Project 1
The first project focuses on scale and perspective related to landscape painting. The landscape collage begins with a lesson about scale and perspective. Students choose a master landscape artist from whom to draw inspiration. Each student studies a chosen painting in a series of drawings. The final composition is a painted paper collage showing scale and overlapping to convey depth.
Concepts:perspective, horizon line, scale and overlapping
Skills: painting, drawing, cutting and gluing.
Art history: landscape and seascape painters and printmakers
Project 2
The second project is a texture sampler. Students explore various printmaking and drawing methods to capture visual textures. Each student designs a shape or unit as a template to trace on all her textures. She creates textures using rubbing, printmaking and computer generated methods. She then cuts out each texture and composes a “creative” grid while maintaining an active negative space.
Concepts: texture, grid, negative space, value, balance
Skills: printmaking, drawing, frottage, gluing, designing and composing
Art History: tessellations, mosaics, quilts, grid structures in art, modern art and graphic design
The Grade 7 project focuses on the study of one animal through various media. Students study an animal of choice through a variety of media including graphite drawing, watercolor, pastel and paper mache sculpture. They are directed to capture the gesture, proportions, textures, and colors of the chosen animal. Girls use iPads and books to find visual resources from which to study.
Concepts: gesture, color, texture, form and proportion
Skills: drawing, painting, fabricating/ construction and research
Art History: animals in art
Project 1
The first project focuses on self-portraiture through various media, understanding concepts such as proportion and sculpture.
Self-portraits
Students make a series of self-portraits using a variety of materials such as graphite, colored pencils, and watercolor crayons. Each portrait focuses on a different concept such as proportion, form, and emotional and/or symbolic color.
Concepts: proportion, form, emotional/symbolic color
Skills: drawing, painting, blending color, synthesis of idea/materials
Art History: portraits and self-portraits of artists in many cultures and in many media
Project 2
Found Object Head
Students look at what is essential to convey the idea of “head”. They then begin to gather found materials to construct a head that can be viewed 360 degrees, stand on its own, and can be read as a head by the viewer.
Concept: What is essential to make a head?
Skills: construction, gluing and synthesizing disparate materials.
Art History: assemblage, found object art, sculpture, dada art (c.1910)