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Fortune Teller Critique

Today 6th grade artists engaged in a Fortune Teller Critique, which is something that I came up with when I was student teaching. Students worked in groups of 3 or 4 and used a paper fortune teller to generate questions to discuss about one another's artwork. The critique is very helpful in providing feedback about one's own artwork to use when they fill out their Artist Statement next class. Some of the questions included:

• What  makes this artwork successful? How does it meet the objectives for the assignment?
• Discuss one Principle of Design used within the artwork?
• What does the artwork make you think about? Or what do you think the artist wanted you to think about?

Overall, I think the critique was a success! It allowed students to talk about topic other than Elements and Principles, and it will certainly help make the Artist Statement run smoother since they already have a lot of feedback!

Dürer Relief Print

7th and 8th grade artists were introduced to art of the Northern Renaissance, which is my personal favorite art period. I love the richness in the paint and the extreme realistic rendering the master artists were able to achieve. One of these impressive artists is Albrecht Dürer, an artist known for his many self-portrait paintings as well as his woodcut prints.

Self-Portrait at 28, 1500
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Durer_selfporitrait.jpg/220px-Durer_selfporitrait.jpg

Rhinocerus woodcut
https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/46/150746-004-3F4BD323.jpg

The greatest thing about this rhino artwork is that Dürer drew it based on a written description - Dürer never actually laid eyes on one of these animals before drawing it! For the most part, the drawing is pretty spot on; I admire the variety of textures and details he added to the animal, which is why this is the inspiration for our next project! Students chose an animal and have been practicing drawing textures, using contour lines to create their animal because there can be no value or color in creating a print.

More details will come your way once students begin creating the actual print block. For more information about Northern Renaissance artwork, take a look at the slideshow on the 7/8 Art page!

Rangoli

5th grade artists are in the middle of one of my favorite projects: Rangoli! Students started by creating a radially balanced design to simulate the beautiful Indian artwork, which is a temporary art created with colored sand, rice, or flowers to celebrate Diwali. Below is a video of someone creating a design using sand:

Check out the Rangoli slideshow on the 5Art page for more information and video examples

Once students finished their patterns, they chose 4 analogous colors (colors next to one another on the color wheel) to complete the artwork. Students used bright chalk pastel on top of black construction paper to create contrast. Here are some works in progress:

Mask painting

6th grade students were just as happy as I was to have Art yesterday! Artists are working on painting their masks, using neutral colors first, and then adding emphasis to one area by adding a tertiary color. A lot of progress was made in class yesterday!

MAY Fair 2017

Come out to support local FCPS artists, including 4 from FCCS, at MAY Fair on Saturday, May 6. It is an art show where artists will be selling their artwork. We will have live music and activities - I will be there giving free Henna tattoos. I hope to see many familiar faces there!

Congratulations to Nyah S. (6th), Zoe M. (7th), Alex A. (8th), and Sarah K. (8th) who were all chosen to participate in MAY Fair!

ASL Hands

7th and 8th grade artists are working with my favorite medium for their current project: charcoal! After viewing a demonstration and practicing both additive (starting with a blank paper and adding charcoal to the page) and subtractive (starting with a darkened paper and erasing to show the picture) drawing methods, students chose which technique they wanted to do to draw their hands. Students must use American Sign Language to fingerspell three of their initials and draw what they see. Period 4 has had two class periods to work on their artwork so far, and I am impressed!