First Full Completed Project!

This was a spectacular week! Students successfully completed their kaleidoscopes, took part in a critique, and wrote their first artist statement. As I explained today, artist statements are written for two important reasons: 1) for the artist to be able to explain their intent to the audience, 2) to show what they have learned throughout the unit. I am looking forward to reading the artist statements this weekend so I can discover more about their beautiful artwork. I will be taking photos and updating the virtual art show sometime this weekend. For now, here are a couple images of completed kaleidoscopes:

This is a reminder that the February Doodle Calendar due date is quickly approaching - Monday, March 2nd! 

Kaleidoscope Name Design

This week was filled with a lot of art-making! On Monday we looked at examples of Islamic art and learned about radial balance - a type of balance where elements are radiating from a center point and the weight is equally distributed around the center. Each day this week the warm-up prompts related to radial balance to reinforce the concept. Students demonstrated their understanding of radial balance by creating a kaleidoscopic image of their name by tracing a stencil of their name as a flipped tessellation. I've been sharing in-progress photos this week of this fantastic project - each name kaleidoscope looks completely different!

Now that students have created the image, they are working on coloring the artwork using a combination of harmonious colors - colors that have a pleasing appearance.

I will post more pictures all next week and add completed artworks to the Virtual Art Show! The Virtual Art Show is where I showcase student work. There is a tab at the top of my blog where you can click to see the slideshow for my current classes and also the slideshows from all my previous students. Students can look at the slideshows from last semester/last year to preview some of the artworks they will be able to complete while in creative arts. The first thing I am going to upload to the Virtual Art Show are the class flags. It is great to have so much artwork on my walls!

Happy Valentine's Day & enjoy the three day weekend!

Kaleidoscope Name Designs

The last two weeks have been quite eventful! Students learned about Islamic art through digital resources and put their knowledge to the test by creating an Islamic-inspired radially balanced kaleidoscope! The best part of the kaleidoscope is that it is created with students' names. This project took a lot of patience and problem solving, but the outcomes are gorgeous! This truthfully is one of my favorite projects because each design turns out gorgeous and is totally unique from the rest. Once the designs were completed, students chose a harmonious color scheme (a group of colors that are pleasing to the eye) to carefully color the artwork.

I've unfortunately been slacking and have not added photos of the balance drawing to the Virtual Art Show, but this weekend I will absolutely take the time to add photos from both projects to show off the beauty this group of talented students have created! In the meantime, here are some snapshots from what students have been working on:

Students have Doodle Calendars to complete each month. The September doodles were so fun -- I got to learn a little bit more about each student through their "my favorite..." drawings. Each month generally has a theme; some of them are goofy exercises just to get them drawing and some will have content-specific prompts to get students practicing techniques. The October Doodle Calendar has fun autumn-related prompts and so far students have been coming up with such creative ideas!

October DC

October DC

October DC

September DC

September DC

One Project Down!

Semester II creative arts students completed their their first project on Friday! I am updating the Virtual Art Show now to display some of their kaleidoscopes. I can't wait to decorate my classroom with their artwork when we finally return to school after all this snow and ice. On Friday students wrote an artist statement on their artwork. This was many students' first time writing an artist statement, and we're going to spend some time in the next few weeks perfecting the art of artist statements.

For our next project, students are going to learn about the Elements of Art. I've set up a digital scavenger hunt for them to complete to practice finding the different elements in artwork and photographs. After the scavenger hunt, students are going to create a choice-based artwork using dry media that displays the seven elements. I'll continue to post photos on social media of the students and their artwork. If you're not following me already, add me!

Twitter: @StrasserArt_OMS / Instagram: @MsStrasserArt_FCPS

Stay warm out there!

Happy Friday!

Today is midterm! It is hard to believe that we are already one eighth of the way through the school year and one quarter of the way through Creative Arts! I have so many more exciting projects planned, and students are doing a fantastic job powering through them.

At the beginning of this week, I introduced our unit on Africa. Students will be working in groups to create a musical performance, including both Djembe drumming techniques and African dance. Before starting this group project, students have been working on a mini visual art project. Students selected an African animal, drew the outline and filled the inside with zentangles, a relaxing, repetitive doodle. Most students are currently working on painting the backgrounds, showing their ability to create a value scale. I am impressed, yet again, with the creativity that all the students are bringing to this project!

I was finally able to hang the kaleidoscope artwork this week, so here are some images from the displays!

Kaleidoscope Name Designs

For the last two weeks, artists worked on Kaleidoscope Name Designs. I was blown away by the final artworks, many of which can be seen on the Virtual Art Show page of this blog. Students learned about Islamic Art and how much of the beautiful designs are created by tessellating a simpler image. Each student created a template of his or her own name and traced it several times by flipping it around the center of their paper, creating several mirrored images of their name. They had to select a harmonious color scheme (colors that present a pleasing appearance) to neatly add color with colored pencils. Here a few of the artworks, but please check out the rest on the slideshow!