Linear Equations

After our Zentangle project, I moved on to Linear Equations. 

This is a fun project for students because they get to trace photographs. Zero artistic ability required, yo. It's pretty rad.

So basically what we do is spend a day in the computer lab finding images they can use. These have to be good quality images (no pixelations here folks!) and real photographs (not cartoon images, logos or words).

Students have to find two images that are somewhat related to create their own original composition. It's fun to see what kinds of things students come up with - what are they interested in, etc. Then, when they have their chosen images in the right sizes printed out, they have to figure out where to place the images in order to create their own composition. Then the tracing begins.

We made our own tracing paper by covering the reverse sides of their printed photographs with graphite and then tracing the images on the other side over their final piece of drawing paper. I don't have any photos of the original photographs my students used, I just have the finished products.

This project is good to teach them composition and appropriation of images. Plus it's easy to start out the year with since they don't feel pressure to draw something exactly how it looks, they just get to trace the image. Fun, fun.

Zentangles - Intro to Line

my example for the project

In my Art 1 class we are starting off the year right, and by that I mean full of sharpies, colored pencils and lots of line work.

So to start off this lesson I just did a basic discussion with my classes - what the heck even is line? They were all very mathematical, I'll have you know, what with their segments versus rays versus points in time and blah blah blah.

What it boils down to are these types of lines (as far as art is concerned):
straight
curvy
angular
thick
thin

There were a few more types that varied from class to class, but those were the big ones I hit on. They needed to use all different kinds of lines in their designs.

We started with a large sheet of drawing paper, a thick sharpie and a fine tipped sharpie. The students traced two circles (from coffee cans, etc. so they were fairly large). I had them trace two in order to have one in only black and white and the other in color.

And then I showed them this video and sent them to work.

Here are some examples of what was produced:

pastels, mostly

just in case you guys were wondering what the heck i've been doing lately, here is an update. a lot can happen in three months - sorry about that. i am the worst blogger some days.

what i want to get for my next tattoo...mmmmmm yes

a highly unrealistic caricature of a man who mildly resembles TheBoy if you squint real hard.

an abstracted guitar of sorts. unfinished. 

zentangles! it's like doodling, but a little more sophisticated.

Honduras water color. i'm in the process of making some cards with these on the front. should be good.

chalk pastel sunflower. i turned out liking this a lot more than i originally planned.

what i've been doing recently

here's just a tad of what i've been up to lately in the art world.

watercolor. chalk pastel.

lots of ink work. the library can get boring.

and remember those graffiti sketches i posted almost a month ago? well, here's the development of the second idea:

it's all framed and ready to be hung in the gallery next week. the artist opening is on the 19th and i couldn't be more stoked!

sketched

I've been playing around with the idea of a graffiti landscape, and at first I had no idea what that could possibly entail. So I did what every young artist does these days and hopped on the interwebs to see what kinds of came up when I entered those words into the google machine. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

I also talked to my family to see if they could brainstorm any ideas, and let me tell you - some of the things that father of mine came up with where pure genius.

So here are two concepts I'm developing:

This is based off of the idea to merge the graffiti and landscape through a word. At first I was trying to put the landscape inside of the letters, but I wasn't really excited about what was flowing from my fingers. So instead I started drawing the landscape on top of the word, still incorporating plants and trees into the letters, but in a different way than originally anticipated. So far so good.

And here we have a slightly underdeveloped concept, placing graffiti font into a graffiti style landscape. So far I love this, but it still needs some work. I want to put a little Zacchaeus figure in the tree and move the letters around to a better spot. 

Eventually these will turn into paintings and not just sketches. Which will be incredibly exciting! At least for me.

remembrance

Here is the latest oil painting I've finished. I created it for a friend's mom in remembrance of her mom's father.

I'm a bit annoyed with a few things, but overall I think it turned out great. Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures - the lens on my phone is scratched and it just doesn't do justice to the way things look.

some watercolors

I really like painting with watercolors. It's probably one of my very favorite things to do. Ever.

Some art supplies were donated to our school by a woman who's mother had been an artist. After she passed there were all these supplies that needed someone to love them, so she gave them to us. There were a lot of different types of supplies, among them a plethora of tubed watercolor paints. I died. They are the greatest. Today I played with them to create this mermaid: