Free Projects

We only have four days of class left to Sculpture & Pottery - a semester course. Many students are finishing up "free projects". Some students enjoyed a specific art form and wanted to do it again. Others chose from a list of optional projects including weaving.

Nonobjective Watercolor Paintings

Art I students have completed their large nonobjective watercolor paintings. Nonobjective art is

Non-objective art does not contain a recognizable subject. Rather, the artist manipulates the elements of art (color, shape, line, form, space, value, texture) by using the principles of design (balance, repetition, unity, rhythm, proportion, harmony, variety, emphasis, movement).(Answers.com)

Students looked at the paintings of Wasily Kandinsky for inspiration. Then they created designs using shapes and lines. Within each shape, they used specific experimental techniques. You can see a few of them in the detail of student work below:

Techniques with wet paint: Sprinkle wet paint with salt, Drop clean water drops on wet paint, spray with water bottle, Wet paint on wet paint, The "Thirsty Brush" technique, scratch into wet paint with tooth pick, screw driver, brush handle, credit card, pallette knife, etc.

Techniques over dry paint: Remove some paint with eraser and sandpaper, sponge painting with another color, fan brush, etc.

Below are a few of the finished paintings along with the artists' names.

Sophie Lackner

Arianna Crawford

Danielle Cole

Morgan Carnrike

Megan Kelley

Altered Books Expressions

Students are finishing up altered books projects. The only rule to this project is: There are no rules. Students decide what to do with them. Sarah Slocum created the one above. An educational encyclopedia comes to life through the assemblage of toy, puzzle, bookmark, reading light, and other materials.

This one is by Brittany Holmes. The cover is painted and the interior is filled with collage, puzzle pieces, beads, sequins, and other objects. The pictures below are from the interior of the book.

Optical Illusion Prints

Belvedere (1958)
by M.C. Escher

Even though the class is called Drawing & Painting, we still do some printmaking. We looked at some of the fantastic prints by M. C. Escher. He used a lot of optical illusions in his work. Everybody in the class made a print design that incorporated an optical illusion.

For example, the one below is interesting, because it is two copies of the same print. One is upside down. Viewed one way, it looks like an elderly woman. Viewed the other way -- a young girl.

Old Lady/Young Girl
by Adam Felt

Nonexistent Triangles
by Heylin Douglas

The print above is interesting because when we look at it, we see two triangles -- even though no triangles were drawn in the design.

Pencils to Snakes
by Levi Mathers

In Escher's work, a recurring theme was metamorphosis, with one thing becoming another. This idea inspired the student above, who created a design where pencils become snakes.

Impossible Cubes
by Andrew Jackson

The neat thing about printmaking is that you can experiment with printing on unusual surfaces. The student above made a fabric wall-hanging that used repetition of his Impossible Cube.

Graphic Novel/Graphic Organizers

Cavemen in Space
by Rica Dimon

Theme search is something that eighth graders learn in our school. Theme Search is "a strategy that helps students determine the theme of a narrative story by determining the changes that a main character goes through as a result of a crisis" (Learning Point, 2010).

Graphic organizers are visual representations of knowledge, concepts or ideas. They are known to help:

• relieve learner boredom
• enhances recall
• provide motivation
• create interest
• clarify information
• assist in organizing thoughts
• promote understanding

For this project, every student made a graphic organizer about a graphic novel. Each student drew the main character at the beginning of the book and again at the end. They wrote a brief paragraph about how that character changed through the story. Here are a few of the finished projects along with the student who made the drawing and the name of the book.

Cavemen in Space by Aleesha Marcy

Cavemen in Space by Kendra M

Bone: Eyes of the Storm by Alexandria Schmidt

Amulet
by Paisha Glisson

Peach Boy
by Zach Toomey

Smile
Jordan Finnerty

Tree Frog
by ____________

What is Pop Art?

Chomp

by Aerotine MacWhinnie

Marker

Booom!

by Arianna Crawford

Marker

"Pop" is short for popular. Artists who work in this style use common everyday objects to portray elements of popular culture, primarily images in advertising and television.

The first Pop artists were attempting to get art back into American daily life, and rejected abstract painting because of its sophisticated and elite nature. Pop Art shattered the divide between the commercial arts and the fine arts. Often subjects were derived from advertising and product packaging, celebrities, and comic strips. The images are presented with a combination of humor, criticism and irony. In doing this, the movement put art into terms of everyday, contemporary life. It also helped to decrease the gap between "high art" and "low art" and eliminated the distinction between fine art and commercial art methods. (Art History Database).


These marker drawings were inspired by the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein, who did cartoon inspired paintings that helped launch the Pop Art movement. Ben-Day dots were considered the hallmark of Lichtenstein, who enlarged and exaggerated them in many of his paintings and sculptures.

What is an Assemblage?

The Day After Christmas

by Haley Priester

Assemblage

An assemblage is a form of sculpture comprised of "found" objects arranged in such a way that they create a three-dimensional work of art. The assemblage above was created by student Haley Priester over Christmas break.

If you would like to see more examples of this art form by professional artists, visit The Assemblage Studio. The examples you see may give you ideas for objects you might assemble to create your own work of art.