Op Art Hands - 6th Grade

Since we came back from holiday break on a Thursday and as often happens after a break, many students are absent, so starting something large always creates an issue. I decided to use a quick short lesson on op art to fill in the gap. That way we didn't have to jump into a really large project and this allowed us sometime to get back into the swing of things. This small project was a relief, especially when I came down a severe case of strep the following Monday. It was just easy enough that a sub could teach it to the students who trickled in but not something that just wasted time, we don't have time for that in the Geisler Art Room.

For this project students drew their hand (most traced) but some actually thought about the position their hand was in and then drew it. Then using markers and a ruler they drew straight lines until they hit the outline of their hand, at that point they bent the line to make it look like it was traveling over their fingers. We found out that you want to start by drawing a bunch of lines in one color, at various distances on your paper, then switch to another color. By trying to alternate each color constantly across the page it takes too much time and tends to get frustrating but by jumping around with the colors the projects seemed to go faster and was more successful.

Students were graded on the following criteria:
  - Did the lines gently bend over their hand
  - Could you see the hand pop out of the lines with out having the pencil line
  - Did the students use 3 or more colors
  - CRAFTSMANSHIP (was it done neatly)

Color Collision - 6th Grade

The 6th grade art students have been really busy and unfortunately that has meant that I have had a lot less time to write on my blog than I would like. The color collision project is one that I love to make with my 6th graders as it teaches them the color wheel, color blending, and watercolor methods.

For this project we start by talking about and exploring the color wheel. We discuss what colors mix to make primary, secondary, and tertiary (intermediate) colors. We then discuss different watercolor methods such wet on wet painting vs wet on dry painting. We also discuss what the best way to paint our designs to make the colors blend and not create harsh lines between colors. In the end we come up with beautiful designs that have taught us so much about color in art.

Students were graded on the following criteria:

  - The use of organic shapes

  - Colors were mixed correctly, with not line between connecting colors

  - Colors are in the correct color wheel order

  - Design fills the paper in an organized way

  - Background is painted black and painted neatly

  - CRAFTSMANSHIP

The MLK Project - Creative Expressions Club

It has been absolutely crazy in the Geisler Art room, which I love.  With the every other day schedule it seems like we are crawling through each project and with right around 100 students per grade it takes even longer to grade each project.  On top of all our art room chaos we have been creating some wonderful projects in the creative expressions club. Students have been working on various crafts, we started fixing a mural and plan to complete that in our next few sessions. Our newest project however was brought to us by Geisler Middle School's Assistant Principal Mr. Gustitus. He came to us last minute looking for some help with the Geisler display at the district Martin Luther King celebration. Since I have never been able to attend the MLK celebration I am not sure what the display looks like but from what I been told it hasn't been something to write home about. I am hoping that this year with all of the work done by both my students, myself and the creative expressions club we have a better display.
Our concept started with one idea, we thought about taking his image and combining it with phrases from his speeches. However, as often happens in art we started thinking about what we needed and our plans changed. In the end we decided to go with something that represented our unique diversity at Geisler. Martin Luther King's portrait was paired with his words "I have a dream" in 8 different languages, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Persian, Japanese, Arabic, and Hmong. These are all languages spoken by students in our school. While 20 languages are spoken in our school, I only choose 8. These 8 were selected on the ease of student accessibility; these languages are spoken by art students and were written on the final art work by the students and visually less is more. With the project being created last minute size became issue and so to try to put all of the languages spoken by students on the art work would have made the image to congested. Finally, we choose to frame the art work with images of students from Geisler our building really is keeping MLK's dream alive.
Well enough said here is the final product.  I apologize for the horrible image as soon as I get the art work back I will take a better photograph.