Succulent Still Life Junior High Art Lesson

Basically - I bought a whole bunch of succulents last year and managed to kill most of them before we even had a chance to get to this lesson.

Kill succulents?  Yeah.  I don't know. Too much water?  Not enough sun?  Not enough water? Too much sun. No idea.

I wanted each eighth grader to have their own, then for our second project we would make a clay pot for the succulent - but they got too dead for that.

The succulents, not the eighth graders.

Here is the lesson directions and rubric.  Its on TPT, but it is free. I did not actually follow the directions that I had written out though.  I wrote the directions thinking we were going to be looking at photographs of succulents, and not have the actual succulents in front of us.  The directions we actually followed are in this video.  The rubric included is also a little generic, and I altered a few things after I taught this to my actual students.  But it gets the main points across.



One of the coolest things that did happen with this lesson was all of the students using their music stand lights from Uncle Jon's Music in beautiful downtown Westmont.  I highly recommend investing in a set for yourself. 

Middle School Christmas Ornaments in Oil Pastel - with PowerPoint and handout

This is my first year with my middle-schoolers, and I have had a rough time knowing what skills they have, and which they still really need to work on.

After our last value study project seemed like a real struggle, I thought I'd take it easy with a step-by-step guide on drawing and shading color values with Christmas ornaments.  This project is not concerned so much with the reflections of the ornaments.  We only concentrated on 3 parts: cast shadow, mid-tones, and highlight.  We also practiced building layers with our oil pastels and mixing tints and shades.  Also, I teach in a Catholic school - so Christmas ornaments are A-OKay.

I started with a handout full of stolen images from the Internet and a PowerPoint too.  We discussed the parts of light and shade that create value and the difference between grayscale and monochromatic color schemes.

The handout coincides with the slides on the PowerPoint and discusses vocabulary.
Next, I take the students step-by-step through the process of drawing and coloring and rendering their Christmas ornament in 3D. They do actually have an ornament in front of them to look at and draw.  The slides were up on the TV as the kids worked, so we mostly all stayed together, but some friends needed additional help.

      

Included in the handout is a rubric for this lesson.  Overall I am pleased with the results!  I only see my middle schoolers once a week for 45 minutes.  It was a learning process at the beginning of the year, and I felt I was never going to get through any sort of curriculum.  We've started working smaller and less independently, and that seems to work.  Here are some student works:

Draft folder clean-up: A million ideas for Still Life drawing!

Recently in the Art Teacher's group on Facebook, a member asked a simple question:

"Have any observational drawing subjects for 10-15 minute warm ups? I'm a little tired of shoes and bottles."

Over 100 hundred responses later, the conclusion I came up with was, "draw whatever you feel like drawing, gosh!"

Here is the list of Still Life objects (never proofed and ready for you!) Good Luck!

This post was originally started in February, 2014

Engaging one day projects week! A beautiful flower vase.

My students seem to really love drawing from "How to Draw" books.  I often use them for introductions to lessons.  I had a set of "How to Draw Flowers" books and asked my third grade to draw silently for 15 minutes.

I chose the flower books so that we could discuss the still-life genre.  It was something we had not talked about since the beginning of the year.  We briefly discussed some fine art exemplars, and went to work drawing a vase of flowers on black paper.  I knew it would only be a one day lesson, so I didn't get involved in the parts of composition, or aspects of the subject and ground.  I did require students to only draw flowers from the book, not their imagination.

Once they were drawn, they traced with GOLD Sharpie!  We colored with color sticks. Students stayed engaged and unfortunately, some kids could have worked longer - if we only had the time!

Breakfast Food Color and Cut page handout

Breakfast food is a great subject matter to explore in art class!  It is relatable to every kid and it usually does not incite yucky noises and disgust the way dinner can.  Vegetables, am I right?

The Breakfast Food Color and Cut page was made for kindergarten students.  Similar to the Fruit Color and Cut page, I used this during a unit on still life drawing.  Kindergartners would draw their own placemat, plates, forks, drinks, and napkins onto a piece of construction paper.  They would then color and cut out the breakfast foods they wanted to include, or they could of course draw their own.

I drew these pictures probably 10 years ago.  I used tracing paper, tape, and Sharpies to turn them into a handout.  I still had the originals in my file.  I thought it was kind of funny that I had to go through all that to make these simple illustrations. Now, I can do it so much faster and with better results on the iPad or computer.