This Week in Art! August 25-29

Our first full week of art is over! Even though classes were short (we had extended seminar every day), we made a lot of awesome art. This week I have some guest blog posters in the form of student volunteers from 7th and 8th grade who are going to tell you about what we did in art class this week! Thanks for all of your help guys!

6th Grade Art:


This was a very busy week! Besides working on our daily sketches, we began making block letter sculptures! Today we just started to work on paper mache! We'll have to try to finish it up next week amidst MAP testing, which means we'll only have art class for one day next week. But, we'll try our best!

7th Grade Art:


"This week we started everyday by taking 10 minutes to do the drawing challenge. Then over the week we worked on photo shop to create a picture that we then printed. We are still working on graphiting our picture and some of us are tracing our pictures now."

-Andrea G, period 4

These large self-portraits are going to be painted in a monochromatic color scheme. They are MUCH larger than last year's paintings, so I'm excited about how cool they'll look hanging up in the school!

8th Grade Art:


"Monday and Tuesday, we got to plan a big clay project. We had the option of choosing between making a monster pot, a coffee mug, or a box with words on it that was inspired by a art piece made by Robert Indiana. Wednesday, we got to draw out our plan that we were going to make out of clay later in the week. Thursday, we started working with clay and forming the basic shapes of our project. Finally, today we are finishing up forming the shape so we can fire it in the kiln."

-David H, period 1

In other art news...
Kids, teen, and adult art classes are now available at the Elmhurst Art Museum! There are some awesome classes being offered - check them out!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

Welcome Back!!!

Welcome back to a new year of art! We've only had school for three days, but a LOT has gone on, including the flooding of the art room on Friday, which pushed us up to the library all day!

No matter - we used the time to try out our new technology - "Photoshop Phriday" for 7th and 8th graders, and an intro to Chromebooks for 6th graders!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Wednesday was the first day of school for students. We all received our "Welcome to Art" letters that should have been taken home to be signed/return, so that we can get our Artsonia digital student art gallery up and running again!

On Thursday, we honed our drawing skills by undertaking a new 30- or 45-day "Drawing Challenge!" Every day in class as a bell-ringer, students are asked to do a quick sketch on a topic of the day. At the end of our term, we'll do a little one-on-one student-teacher conference to see how our drawings measure up collectively. This activity REPLACES our old "sketchbook" assignments, and is designed to give LESS HOMEWORK in art class! Woo hoo!

This is pretty new: students no longer have to bring a sketchbook to class each day! Instead, all students should have a binder for class (sometimes referred to on the supply list as a "UA" or "Music" binder), and we'll be keeping all of our drawings and papers in this one binder for the duration of art. Our binders stay in the room, too - no need to bring them home - making our loads a little bit lighter!

Next week, which is a full week, we'll be beginning our first major projects in class: a little clay, a little sculpture, and a little painting!

Welcome back everybody!
- Mrs. L.