Guest Bloggers : Zach F. and Ray C.

In art last year I made a really cool clay sculpture. It was a picture of Jason I got off the computer and I traced it onto a piece of clay. After that I cut it out with clay tools and I formed texture on how it would feel in real life. It was a really fun project and I would like to do it again. After all, the project turned out great and it went to the art show.--Zach

This year I drew an abstract art in class. I was very proud of it. It got put in the art show. I don't know how I got the idea of it but I did. It was a picture of a flat landscape and a really cool abstract moutain range. The sky, ground, mountain and sun all blended in making it look good. I was very proud.

Check this out: Sculpture faces out of Toilet Rolls

www.loudreams.com/2009/04/06/toilet-paper-roll-sculptures

Greek Pots: Black Figure and Red Figure drawing

The sixth grade students are looking at Greek art and natural figures. They have looked at how pots are made in an earlier unit. Now they are seeing how glazes made a big difference in the art world. With only one color glaze, Greeks made black figure and red figure pottery, and were able to create epic stories on the contours of their pottery. 

Students experimented with working with these methods by creating an oil pastel pot, and drawing over it with another oil pastel, as if it were the glaze. Black figure drawings started with silhouettes of figures drawn in "glaze". They scratched through the glaze with scratchboard tools to create details in their black figure designs.

Red figure designs created details by drawing into their figures with the glaze, and filling in the negative space on their pot compositions with glaze.

Sculpture: George Segal and plaster wrap bandages

We are all familiar with the plaster wrap bandages that are used when someone breaks an arm or a leg. George Segal uses this material to capture the human form exactly.  

George Segal made his first artwork from plaster soaked bandages in 1960.  His work began by covering parts of a body, then plastering the body parts together until they formed an entire person. His work is displayed as unpainted plaster forms, monochromatically painted forms and cast in bronze. 

Sculpture students at Parker have used George Segal's style to make plaster hands. Their assignment was to create a message with the hand, by painting and/or adding other media to that sculpture. 

Some have become hands of friendship or peace, others have transformed into animals, flags and robots. All have found personal statements can be made with the small gestures of a hand.

Donate to Food Banks by making Computer Art

You can donate $1 to Feeding America by making computer art.

Go to breadartproject.com and you will find a museum of toasted bread art. Go to the workshop and make your own art for display in their gallery. For every piece of art you make, they will give $1 to Feeding America. Then go to the galleries and look at what other artists have done with their toasted masterpieces.

Abstract Sculptures

With wire and nylon stockings, we've made abstract sculptures that take on odd mysterious forms. Students first bent wire and coathangers into many angles. They drilled wallboard for a base, and glued the wires into the wallboard. By taking a nylon stocking and covering the wires, wrapping the stocking all the way around the base, they have created new and unusual forms.

THE ASSIGNMENT: First, find an image in this form. It can be a wave, a squirrel, a face, a tree, etc. Then make your viewers see that image clearly by painting and adding items to the scupture, until it is recognizable.

SCULPTURE IS ABOUT COMMUNICATION. How can you manipulate an abstract image, into a concrete idea? What do you want the viewer to go away with?

7th grade art history Research

For those of you who are having a hard time getting all the information for your web quests, you can finish these projects at home.

Just go to edline, to your art classroom and click on the link on the right hand side of the page.

For Hudson River groups, click the hudson river quest.

For all others, click on web quest.

All students will be given a group grade, an individual grade on research and an individual grade for their landscape drawing or painting.