This was one of those projects that had the chance of being great, but the final results were just okay. I have mentioned that when I moved to the middle school, I thought I would be leaving the tempera paint and crayons behind, trading up for acrylic and charcoal. I don't know why, but in my mind, those things were more sophisticated and suited to older students. This is the first and only acrylic painting project I have tackled so far. 

I set up a still life made of up of fake leaves, fake sunflowers, fake fruit, with real pumpkins and gourds on every table. Students practiced drawing them, and then tried to 'zoom' in and draw a close up of some element of their still life on bigger 12X12 brown craft paper. We painted them still life pictures with acrylic paint....and we did not outline anything in sharpie. For that I am proud. I am guilty of black outlining everything. (a few kids wanted to and I let them, but it wasn't required)

We really focused on overlapping and value. Students would have to draw the textures in their sketches so they could paint them later. 
​
This was also the year that a boy carved a pumkin and brought it to school for me! So thoughtful!!

Day 1
Look at a slide show about still life art. Focus on word: overlapping, hierarchy and  proportion. Practice drawing the still life on the table in your sketchbook with a pencil. DO NOT move the objects. You could move around the table, but don't move anything, they need to be basically the same for each class. Once you have selected a view (I think we did several warm up sketches). Begin drawing it on 12x12 brown craft paper. Try to 'zoom' in on the objects so you don't have as much background to fill in later. 
Day 2 
We talked about color mixing to get a variety of tints, shades and types of oranges and greens. Students need to mix enough of the color that they need for the object they are painting, paying attention to shadows and highlights. Also, this is just the first layer, we will go back and add visual texture on top, once this dries. 

Day 3-4
Adding shadows and visual texture. Also, finish painting the background. Watch this video on how to finish the still life. Early finishers can use 6X12 brown scraps to paint a fall painting, could be a sign or a free time just for fun since we have all this paint out. 

Supplies
pencils and erasers
still life objects
12X12 brown craft paper
palletes
brushes
acrylic paint
water cups and paper towels

Having three snow days in a row has really motivated my blogging. I'm digging all the way back to the 2014-2015 school year for lessons and photos on my external hard drive. After getting a new (much smaller hard drive) computer at school, backing up all of my old photos on an external drive, getting a new phone and finishing up my master's that year, I just did not do much blogging. At least I did take a lot of great photos of projects that I am excited to share now. 

​For this project, we did some observational drawing in our sketchbooks. We drew the manikins in action poses, and we drew random stuff around the art room. Then, students picked one of their sketches to draw big. I was obsessed with 18X24 that year.

We mostly drew with chalk on black paper and colored with chalk pastels AND oil pastels. I have found that I have more and more students that are sensitive to the texture of drawing with chalk or sharpies on paper.

The vibrations bother them and I either have to let them use a rubber glove, an alternative supply or find some other way for them to complete the project.

Do you have sensory issues with supplies like this? What do you do? 

  Day 1-2
Draw objects to practice in your sketchbooks. First, pose the manikin and draw the pose. Do 2-3 drawings of the manikin in different poses. Then, I will bring around a tub of tools, objects and basic still life materials. Set up a still life or draw one object at a time, practicing LOOKING at the contour lines of the object. No tracing! Select one of your sketches to blow up big. Sketch it on black paper with chalk. 

Day 2
​Finish coloring still life with chalk and oil pastels. Look at examples of Jim Dine's tool still life drawings. 

*I think I might've let a few classes work with a partner on this project. Also, I let them draw objects around the room, like my lava lamp. And I even let them draw a few made up objects like ice cream and sports balls and nail polish....

Supplies
still life objects
pencils and sketchbooks
chalk
black 18X24 paper
chalk pastels and oil pastels

It is no surprise to my students that owls are my favorite animal. I have tons of owls all around my room, many of them gifts from former students. One of our very first projects when I transferred to the middle school was definitely going to be an owl project. This is an oldie but a goodie from 2014. I was really big into making my students use 18X24 paper that year.

​When I look back, almost every project we did was huge like that. In order to make room, students had to work at the counter, on the floor and spread out in every direction. You could tell I was used to having smaller classes at the elementary level....now my classes are quite a bit bigger and it is harder to spread out that much. 

When I first moved to the middle school, I really thought we would primarily be using fancy supplies like charcoal, paper mache and acrylic paint...forget crayons and tempera....but a lot of my students were still at the same level the 4th graders I was used to so it should not have been a surprise that charcoal was really messy and somewhat foreign to them.

In the photos below, you will see chalk and charcoal on the floor. Yes, we made a mess. And I felt bad as the new band room wasn't finished and each day during my prep, the percussion team would use my room to practice, getting dust and crumbs all over their brand new instrument cases....Oops. 

I am sure I got the idea from Art Dish with MJ. For references, I photocopied photos of owls and put packets on the tables. I also had one bulliten board with owl photos on display. The photocopies helped them recognize values and textures. We tried to stick to black and white for the bodies, yellow or orange for the eyes and one solid color for the background. 

Since I forgot to type this up in 2014, I am copying my lesson plans from that date here. 
Day 1

• Seat Work: Complete the value scale from dark to light. The bottom strip. For the top strip, draw different textures, dark and light together.
• Explain that today we will be using texture to create value.
• Have students make a mini owl on the back of their value scales. This is a THUMBNAIL sketch of their design. Next time, we will use CHARCOAL to make the owl on BIG paper.
• Some students MAY have time to finish landscapes, point out oil pastels and class boxes.

