Back by Popular Demand.. Hands!

First came the contour line drawing. You know, the obligatory contour line drawing of a hand that every art teacher has every art student draw.. because it's the law... and i didn't want to be arrested.



Next, as a sketchbook assignment, I asked each student to turn their contour hand drawing into an animal.




Then, I wasn't going to have them paint their hands but someone in class stalked the FaceBook site and saw we painted hands last year so....

Cassette Art

We created line drawings using old technology.. in this case cassette tapes.



We started out by creating line drawings in our sketchbooks.








We then transferred the sketches to illustration board.



We used white glue to hold down the tape and toothpicks to spread the glue.



A surprising number of our artists had never seen cassette tape before.



They didn't really understand how to get the tape out of the cassette.

Observational Drawings

Let's play, Guess What's In The Bucket?



If you guessed frogs, you were correct! Good for you!



Today in class we drew animals from observation. We set up 5 stations and each station had a different life form to draw.



There were bugs...



..and shells...



.. and leaves..



and turtles.



The artists had two, five minute sessions.. the first to create a contour line drawing, the second to create a blind contour line drawing.



After the 2 sessions, the artists moved to the next station.



to draw some more.

Day One Project

Opposites using plastic bags

In teams students had one class period to create a work of art using non-traditional materials. Their artwork had to represent a topic that they were given.

Broken using cereal and popcorn

How they created the art, what they created and where they created it was totally up to their group to decide.

The students were allowed to use any other art materials in the room to help with their project but the main focus of the artwork had to be on the non-traditional materials.

The materials were: plastic bags, cups, newspaper, cereal, post it notes or scantrons

The topics were: broken, grow, season, opposites, caged and shocking

Grow using scantons

If you look through the cards you can see the letters G,R,O,W

Shocking using newspaper

Season using cups

Shocking using cereal and popcorn

Grow using plastic bags

What's Going On Apex Summer 2011?

Here's a quick look at what some of the Apex HS Art students are up to this summer...



Chris, Computer Art student, spent several weeks working on this banner. In fact, he skipped a few other projects in order to keep working on it. The banner was designed for Chris' favorite YouTube channel, a daily diary called Shaytards.

Chris hoped that at least the banner would be looked at , maybe commented on. Well, they did one better. They decided to use his banner on their YouTube page. Check it out --> http://www.youtube.com/SHAYTARDS



Sydney, Art History student, has become the first intern to work for the NC Museum of Art! How very exciting!

Sydney also went to Italy for the summer. She saw the Pieta, The David, and even the Peggy Guggenheim collection... So what art work did she tag me in? A photo of street artist André, know for his distinctive stick figure character. I thought that was pretty cool.



Last but not least, Apex HS graduate and former Art One student, Mark entered his self portrait in the North Carolina Museum of Art special juried exhibition Self, Observed. The exhibition celebrates the exploration of identity that occupied Rembrandt van Rijn throughout his life. We wish him well!

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Art-On-The-Move

The new Art On the Move bus is out and rolling down the streets of Raleigh. The streets of Raleigh are the perfect place for it too cause that's what we wrote about for the background.

The bus contains sentences written by students that include the names of streets. They looked at a map of Raleigh, found a street and wrote a sentence that incorporated the name of the street.

Some examples of their sentences include:

I want world Peace Street.
When I get nervous I Pace Street.
Baby you can drive my Carr Street.

My Posse

What's So Good About a PLN?

PLN is all the buzz in school speak. The basic concept is simple. Teachers working together to write common lesson plans. My PLN goes beyond my school and the basic concept. My PLN helps create incredible ideas for art projects.




Today, I went to my classroom to start planning ideas for next fall. I opened up my email box and looked at all the ideas I emailed myself based on ideas I stole... I mean received as tweets from my PLN. Here are just a few...

Side note: I'll try to give credit where credit is due but hope you can forgive me because there are so many great ideas, I forget where they all come from.




This is a lesson created by @Tiedemania an elementary art teacher from Jersey of all places.

I always do a unit on animation with my Art One students. What's I'd like to do is have them capture the movement of many drawings in chalk and then create a stopmotion animation of those drawings. How cool would that be?




I don't remember who posted this but I love the idea of using this as a line project.

In the past I have given my students the assignment: Create art using outdated technology. Somewhere between that idea and this one is a project I'll do next fall. The tweet was Amazing Cassette Tape Artworks by Erika Simmons.




@kellyrva started folling me on Twitter so I decided to stalk her blog. I love this assignment. It's one of those, "Why didn't I think of that!" ideas.

We always do a unit on perspective and we draw buildings... always buildings.

Games! What a refreshing idea. Will certainly be stealing.. I mean borrowing this project.




Again, not sure who originally posted it but balloon art... are you kidding me?

Here at Apex HS Art we are no stranger to balloons. We made a 40' by 46' mosaic of the Mona Lisa out of balloons.

In the past, I've given balloon sculpture as a project but it was usually a one day event. Just for fun. This fall I think i'll design a full lesson plan around the concept of balloon art... something big!

So there you have it. A glimpse into the first day of planning for next fall and the ideas generated by my PLN.. if they wanted to or not :)

For more about my Posse click here!

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That Kid Never Follows the Rubrics!

I read a post this morning on having students create personal success plans.. and it got me pondering how I could incorporate something like this into my art class.

Creating a Personal Success Plan - A Sensible Alternative to Standardized Tests

There is a struggle that occurs in art classes when there is a student who wants to do a project her own way. The art teacher has created a lesson plan with a strict grading rubric and along comes the flighty art student who doesn't want to follow the rules but wants to express herself.

The teacher is bent because the student isn't following the plan. The student is bent because, after all, this is art class and you should be allowed to do whatever you want in art class. So what does the art teacher do?

This is where I think a personal success plan could come in handy. The student could create a plan on day one. This would start a dialog and hopefully uncover the student's interests and possible directions. The plans could be revisited serval time during the year to help continue the discussion.

Then, at the beginning of a new project, the plan could be used to discuss the direction the student wants to take while still keeping her work inside (or at least near) the framework of the rubrics.

ian
@iansands
http://www.zonkeystret.com