Writing in the art room

Yes, this is art class, but I believe that Art enhances all other disciplines.  So I require my students to write about their art.  We have a weekly warm up, called the Art Start, where students are assigned a work each day Monday-Thursday, and they must draw a picture inspired by the word.  Now, the pictures are only 1/4 of a page, but they must use up that entire box and color or shade their drawings.  Here comes the writing component:  On Fridays, they must select one of their drawings and write four sentences about it.  I also ask them to write in cursive.  I gradually increase the number of sentences that must be in cursive and I provide them with a cursive chart as well.

Inchies!

Have you heard of inchies?  An inchie is a one-inch-square work of art.  I challenged my students to divide two pages in their sketchbooks into a 1" grid.  Whenever they have "free time", they are to draw an inchie or two in their sketchbooks.  The goal is to have both pages, which have about 80 squares each, filled up with tiny works of art by the end of April.  The students must make each square its own artwork, and they must each be original.  I am participating with them.  I am not sure what we will do with them in the end yet, but we will use them for another activity.  More details and photos to come!  Here is an example of the beginning stages:

Still Life Drawings

For this project, students had to set up their own still lives at home and take a photo from three different angles with their cell phones.  Then we used a method I saw on you tube for drawing still life art:  Students divided their papers into four quadrants, and then drew in all negative space.  This was really helpful, because it allowed the students to narrow down where everything should be placed, and keep it at the correct size/scale for the picture.  Then students drew the contour lines for their objects before finally adding details.  This method also allowed them to focus on one quadrant at a time--which made it more approachable for students.

I believe that this was a really successful project, because the students were able to choose what they wanted to draw--which made it more interesting to them, and those who put forth effort were really pleased with the end result.  We did several activities with colored pencils first, so students would be comfortable with proper colored pencil techniques.