Objectives: Use value and texture to design an owl’s portrait. I will know I have learned this when I practice my value scale and complete my thumbnail sketch.
Supplies: Value scales, pencils, visuals of owls.
Day 2

• Before students enter, have paint shirts at the door and encourage them to wear today, it will be super messy!
• Use charcoal to draw an owl BIG on big paper. Try not to smear the black everywhere. Use black to make some dark areas, but also leave some areas lighter (value).  Students may want to stand today.
• Explain how to do clean up and drying wracks, and wiping down tables, and chairs.
• Select two (or 3) spots to use color on the paper: eyes, background and/or beak. Use CHALK PASTELS.
• Make sure names are on back.
• Put in drying wrack. CLEAN WELL!

Supplies: Big white paper, charcoal, colored chalk

Day 3
​Stress following procedures, remind them of some things they are doing well or could be improved. Give them a list of options for their ‘free day’. We are almost there!

• Students should use the time today to complete their landscapes and their owls.
• If both projects are completely finished, give them the option of adding an INK wash on the landscapes. Owls will go in the class box if they finish.
• Clean up really well!!

When my students had finished the big sloth unit at the beginning of the semester, I knew I did not want to jump right into painting. Chalk is so unbelievably messy that I just needed a simple project for a few days to recover. I was telling another specials teacher about my dilemma and she gave a simple suggestion: have them draw a jersey from their favorite team.
​
Hmmmmm. That would be pretty easy....and it would give me a chance to reinforce iPad procedures since kids might need to look up team colors or information.

That could work. So simple. So easy. 

What started out as a one-day thing stretched out for two weeks. Because with me, it can never just be easy...it has to be a full blown unit.....

First, students got a message from flash. Which I read painfully slowly, like a sloth. At first they were incredulous, but then when I mentioned the word JERSEY, they got excited, especially the boys. 

Day one, students practiced their jerseys in their sketchbooks. I printed off simple visual outlines of football, baseball, soccer, and basketball jersey. I ended up adding cheerleading, volleyball, rodeo, track and gymnastics visuals into the mix for kids who needed to be creative about their team sports. 

Once they had drawn the jersey, they used 9X12 white paper to draw their jersey and 6-9 additional symbols from their sport. The symbol could be a football, a player's number or anything else that would work to represent the team---they had to draw a 'grid' to organize their symbols.

Then, everything was outlined in sharpie. Sometimes, I hate letting them use pencil first because they can never seem to erase pencil lines very well. I am very picky about erasing. 

I decided to limit them to crayons for this project in order to have adequate color options. In the future, maybe I will use colored pencils.....

I even went to Wal-Mart to buy a 105 color box of crayons because I only have one sky blue and NO brick red in my entire inventory.....how can you truly match a team's colors without using the right shade of red/blue?! Next year I am definitely ordering multiple crayon color sets.....I don't know how my requisition only sent me the standard 24 colors again this year...I really thought I had ordered the big assortment this year....all well. 

My reasoning behind this project was two-fold, I really wanted to get my sports-minded students excited about the art, and I really wanted to learn a little about their interests. Sometimes if you don't give them a chance to put the Denver Broncos on something, it will end up making its way into their artwork one way or another. The project ended up being a bit of a snooze...and it is not one of my favorites. 

I absolutely love the 'grid' layout that Kathy uses on her projects for kids. For this project, we used a similar format. 

In fact, half way through the FOREVER it took for them to color these babies, I had to take a day off. 

​It was a beautiful Friday at the end of September. I set up a bunch of shoes on the table and after practicing some contour and blind contour with dry erase markers, we went outside to draw in our sketchbooks with felt tip pens. I had them draw their own shoes outside because the weather was so nice AND because I did not want to smell their feet. 

Okay. Seriously. 5th and 6th graders can draw shoes really really well.

​I was amazed at how successful they were!! I ended up setting up a little shoe center in my classroom for those that had finished their jerseys to sit at and draw shoes on white paper. 

In their sketchbooks, I made them draw with the School Smart waterbase ink/fiber pen. 

For some reason, I had ordered several dozen of the 8 color sets. I left out yellow and orange and had red, blue, green purple and brown for students to choose from. This worked out really well....sharpie would've bled through the pages and regular marker wouldn't have had a THIN enough line. Also, since we did not use pencil, they could not erase...which was so magnificent! 

To build their confidence at blind contour without using up a ton of paper, I gave them dry erase markers and dry erase boards. Well technically I only have 20 dry erase board so I had to improvise with some dry erase sleeves. These things are the bomb. Also, I have been saving my lonely socks, you know, the ones from the dryer that have lost their partner. I use those as erasers. Shoes and socks day---OH MY!!

Also, got the idea to suggest adding a crazy sock in their finished drawings from this post. So cute!

Students really enjoyed going outside to draw, even if it was only for a little while. 

With a couple of classes, we even had time to blind contour draw the bike rack!

This project is a great example of showcasing student growth. Students use observational skills to practice drawing the human form using posable mannequins. In sketchbooks, students practice drawing mannequins in 3-4 poses. 

Then, they select a pose from one of their drawings, and recreate the pose in a work of art, and they have the option to keep the mannequin as a wooden figure or turn it into a character. If they turn it into a character, they can create a scene with details and a costume---if they keep it as a wooden form-man, they can create an abstract design for the background. The entire picture is outlined in sharpie and colored with crayons. 

The sketchbook page on the left is a good example of a student who was struggling with the mannequin form. In each of the initial sketches, she was putting way too many body parts, she was just struggling to SEE how simple the form was---and making the legs too short or the body too big. After realizing that several students were having that same struggle, I started taking sitting with them one-on-one, drawing the mannequin on my own piece of paper, using proper proportions, allowing them to draw it in their sketchbooks, along side me---this really helped this particular student, and several others too. You can see the biggest drawing in the center of her book, it is much closer to the actual proportions of the mannequin, and gave her a lot of confidence. Below is her final work of art---I love the messy, expressive background.