Painted Color Wheels

Middle School - Elements of Art: COLOR

After all that practice mixing colors with the Value Scales and Robots, students were ready to create their own color wheel.

We learned about all the colors, their places on the wheel, names of various categories of colors, and practice coloring one with color pencil. Whew! Finally, we were ready to tackle the real color wheel.

Students had to decide on a theme and come up with a variety of drawings to create the wheel. Once drawn, each color had to be assigned to its proper placement.

Chinese New Year Composition

High School - Art 1

For the high school Chinese New Year composition, I provided the students with several pages of Chinese characters, designs, cartoons and other Asian style illustrations.

From these they were to pick and choose and put multiple elements together to create their composition, altering any designs as they please to make it their own.


The final product had to be colored with color pencils.

1 Point Perspective Room

High School - Art 1 - Perspective

After several days of learning and practicing 1 point perspective as a class, the students were ready to be set out on their own. They had to create their own room using the 1 point perspective technique.

The minimum requirements for the assignment were as follows:

• 1 window
• 1 door
• 1 doorway into another area
• 2 pieces of furniture

Dragon Puppets For Chinese New Year

Middle School - Craft

The Chinese New Year for 2016 fell on Feb. 8th. It's the year of the Monkey.

We discussed similarities and differences between the traditional Chinese calendar and the western calendar. Each kid got to find out what animal they were born under. I also read the characteristics for each of the animals represented in the room, creating a few laughter among the group.

Value Robots

Middle School - Elements of Art: Value

For this unit we talked a lot about value, meaning going from light to dark or dark to light.
Kids practiced this concept first with pencil, then with 1 color plus black and white, to create the value scale you see below.

The first row is black and white paint mixed to create the various values of grays.
The second row is the color, blue in this case, mixed with white, and the third is blue mixed with black.






Once all those steps were complete, the kids were ready to draw their robots!

Sock Monkeys

High School - Craft

The kids did an absolute incredible job with these monkeys.

Looking for project ideas, I happened on one on the web and immediately knew we had to do this. Off I go to get socks, thread, and stuffing and we're in business.

Though it does look fairly simple, it took a lot longer than anticipated. The kids were all good sport about it and kept at it at a steady pace. The results are nothing short of cute and I'm very proud of what they accomplished. Some of the kids had never handled a needle before.

I've since seen a multiple of sock animals, so next year I might add more choices depending on what templates I can find - and as long as it only take a pair of sock for each.

Dynamic Masking Tape Sculpture

Middle School - Sculpture

As our last project before the Christmas holiday, I thought it'd be cool to do a 3-D project of some kind. We are finishing up on our Shape & Form Unit, so what better way to explore form than through sculpture?

The key terms for this project are STATIC and DYNAMIC.

I give you: A Dynamic Sculpture!
Some may be more dynamic than others, and they're ALL nonetheless amazing.

This was so much fun to do, and ho what a mess! And so worth it!!! I'm sure you'll agree as you go through the result below.

Snowman And Reindeer Pompoms

Middle School - Craft

For the Christmas season, kids that were done with their Snowflake (link soon) and other assignments had the option of making a pompom snowman, reindeer and/or Santa.

We got a whole herd of reindeer and several snowmen but only one Santa. A few sheep where thrown in there too for good measure. There were pieces of yarn everywhere!

The kids were overjoyed with their creations, myself as well, as they are the cutest things. Notice "cool Santa" has sun glasses on and so does his reindeer.

Vase Faces Reversible Images

High School - Art1 - Elements of Art: Positive/Negative Space

We were studying a concept called "Reversible Figure-Ground Relationship," which is a fancy way of saying Visual Illusion. The idea is that it is hard to tell which part of the image is the "figure" - or "positive" shape/space, i.e. actual object drawn - and which part is the "ground" - or "negative" shape/space, i.e. background.

You've seen these images that flip back and forth when you change your eye focusing while looking at them, like this one for example:

Which do you see? The young woman or the old lady?

Paper Flowers With Table Centerpiece

High School - Craft


This wonderful craft is very easy to do and is even more amazing looking than I had anticipated. The kids did a wonderful job with their flowers. They look as close to real as you can get with paper.

Glass bottles are wrapped with yarn of several colors according to taste, with glue being spread on the bottle every so often to prevent the yarn from unwrapping. Pretty easy.

As for the flowers, well, a quick search online will result in plenty of instructions.

Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures: