Painting Bootcamp

Last week, the Art One class explored a week+ in Acrylic Painting Bootcamp. The purpose of this intensive week was to give the student's a foundation in using acrylic paint. We had a loose theme of "landscape" to give them a starting point. however, it was more about learning the painting process.

We started the week with a few simple color theory exercises. My philosophy is that exercises should be exercises, not projects. Students should spend just enough time running through a color theory exercise to gain knowledge. No sense in spending three weeks on a color wheel.

Some times mixing colors works and sometimes the unexpected happens. That's ok, that's how we learn. :)

We even explored a few tippy tappy trees, Bob Ross style.  We watch a few Bob Ross videos including ones on painting clouds, painting mountains the one were Bob Ross cleans Picasso's clock in an epic rap battle!

I asked the students to create black and white pencil sketches of what they wanted to paint. Then we went to the iPad lab and we learned a few techniques in Sketchbook Pro. The students had the opportunity to create digital color sketches on the iPads before returning to the art room to create using acrylics.

When we started painting, the students had reference photos as well as their pencil sketches and their digital iPad sketches.

A digital version above and the final acrylic version below that.

A digital version above and the final acrylic version below that.

Now the Art One students have a great foundation in acrylic painting. They can use this medium for any project going forward for this class or any other future classes they may take.

Artist Solve Problems - Challenges

We are starting a new unit with Art One.. Artists Solve Problems.

This unit deals with limitations artists either have to endure or that they set on themselves. To kick off the new unit, we broke the class into three groups. Each group rotated through three different "limitations". Here is a look at all three...

Limitation One: Toast!

For the first challenge, each team was given a loaf of bread and three different methods of toasting. These included a toaster, a toaster oven and a heat gun. The teams then had to decide to work in groups or individually to create a work of art using only toast. Above, a group image of Mickey Mouse.

I snuck in a Zonkey in...

Limitation Two: Pancakes!

We've all seen the pancake art where someone creates one of the characters from Frozen out of pancakes. Well just how hard is this challenge? Pretty hard!

Still, as a teacher I am please to say that even though our pancakes weren't quiet as well done as the ones on Pinterest, my students did learn to make pancakes.. an experience many had never had... and really, what could be more important than knowing how to make pancakes?

So in theory, we did everything right...

This is our Donald Trump pancake... Nailed it!

If you try this, don't forget the syrup. It's one of the four major food groups; candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup.

Limitation Three: iPads

For this challenge, each team member was given an iPad and told that they could create anything they wanted but that they must use all iPads for one team image. 

This is easier said than done because first, there was a time limit of just over a half hour. In that time they had to agree how to use the iPads, which apps to use, what image to create, etc. A lot of group decisions which isn't always the easiest of tasks. 

This team did a sensational job of going through the process and in the end created a great image!

.

Artists Steal

Here is a look at some of the project, some still in progress, from our Artists Steal unit. Our artists could borrow, steal, appropriate or intertextualize (is that even a word?) to create their final works. Above, the Scream has a zipper for a mouth. See how many of the following you can "get".

Answering Essential Questions: part 2

Our latest unit, Artists Answer Essential Questions asked our students to first consider a word and then ask questions about the word. Once students developed their questions, they were tasked with responding to their own question by creating a work of art. Media determined by the artists. You can view a other responses to essential questions here.

-------

Above: Banana Corn

"The word i chose was societal standards. Everyone is different, however society likes to put everyone into boxes and label us. We have to know every detail about ourselves, and if they don't fit into the nicely labeled boxes then we have to conceal them in order to fit in. It's like trying to fit a triangle in a square hole. It doesn't work. This poses the question, "How do societal standards effect individuals?" I tried to represent this question by taking multiple of one object and throwing in an object that is clearly different but trying to appear the same as the others." ~ Sarah

 a Target brand crayon box to look like it was Crayola

This image never existed.

The word I chose for this project was temporary, and my question is "Can art truly be temporary if it is captured by photos?" The purpose for the artwork to only last for a short while or only be seen by few people is completely destroyed if that artist keeps a picture of the piece. The medium I used for this piece is a product called Buddha Board which is a surface that turns black when painted on with water. As the water evaporates from the canvas, the image slowly fades- lasting only temporarily. I wanted the concept of ephemerality to reappear in the subject of the piece also, so I drew the life cycle of a monarch butterfly. I grided my drawing of the life cycle and painted each square on the Buddha Board one at a time and then took a photo. Then, I put all the photos together to recreate the original drawing as a collage." ~ Tess

They will never be that exact age ever again...

"For my essential question I came up with, "How is youth captured in photography?". I used water color and pen ink to make the Polaroid camera words and photos. Then I mounted them on a piece on illustration board painted black. I used the baby pictures of multiple people to show how their youth is captured in photographs. And they will never be that exact age ever again except in that photograph." ~Brooke

Change

"The question I chose to use was "What evokes change?". One answer to what evokes change is wanting to fit in and be accepted. To show this, I decided to to use a caterpillar hanging off a branch getting ready to make a chrysalis. This shows the caterpillar getting ready to change. I also chose to put butterflies around the caterpillar to show what influences the caterpillar to change.  Someone said this idea reminded them of the ugly duckling which I agree with." ~ Maddy

No response

"The past couple of months I've been a ball of anxiety and espresso. between school, work, college plans, and planning now two foreign mission trips my to do list has been thoroughly packed and some things just haven't made the cut. one of  those things being art, i didn't put time, energy or the mental capacity aside for doing any art. so when this project was introduced it was another thing i had to do and i disregarded it and put it in the back of the line. 

No i did not have a question to inspire this piece, and i love that. my life and everything i have going on requires questions and/or answers and quite frankly i don't have all of the answers and that stresses me. the reason for this project was to avoid questions, have it clean, simple and organized so the viewer may take it as they perceive it." ~ Rachel

How has beauty evolved?

"For my project, I chose the word "beauty". At first, I wanted to do a portrait of a young, beautiful woman but eventually changed my idea to do something completely different. My question changed to "How has beauty evolved?"; so I decided to do an evolution of makeup from the 1920s to the present day, 2015.

I wanted to do this project because a lot of people underestimate makeup, or cosmetics, to be a kind of art. Many techniques we learn in class can also be applied to the human face; like contouring, shading, value, lines, color, etc. By researching about the different styles of makeup, I applied certain eyeshadow colors, foundation colors, and variations of lines on her face." ~ Poorna

Purpose

"What makes us useless? Are people born useless? Are there objects in life that are useless? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything is useless until given a purpose. I thought of different examples like how a seed turns into a flower or how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly and how they were once nothing special, but now something beautiful and purposeful. My favorite idea was how an ugly, fat pig turns into delicious, beautiful bacon." ~ Girl 2

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark!

As we head into our next unit, Artists Steal, I thought it might be a good time to learn a very important art rule... Don't be afraid of the dark!

Yes, contrast can be our friend but sometimes art students can be a little intimidated by the dark. For this two day value and shading bootcamp, we "stole" a portrait we were interested in duplicating.

"What!? You just snagged a pic off the net?" Well, yes. Because this is a workshop on contrast and little else. Focus people.

So here is a look at few of these exercises. This group had no problem and I'm pretty sure from now on none of them will be afraid of the dark.