Grade 7 Art Lessons - The Human Face

A self-portrait??? Yes, hard to believe but I did it. It was after I drew myself and then transferred it to canvas. After that we got to do a two-minute self-portrait. So much fun!
If I could do it, then I knew my students could do it. So after that workshop I taught lessons on how to draw the human face, paint your own face and then do a fun 2 minute painting using no brush!

The results are quite great and surprising to the students. So for 2 or 3 years now I have used this lesson in grade 7. In grade 8 we do more of the anime faces and Japanese anime known as manga.

Here are the 3 lessons I wrote about the methods, materials and hints for drawing, then painting faces. Really good advice I used: How to Draw Human Faces
Painting Realistic Self - Portraits

and Mask Making of Human Faces

Trying to draw magazine faces just didn't help the students' confidence too much. It is a good introductory lesson. Have the students draw the faces from magazines upside down to get their right side of the brain working and looking for contours. Post their drawings right side up with the magazine face right beside.

Math Made Sensible

Some math can described so simply and other math is so full of jargon, terms and specific conditions that students get lost. By clarifying basic strategies to solving math concepts, practicing and doing things step by step, some math can be made sense of. I wrote a guide for teaching a calculus concept called limits. Then I wrote up some sample questions and solutions, for students in grade 12 to follow. I learned this when I was in grade 12. So passing on these strategies has been satisfying.
You'll find great teaching tips for this concept in the article: Calculus Limit Problems Made Easy.
Then accompanying study guide for students is in the article: How to Solve Calculus Limit Problems.
The special cases of limit problems is in a separate but related article called: How to Solve Special Cases of Calculus Limit Problems
The articles are all linked together and provide examples wih a sheet of solutions. It is free Calculus help for students and teachers alike. Hope it is useful.

Creatures - Fun Easy Symmetry Art

As a last minute make a pretty Valentine project I thought we could cut hearts out of paper and smush paint along the fold, open it up and have a psychedelic design. Since we had to let the acrylic paint dry, we made a second one where the students got to choose the colors they wanted in the painting. We opened them up to see a design created that later you can turn into a creature or whatever you see in the paint. This is such an easy project. Its messy as the paint oozes out of the paper when you fold it. Also, the paint sticks to the paper. However it teaches symmetry and using creativity to create something out of the paint blob. What creatures do you see in these examples?? I see a bee, a moth, an ice cream cone and a globe.
An article about the method and other examples of symmetry in art can be found at Bright Hub.
Here is the link to the Colorful Art Using Symmetry article.

Valentines Day Watercolor Project - 3 Styles

Painting a watercolor background in purples and pinks is the start of this project. Once the background is wet, you can use heart blocks wrapped in tissue to blot up heart shapes in the background. These are filled in with painted Valentines messages.
The background can also be stamped with white acrylic stamped hearts. These are nice and easy to do. Thirdly, you can cut out hearts from the background and paste them onto a watercolor background. Grade 1's can do this.

You can also sketch hearts on a smaller watercolor paper and then paint each heart in with 2 colors of watercolor such as yellow and red. This makes a nice bouquet of hearts. 3 projects, all easy to do!

All three ways of doing this have been written at Art from the Heart: Watercolor Valentines Day Art Project
Which one do you like doing the best???

Watercolor Winter Projects - Fun and Easy

Watercolors can create excellent and easy art. In grade 4 we created a winter scence using blues and purples for the sky, greys for the snow and fisnished with white snow on grey trees.
See the article called Winter Watercolor Landscapes Lesson.
Also in grade 4 we used a frosted window scene for a smaller 4 by 6 watercolor. Using grey and pink sky colors, we also painted in a branch and a window sill. The glass looks frosty by adding glitter to the painting after its dry. Try this one as its a nice effect. Use plastic to make crinkles and and lines in the wet paint to help draw the frost on later. See the article Winter Watercolor Window Art at Bright Hub for all the steps, pictures, hints and tips.

Fall Art Projects

This fall I did fall watercolor leaves with grade 4 and 5 students, carved gourds with 7's and 8's, and made clay arthropods with science grade 6 students. I have written articles on the methods at Bright Hub for these projects. The science creatures were very fun to do. The invertebrates are displayed with cards describing the adaptations. If you have access to clay and a kiln, try this art/science project!
Details are found at: Making Clay Arthropods-A Fun Science Activity.

The carved gourds was interesting, a bit difficult for grade 7 and 8 students but we had fun trying. I discovered many things you can make with gourds as a craft, but are time consuming. Candles, bowls, purses and drums were a few of the interesting cultural crafts made from them. We simply carved them and made them brown by applying shoe polish. The article and method is at: Gourds and Gourd Art Etching

Watercolor leaves was a fun and easy watercolor project where the students drew leaf shapes and painted in 2 colors and then filled in the background. They were displayed altogether and it was a lovely fall display. I would do this again. The article with the steps is found at: Easy Watercolors for Fall

In August I took photos of murals in our city and wrote 2 articles on painting murals with students. One article is about painting an ocean themed mural near a splash park or near a sink in an art room or kindergarten room. It can be found at this website: Murals: An Ocean Wall Mural - An Art Lesson. They were part 2 and 3 of a 3 part series on painting murals with students.

The other article focused on a lesson about murals that show perspective. The lessons included how to teach drawing with a vanishing point. Practice drawings are included to help students draw the eye in to the picture. I included photos from around the city on murals which were optical illusions to help the viewer think that the mural continued from the street into the wall. There were also several good websites to show artists (eg. Eric Grohe, Julian Beever) who do large murals like this all over the world. The art lesson is found at this website: Murals: Wall Murals Using Perspective to Draw You In