Studio Art: Cubist Superheroes

Well, I can officially say that this 5-year teacher has made a rookie mistake...she has spread herself too thin this year.  Between the business of being a K-12 teacher in one building, being on a scheduling committee, the negotiations team for our new contract, being on a report card committee to revamp report card comments, working the extended day program after school, AND starting a new business venture this year, I have reached a point where I have taken on too much.  Unfortunately, my blog has suffered because of it. :(

These are some of the cubist superheroes that my Studio Art classes completed this year.  We finished these in the middle of February, and since done a printmaking project, soon to come.  You can check out the objectives of this project, which are the same as last year, on this previous post.  Again, we used the coarse pumice and modeling mediums to create actual texture on our canvas. 

Similar to last year, the students that were extremely successful at this project were the students who had a hard time with the realist projects, and the students who favor the realism projects, struggled with this project.  Next year, I'm going to change up the subject matter for this project...I just haven't figured out what it will be yet.

Elective: Modern Mona Lisa

Ah, hello summer vacation!  Up here in Northern New York, most of our vacations began Wednesday or Thursday of last week...mine started at 10:45 on Thursday!  So far, it's been off to a nice slow start...complete with a cranky teething baby!  I just keep praying that it doesn't take ALL summer for these teeth to come through!

For the first half of summer, I'm going to catch up on all of the projects that were completed at school, but that I never had time to post about.  My first catch-up post is from my Elective class.  We did acrylic paintings of "Modern Mona Lisa".  This was our second last project of the school year.  With a class size of seven ladies (three seniors and four 10th graders), they were pretty slow moving on projects and it definitely took a lot of motivate them, even though they wanted to be there!  I blame it on the smaller class size.  Either way, this was one of their favorite projects of the year!

This was a simple project...the guidelines were that they had to think about women today and paint Mona Lisa today if da Vinci were around to do so.  We spent a class practicing drawing faces using a proportion sheet to help get the feature placement correct.  I taught them (or in some cases reinforced) the idea of painting from the background to the foreground.  I also made them mix their own skin tone paint...something they thought was hard but they enjoyed the challenge.  When I asked if I should buy skin tone acrylic for next year, they were outraged!  "No!  It's a good experience to learn how to do this on your own!"  Just like we used for the cubist superhero project in my Studio class, my students used the various acrylic pumice gels, modeling mediums and gel mediums to create actual texture.  I'll take it! :) Quite simply, here are their results!

Studio Art: 2-D Media Unit: Painting! (If Picasso Painted Superheroes...)

Last week on Friday, we started the second portion of the 2-D media unit, which happens to be painting.  On Tuesday, we talked about what paint is made of, the three different water based paints versus oil paint, and painting surfaces.  We also started to dive into the art criticism process.

Then, on Tuesday this week, we talked specifically about Picasso and cubism.  I gave students an additional note sheet that had notes for Picasso, as well as the objectives, checklist and rubric for the next project..."What if Picasso painted a superhero?"  Before beginning this, I showed them the Superhero Series by Mike Esparza, which is a direct idea steal from Pinterest.

The students are REALLY enjoying this so far.  Here are the project objectives and the checklist I gave students with their rubric:

Project Objectives: 

By the end of this project, I will be able to… 

1. Describe the characteristics of cubism. 

2. Discuss how life events affected Picasso’s artwork during his three artistic periods. 

3. Create a cubist representation of a super hero using acrylic paint. 

4. Identify the order in which a painting should be constructed in. 

Project Guidelines: 

☐ You must choose a superhero or villain to depict in the cubist style. 

☐ Your painting must depict the subject from at least the waist up. 

☐ The subject needs to take up at least ¾ of your canvas. 

☐ You must use full color and value in your painting. 

☐ You must show knowledge of the cubist style: 

~ Multiple view points 

~ Use of geometric shapes 

☐ You must unify your background with the subject.

What's ironic is that the students were starting to complain at the drawing assignments because they were having to draw realistically and use lots of value...now they're complaining that it's too hard to try and intentionally draw their superhero unrealistically!  

So far we are two days into this painting.  On Wednesday students had to draw out their superhero.  Some struggled, and some did quite well.  I encouraged them to simply break down their figure into basic shapes, and then to move body parts to be where they aren't...turn an eye ball sideways, put an eye in the middle of the forehead, put the mouth on the side of the mouth, etc.  I also pushed the idea of the multiple view points, which is a little bit harder of a concept for them to grasp, I think.

I then also introduced the students to acrylic gel medium, which was new to them and actually new to me.  Last year, when I was grading post-assessments with another fellow art teacher, one of the projects she did used these gel mediums to give texture, and I loved it!  I bought a large jar of the modeling paste and then three each of the coarse pumice and fine pumice gels.

We applied the gel medium using paint knives...

My painting is on the left.  I gave students a demonstration today on how to paint by blending colors on the canvas instead of in their paint palette.  A few students started painting their backgrounds today.

This was just a quick preview of these projects...tomorrow I am taking a day off for my 34 week sonogram.  I anticipate that the students will start finishing these up by Wednesday and Thursday next week.

On a side note, the Art 7 students have finished their first tag, but after I hung my brick wall today at the end of the day, I forgot to take a picture of it to share!  That will have to wait until Monday!