It's another new year and things are going well!

I have some new lessons I'm trying and will post what I can asap.  We are also looking in to lessons involving the Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 software we just received.  Very exciting!

:)

8th Grade Grid Enlargement Car drawings

For this lesson, students reviewed the grid enlargement process via three worksheets. (pics soon)
From there, they chose a photo of a car that they liked.
Instead of drawing a grid directly on the photo, I photocopied a grid on to transparency sheets.

The photo of the car was placed underneath and taped.

Students drew their own grid on another sheet of paper.  We used 1/2" x 1/2" measurements for their grid.  I didn't have paper large enough to make them bigger.  It actually worked out well.

To avoid overwhelming the kids with all of the detail of the car, I found it extremely helpful to have them start with the outline of the car.  To do this, we took a vis-a-vis marker and outlined the car.  This is nice because it can easily be wiped off and re-used next year.

After they had the outline drawn, they used the vis-a-vis again to outline large shapes.  As they continued they outlined more and more.  This was a huge help as it simplified the car for them.  

Shading was added in the end.

I left it up to the kids whether or not they wanted to erase the grid lines on their drawing.

7th Grade Animal Collage

After a brief lesson about Rosa Bonheur, students selected an image of an animal to draw.
Once the image was drawn out, students looked through magazines for a variety of colors and textures that matched the original image.
I was lucky and was able to get a huge donation of pet magazines from a local pet store.  Apparently the magazines get thrown out/recycled if they're not sold.

8th Grade Paper Mache Masks!

This project was made by applying paper mache to a plastic mask form (ordered from Nasco).

Students decorated their mask as they wished! 

2012-13 Art Show

This is the first year we were able to use the entire room (lecture hall) for our art show.  In years past we've had to share it with the annual book fair.  Even though that brought a lot of traffic in, I always felt like it wasn't quite a true art show.  We didn't find out until last minute that we had the whole room, but we did what we could and it turned out well.  I added something new -- a table with a "comment box" and another with a large sheet of color paper that parents, friends, etc. can doodle or write on!  :)