've got a spontaneous urban art/graffiti theme going on in room B-6/

These triptych's were based on the art of Keith Haring.  Keith was an American artist and activist whose work responded to the street culture of New York City.  To begin this lesson, I presented them with a power point and showed them many examples of his artwork.  Keith did many of his drawings in the subway stations and was well known as "the subway artist".  The students were very interested in this.  It led to a great discussion about the difference between tasteful, positive graffiti and the negative, hasty graffiti that runs rampant through urban areas.

I provided students with a handout contain various Keith Haring line drawings.  We also discussed what some of these drawings symbolize.  Then students created there 5x7 drawings in the style of Keith Haring.  They were encouraged to be creative and combine his imagery in unique ways or come up with their own, which many did. they were asked to color their drawings using the three sets of complimentary colors.  When they finished, they were asked to explain in writing what their drawing represents.  Some of the stories were quite profound!  My students are so intelligent!

Graffiti Name Tag

This is perhaps the most personal lesson we have done so far.  My school is in an urban environment and students see a lot of "graffiti" in their daily life. The students were really invested in this one and most spent nearly two weeks working on them.  We began with a slide shop to look at different types of graffiti art.  Of course, we talked about the difference between legal and illegal graffiti :-).  Next, we watched a you tube video from DK drawing.  Students were able to watch a "professional" graffiti artist complete a tag from start to finish.

There were not too many specific instructions for this one.  I provided the student with a handout of different fonts and that was about it.  They were also given the option of creating their own tag name. I am quite impressed with these works of art!

Japanese Notan Design

The last of our multi-cultural lessons...Notan is a design concept involving the play of light and dark as they are placed next to each other in art.  This is a cut paper project and is a good one for teaching about positive and negative space.

This project only takes about two class periods to complete and the results are always impressive! On day one. each student received a four inch square and was asked to draw two to three shapes per side.  Drawing a shape within the shape was an added challenge.  Then they cut all the shapes out and placed them in an envelop.  On day two they put there puzzle together.  Then they start gluing.  The remains of the square or the "negative space" goes down first in such a way that the longer shapes have enough room to flip out.  Now they flip all of the shapes a out to create a mirror image.

I am amazed at how some were able to achieve such high levels of detail with our not so great scissors.

Aboriginal Dot Paintings

Some stunning student examples of this project!  I am consistently blown away by what my students create given some basic guidelines.  I very much enjoy observing their process.

These paintings are inspired by the Aborigines of Australia who created paintings composed entirely of dots.  Their paintings  feature mostly animals and symbols and are created to tell a story.  The artistic process is emphasized. They are also well known for the X-ray style which is a technique where the artist envisions what might be on the inside of an animal.

The Aborigines believed  in a creation philosophy known as Dreamtime where the earth and all its inhabitants were created by ancestral beings that moved across the earth.

These paintings definitely have a special glow to them.

Well done!