Modigiliani Inspired Portraits

This was a great end of the year project and the results were awesome! I found that my students that normally do not excel in art were coming up with these awesome projects!

Lego Egyptian Figures

To do a little cross curricular lesson with students and their social studies unit we did Egyptian Art Legos. We discussed proportion. When then looked at the canon of proportions in Egyptian Art and compared it to the consistent proportion of lego figures. We also went into detail about how Legos have been created based on key parts and events of history. I even made one of those goofy videos with my face. The students loved it. I gave them the opportunity to bring in Lego men/women to draw. As a class we created our own canon of proportions for the Lego figure.


 The following are student examples: 

60's Style Lyrical Posters

This was a crosscurricular lesson with English 8 students. The students had a inresidence poet come and it talk to them about the 60's era. Students viewed several examples of the culture during that time. Each student created several poems with the poet.

Creating the art work:
Students discussed the lyrcis of that time and choose their favorite lyric. Including images, patterns, and colors that were popular. Following are some student examples.

Mosiac Portraits

This project was with 8th graders. Materials used were cut up gift cards, glue and a modified photography using Photoshops' cut out filter.

Key to success in this project was to make sure that students cut pieces smaller and left space. Sometimes having to cut down pieces to a space.

In the Tiki-Tiki-Tiki Room

My students are loving this project. As they finish up their projects are turning out SPECTACULAR! Their favorite is probably the crumpling of their work into a ball and then painting over it with black tempera. I saw this lesson on an awesome blog and I am sad to say I do not remember it. Here are some of their finished pieces.

As students finished up they added a written piece about their Tiki's prediction. The myth was that the tiki's could smell things before they occurred.

Expressive Charles Burchfield Landscapes

We learned about Charles Burchfield because conveniently the Burchfield Nature Center is down the street from our school. I modified this lessons for different classes due to their abilities and so on. I thought this one was a great use of color and I loved how it turned out.

Operation Beautiful

As a fun little project I thought I would introduce my art club students to Operation Beautiful. Which was started to send positive messages to females about self image. It is a really great program and I love how artsitic some of the post-its are.
 Check out the following video:

Students started creating their own post it's to specific teachers to be put on their door. One thing I would do differently is to talk about more generic sayings that could be posted on other teachers doors that they may not know. They loved the idea of this project and came up with some awesome things! 

Egyptian Profile

The 6th graders learned about Egyptian Art before making their profile. I actually was about to start a lesson and quickly changed it due to them learning about Egypt in Social Studies. Cross-curricular learning whoop whoop! Most of the students turned out great. When I have more time I will display more examples but here is one.

Canyonscapes

When browsing through these awesome blogs I found a lesson I loved. It was based off the book WoW! America by Robert Nubeucher. When I went to go purchase the book it was ridiculousy expensive ($100) due to the fact it was now out of print. Some how I found it for $18 and I've noticed amazon has acquired some used copies.

With my 5th graders I read them the book WOW!America! They loved the colorful illustrations especially the one of the Grand Canyon. When they created their landscapes instead of using tempera paint I used watercolor. I give the students plates so they were able to mix up colors and they turned out awesome!

I have found my 5th grade class this year have been the ones that really shine. They are more open to making their own artistic choices!