Scratch Board Landscapes

I am so proud of my students.

Scratch board can be a challenge. Students are used to making marks that are dark and with scratching, the lines are light. (My co-worker does not do it with students until they are in Art two or three) For me, I felt like scratch board was a natural progression after working with shape and line, specifically line personality and line quality. I took it as an opportunity to review foreground, middle ground and background as well. Plus, we discussed texture and touched upon value.

We watched a couple of YouTube videos that I feel worked really well to reiterate key points.

We watched the second one first (sorry, I am just learning how to import videos). It totally caught students' attention and the music was energizing. We watched the first few seconds a second time in order to really catch how she began her scratch board. I encouraged students to take notes too. After watching the second video, I asked a few follow up questions and drew examples of hatching, cross hatching and stippling on the board. 

I think what also allowed students to be successful with the scratch board was supplying them with many, many visuals. I have collected numerous landscapes over the years, from calendars to magazine pages and postcards. These provided students with a great starting point. That, and their cellphones. Many worked from images they had or found.

I also noticed early on that many were intimidated by the scratch board. After watching the videos, we simulated drawing with scratch board by experimenting with white charcoal on black paper. It was a real challenge NOT to outline shapes before filling them in. Seeing this, I put together a Power Point for one of the following classes. 

 

I borrowed some info from here. Mainly the idea of what they might do when they really don't want to. Check out the man in profile illustration. I think that image really helped to put things in perspective for students. 

I followed that with several examples of landscapes. We discussed a couple, pointing out foreground, middle ground and background as well as scratching techniques. Finally, the last slide was a sunset with a palm tree. It looked okay at first glance but I asked students what was the big "mistake"... outlining the palm tree. I then asked, if it was their image, what would you do to improve it? This got students to think of all aspects of the page. They realized, upon further inspection, that the light source was not consistent and that areas were left black when it was supposed to be light out. 

 

I felt like a genius! Engaging students in this way made all the difference. 

The two images in this post were just the two I was able to snap. There was a huge success rate. And if anything, students realized that the creation of art is a thought process and one that takes effort and care.

From here we are moving on to observational drawing with emphasis on contour lines, followed by volumetric drawing.

If you would like the power point presentation for this lesson, please feel free to leave a comment with your email. I love sharing!

Found Texture Collage (Exploring Visual Design Part 5)

I find this image absolutely stunning.
Perhaps it is my penchant for purple and my recent adventures on Nantucket.
Either way, this student has a great eye for color and was able to find interesting textures to create this beautiful collage.

Students independently read excerpts from Exploring Visual Design, about actual and implied texture. The exercise was to then find implied textures in magazines and newspapers and build a landscape. Students were encouraged not to cut out entire images, but to try to reassign textures in the construction.

This took a little longer than I anticipated, I think a week and a half, but students really got into it. And I was amazed at some of the results.

Look a little more closely at this one:

This student used an aerial view of a city and a close up of a crowd to build her volcano.  Amazing!

To reiterate texture and pattern, we have started small scratch board landscapes. When we wrap up, I will post more about the lesson.

Scarecrows

When fall really starts to settle in, I realize how much I miss teaching elementary school. I don't think I ever even imagined myself teaching the little ones, let alone enjoying it! But there is something about experiencing their pure joy and uncensored imagination in the art room that is so rewarding. I hope to inspire my middle school kids to continue to enjoy art and use their imaginations. It can be a really turbulent time as a teenager, but art can be a great outlet.

Anyhow this fall lesson, again unearthed from my file transfer, is inspired by Not so scarey Scarecrows from Deep Space Sparkle. I did this my third year teaching, but had found Patty's website about a year before.

---side-note---
I am so thankful for the art teacher community created in the blogosphere! I did my student teaching at the high school level and there were five teachers in the building! It was also in a school that had been built within the last five years, had an amazing department head and equally awesome budget. Going from that to the only art teacher at a parochial school with not budget (that I knew of) two years later, was an adjustment to say the least! Finding people like Patty, Phyl and Mr. E. made me feel like I wasn't alone and encouraged me to provide the best art education I could. (And with the encouragement of Ms. Wilkinson (my college roommate), now at The Tale of a Traveling Teacher, I started my own blog during my third year)
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This Scarecrow lesson was the first time I felt like I had taken an idea that I found online and really made it my own. And even more rewarding was how much fun these fourth graders had, class after class completing their assignment.

But now, two years later, I can't remember. What did we start with!?
I think we did a guided drawing the first week.
Yup, that's what we did.
We drew the face of the scarecrow, the arms/ shirt and legs however they would fit on the page. I drew different ideas on the board and had handouts at each table. I kept it simple, building on the letter 'U' and using horizontal and vertical lines. Students used black crayon.
Next we started with a plate of primary colors. We painted yellow things, then red then whatever was orange by mixing yellow and red. We followed the same idea with blue, green and brown. See More.

The next class, we used a bunch of the construction paper that had been sitting in the coat closet for years! It was faded and yellowed in spots but perfect for designing our "crops."

We again started with the primary colors and reviewed different types of line... zig- zag, curvy, diagonal etc etc. Students painted 3 (?) sheets. The next class, we tore the paper and "donated" half to the scrape bin, keeping the other half for the background.

Finally, we cut out our original scarecrows, glued them to the crop background and added some rafia for texture. I'm sure this lesson isn't original, even with the collage aspect I added. But it sure felt awesome for all of us to make something so fun! 

I think I took these photos pre rafia. Super cute none the less!