6th grade artists
Grant Wood, American Gothic Parody! Write up to follow.
Value Half and Half Self-Portraits. To continue our understanding of value, students moved onto self-portraits. Students first did a little practice with a magazine portrait. The students cut the picture in half, glued one half, and drew the other. We discussed how to use a pencil as a measuring tool to be able to measure and place the facial features and value into the correct places and have correct size and shape. Using a measuring tool or grid drawing are great ways to create correct proportions. The magazine portraits were hard because they were in color. That means the students had to look at the color and try to change that into a black and white value. This was challenging but not challenging enough to trick these bright 6th graders. Once they completed their magazine portrait it was onto their own self-portrait. They used their pencil as a measuring tool to plan correct proportions and size and used value to create the illusion of form. This was easier for them as the pictures were already in black in white. They had the other side of their picture so they could match the value a little easier. We really focused on looking closely, observing, and finding the lights and highlights, medium values, and the darks and shadows. 6th grade put great effort and concentration into these portraits and I think it shows through their work as they turned out amazing! The students and I got compliments for weeks when these were hung up in the hallway. Woohoo for these talented 6th graders! We closed this project with a final assessment on value and all students improved from the pre-assessment of value and the elements of art!
Happy Holidays! 6th grade took a pre-assessment on the Elements of Art. I discovered that students did not have a clear understanding of what value in art is. Most students thought of it as money or having a value such as in math. They weren't wrong in their thinking, but we wanted to focus on the meaning in art. We dove into value and learned that it is a lightness or darkness of a color. Since it was close to the holidays I decided to try to make it fit in and chose candy canes and lights. Before they started drawing we talked about composition, light source, highlights, overlapping, and of course value. They first drew in pencil, had to overlap at least 2 objects and create an interesting composition. They started to color with oil pastel choosing two or more colors for their candy canes. They left the center strip of the candy cane blank and would later fill that in with white to create the highlight. They blended and smeared the white into the colors to create the highlight. Last they colored their lights anyway they would like along with creating a highlight on the lights. As you can see below, some kids got very creative by adding santa hats and even a horse! They never let me down with their amazing ideas!
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera collage! Students learned about the Day of the Dead, the artists Frida and Diego, their characteristics, who they were as artists, and collage. Their goal was to create an image using nothing but paper, glue, and scissors to show Frida and Diego and their characteristics. We discussed how Frida often wore flowers in her hair, she wore jewelry, and draping clothes. Diego was much bigger than Frida and he liked to wear hats, and painted murals. They were in the form of skeletons because of the Day of the Dead. Students really had to focus on details and fine craftsmanship skills to get all of the details using limited materials. The made Frida and Diego shine through and showed their personalities perfectly!
Clay banks is one of most favorite projects that 6th graders create throughout the year! We started out with really getting to know clay and getting comfortable with it. They learned the stages of clay, tools, firing, and building techniques. Next was some practice and planning. We took a day to experiment and practice with the clay. Students had to make two pinch pots and put them together, connect two slabs, and add a coil to another piece of clay. Next was planning their pieces. The requirement was they had to use a pinch pot, coil, and slab somewhere in their design, it had to be hallow, it had to hold money, and it had to be built in 2 class periods. Students were off with their creativity and they turned out amazing!. They built in 2 class periods and had 2 class periods to glaze. Before glazing they learned about glazes, how they cannot be mixed, not to put glaze on the bottom of their pieces, and that they need 2-3 layers. I was overly excited when I opened the kiln to see all of the amazing masterpieces! 6th grade sure has some talent and creativity! The broken egg with little chicken feet is one of my favorites :) (see below)