Art Foundations: Tripod Ceramic Mugs!

Art Foundations students at Nathan Hale High School had a lot of fun with this unit! Our focus was incorporating texture and design into clay, and turning that into a functional vessel. 

The texture featured on these mugs was created from a screen.

We started by rolling out slabs of clay, and cutting them to the right size. Next, we carefully rolled and pressed different textural pieces into the soft slab. That slab was then formed into a cylinder, scored and slipped together (clay's way of staying attached), and shaped the bottom of the mug into a tripod.

These were dried thoroughly, bisque fired in the kiln, glazed, and then fired one more time. 

These were finished the day before Winter Break. We celebrated with hot chocolate-served in our handmade mugs!

Cheers!

Proud of our work.

Planets in the Art Room at Pershing!

Paper Mache Madness

Working in Planet Groups

Here at Pershing Elementary, third and fourth graders are working on their solar system inquiry unit in their classroom. Students brought their expertise to the Art Room!

We discussed the importance of scale in three-dimensional artwork. Since we can't make life-sized planets, we had to create them to scale. Planets were made using paper mache, and then painted to mimic the actual surface of the planet.

Uranus in the making!

This solar system will be on display for the entire school to see. We labeled each planet, and wrote out two fun facts for each one. This is our way of educating other Pershing students about our planets.

Finding some fun facts about our planets.

Stay tuned to see our final display! It's sure to be out of this world!

Happy Holidays from Pershing Artists!

Seasons' Greetings from Pershing! Our Winter Sing was a few weeks ago in our gym, and first and second graders were in charge of decorations! We made jumbo-sized Christmas lights and painted them in with bright tempera paint. They were strung together and displayed on the curtain behind singers. It was a wonderful concert, with great decorations!

Art in the Community

There is holiday art on display at West Allis City Hall for the month of December. Each school in the district has art pieces on display. This is a wonderful exhibit of art from all grade levels. What a great way of showing the community the importance of having the arts in schools!

An opening reception to celebrate the work will be on Tuesday, December 4th from 6:00-7:00pm.

8th Grade Scratch Art at WMIS

The 8th graders just finished their cropped, nature-inspired, scratch art projects.  This may be one of the most impressive projects I've seen so far.  I knew the project would be challenging for the kids, because it requires them to think almost backwards.  They are reductively scratching away at black to reveal white.  Prior to starting the project, we worked on cross-hatching and using lines to create value.  We also discussed cropping and it's use in composition.  I am absoloutely blown away by the quality of work the 8th graders created.

Turkey Time!



Students learned about warm and cool colors.

Students chose to color a coffee filter using only the warm or only the cool colors.

After we finished coloring, we sprayed the coffee filter with water and watched what happened when water mixed with marker. Wow, look at the result!

We then cut and glued the other parts of the turkey. Here is a warm colored turkey example.

This is a cool colored turkey example.

7th grade water colors with trees

Recently Lincoln 7th graders studied the artist Tom McCracken.  They made reproductions of his work using crayon, water colors, and black acrylic paint.  They all turned out very unique.

WMIS donates Day of the Dead Art to the VA

Here at West Milwaukee Intermediate, we are only a few blocks from the midwest's largest and oldest Veteran Affair's hospitals. On occasion, we have the honor of lending our artworks to them for special celebrations. This year, the VA is hosting a "Day of the Dead" or "Dia de los Muertos" for the veterans. The 6th grade art students were more than happy to permenantly donate some of their "Dia" skull prints to such deserving neighbors.

Polish Ornaments

8th grade Geometry students at Lincoln created these beautiful Polish Paper Ornaments.  They took the ornaments and decorated a tree in Down Town Milwaukee at Cathedral Square Park.  The best part about these ornaments was the collaboration between the students and the connections between math and art that the students got to experience!

Pershing 1/2/3 Matisse Veggies

 

 

Pershing's Next Generation Learning Community (1st-3rd graders) were inspired by Henri Matisse in this lesson. We read about the great French artist, Henri Matisse. His first love was painting, but after a difficult surgery, he was confined to a wheelchair and began doing paper cuttings. He called this technique "painting with scissors".

 

Students studied organic and geometric shapes, and built up their background with basic paper shapes. Afterwards, we looked at lots of different vegetables, and cut those shapes from paper as well. We got lots of cutting and glueing practice with this project!

These 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade artists are proud of their Matisse-inspired veggies!

Nathan Hale High School: 2-D and Advanced 2-D. Skeletal and Value Studies

2-D and Advanced 2-D Students explored value and the various ways that value helps two-dimensional spaces appear three-dimensional.

Students first composed four different views of a skeletal study, and in a contour fashion, drew them.

Various value techniques were then implemented. Enhanced line, traditional ebony pencil value, pointillism, hatching and cross-hatching were the four types of value that students studied and applied to their drawings. These different techniques all show dimension and depth in drawings.

Nathan Hale 2-D Art Foundations. Still Life Value Drawings with Light Source.

These students first started with a sketchbook assignment which taught them line drawing, quality composition, and use of space, value, value gradation, and how to use a viewfinder. Then they too these new skills and did a line drawing of a still life, which included things such as a bird cage, musical instruments, a camera, hats, and a large mounted fish. Students were able to find a view of objects that interested them, and by using their viewfinder, drew a line drawing of what they saw. After that was completed, each student was taught value with conte. Conte is similar to a very compressed chalk. They created dark, medium, and light values throughout their still life with the help of spot lights. Students were able to use the gray of their paper to help them with their medium tones. Overall, students learned the critical skills needed in order to move on and advance in this art class, and others.

Nathan Hale Art Foundations: Sculpture, Ceramics, Jewelry. 3-D Initials

Students’ sources of inspiration for this project were the initials of their name. They combined the letters of their name into an interesting design. Students used their initials to create an interesting design that stands well on its own. Their challenge was to create a three-dimensional, in-the-round piece of artwork that could stand on multiple sides. To build up their design, students used tagboard and tape. After they built their structure, they paper machéd the entire surface. Paper maché is a substance traditionally made of flour, water, and glue. Newspaper is dipped into this and applied to the structure to harden and strengthen the piece. Then, they used pure color and tints to paint the surface and negative spaces. Finally, they used Sharpie to incorporate line into their creations. Our lines were drawn using a special technique called zentangles, a form of sophisticated doodling that incorporate patterns and shape repetition. Zentangling is a current trend in the art world.

Nathan Hale Photoshop Mosters