4 Years of AP Art!

I am in a very reflective mood. This year, I taught my fourth group of AP artists. It is SO good for me as an educator to see how far I have come in my abilities to teach and mentor students at this level. I could not be more proud of these girls and the hard work they put in for the scores they received.

Throughout this year (and second semester in particular), I aimed to make the class really special, and to cultivate a collaborative learning environment beneficial for both me and my students. I knew this might be my last time teaching the class for a while!

I thought I would share a few of my favourite projects over the years- the AP art program is going through some big changes this next year, so I may not have the chance to use these again!

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  3 Tone Still Life: Metal & Eggs

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  Kara Walker inspired Illustration of a Social Issue

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  Projection Self Portrait

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  Geometric Value Study

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  Multicoloured Reduction Lino Print

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  Scratchboard

Our Heroes

 

Here is another across elementary project that we just finished up on the theme of heroes… and I was lucky to secure enough bulletin board space to display them all! In class, we discussed what makes someone a hero and thought of examples of heroes we knew: people in our everyday lives, historical figures, athletes… Each student chose a personal hero and did some thinking on how to portray them. We learned how to draw portraits, having previously learned about drawing the figure in a pose.

This unit was my first experiment in TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behaviour) and allowing more student-driven choice, which I have not been brave enough for with younger ones. It went pretty well, I had stations set up around the room with different materials. We were already familiar with these materials from earlier this year, so they required only a few reminders before they jumping into choice.

One focus of the unit was developing carefulness, one of the intellectual virtues. Students had the opportunity to practice with different materials first, before making decisions for the final piece. The final results were varied- some students chose to stick with coloured pencils and markers, others branched out into painting, pastel and collage. It was rewarding to sit back and watch the artistic process, as they figured out how to solve problems and combine different media together to create a finished piece.

The sweetest moments were reading the artist statements students wrote to accompany their finished artworks.

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Self Portrait Haul

Kindergarten/1st

2nd/3rd

4th/5th

All new ideas for this year’s self portraits in elementary! Kindergarten and 1st grade drew themselves in their dream jobs. 2nd and 3rd grade did monochromatic Picasso-style portraits. 4th and 5th grade created self portraits in the style of Roy Lichtenstein/Pop Art.

Artist Trading Cards

Wait, a first post of the school year already? Not really, this one is long awaited from last year’s very hurried end.

I began last year with a year long final project, one that has been trending on art teaching blogs out there: ARTIST TRADING CARDS.

The premise of the project was that throughout the year, students would be working on a collection of miniature, one of a kind, quality artworks which would be assessed and traded at the end of the year.

The artist trading card helped to solve a continuous problem I have in the art room, early finishers. If a student had finished their assignment early, they could work on a card- sometimes it was based on a prompt from me, other times it was their choice for the artwork. I also used the cards to practice ideas and techniques before starting bigger projects. Examples of these would be:

Do you recognize these from projects we did this year? Clay Creatures and Scratchboard

We also made cards to emulate well known artists and art styles. Seen here are portraits in the styles of Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Picasso

I especially enjoyed watching students experiment with new materials, taking what I introduced in projects and being creative with their own ideas. Here are a few more favourites:

The last element of the project, before each student handed in all of their cards made during the year, was to make a case. I had some clever and unique designs- including bands, envelopes, folders and boxes!

Picasso Portraits

This was a crazy fun unit which I thought would be a disaster with my most challenging group of students, but it turned out to be a winner. We began with a series of sketchbook assignments to warm up. I found these short one-day assignments to be quite successful.

#1 Contour Line Drawing of a Shoe, Cut Up and Rearranged 

#2 Magazine Head Collage

#3 Picasso Pal Drawing

#4, #5 and #6 Front, 3/4 and Side View Portraits of a Partner

*Thanks to my sponsor teachers at RHS for these ideas!

The portrait drawings were cut up and rearranged on a new sketchbook page to create Cubist-like arrangements. Students then redrew these compositions onto larger sheets of paper. We added onto our drawings with collage elements. These included:

• 1 profile and
• at least 3 facial features (cut from cardboard)
• areas of ‘texture’ (choice of newspaper, magazine pages, wallpaper pieces…)

We reviewed monochromatic colour mixing before painting our final portraits with this colour scheme. The final pieces are ridiculous and crazy, very fitting for this energetic class!

 

 

 

Winter Self Portraits

I always enjoy doing portraits with the younger ones. They are eager to learn the how-to tricks and each artwork is full of personality. For the past two weeks, we have been experiencing more winter weather here in Istanbul (including some snow!) So it seemed fitting to put a winter theme on this year’s self portraits. Kindergarten and first grade drew themselves decked out in winter gear with snowflakes in the background. The second graders (who I had the privilege of teaching two years ago) did line drawings, one of a partner and one of themselves looking in a mirror for details. Despite the chaos of learning how to use paint, this has to be one of my favourite projects with elementary. Enjoy!

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Week 1 Self Portraits

This week, all my students did a self portrait. It was the perfect introductory drawing project and helped me get to know some of the new ones coming into my class. I knew right away I needed to get work up fast and all together, these portraits make a colourful mural to brighten up the room.

Portrait Gestures

Quick five minute portrait studies of classmates. I am proud, they all did great!

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Art Room Discoveries of the Week

I am cleaning up the art room, organizing and handing back work… and grading. Here are some new (and some old) discoveries I found lying around.

…and a thought provoking sketch- Is this what I sound like to students???

Portraits

This week I finished a favourite project of mine with the kindergarten and first grade: self portraits! They always make me smile. We did our drawing first in black pastel, then painted the shirt, background, face and hair. Once the paint dried, we added detail to the face and shirt using coloured pastels. We also filled in our backgrounds with pattern, using line, shape and colour, which was a great review of previous learning!

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