March Madness!

Artwork by Winni Jiang for our district office art show!

March in the Art Department is our most busiest time of year! Art shows and contests galore!! Every week we have something going into an exhibit or being entered into a contest. Its Youth Art Month so we host a variety of activities for staff and students to attend (this year I did a lotus painting after school workshop!) and we have our National Art Honor Society induction ceremony at the end of the month. Speaking of, I can't believe this coming week is already the end of the March Madness! 

I've been powering through projects with all of my classes so here's what's been going on:

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Drawing and Painting classes did their first ever tattoo art inspired ink painting. This was the first time putting together a project using tattoos as inspiration. It's something I've always wanted to do with my classes because of my love for collecting tattoos and artwork by tattoo artists. We had our own "Ink Master" style challenge of creating Japanese or American Traditional style flash and we presented awards to the ones kids chose as their favorites.

Now my drawing classes are starting their grisaille underpainting for their board game still life painting project. This is one of our only "photo realistic" paintings that we do. Students develop their forms in grayscale first then apply color over it. 

I've learned to teach a lot of transparent layering with my drawing and painting classes because of the materials we have access to. Blick's acrylic is usually what we are able to purchase and the colors sometimes are very transparent. So in order to build density and not have to mix every color, we do underpainting first and then glaze color over it. It helps us use our materials more effectively.

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Studio Art and Drawing and Painting classes also worked on our Women's History Month Portrait Poster project. Students selected a name of an iconic woman from history and paired them with the style of a female artist to create the poster. In Studio art we also finished our Chinese Brush Painting unit and have begun our cupcake still life painting (where they learn about underpainting with just black and brown acrylic and water).

watercolor painting by AP Drawing student Percy Reale

watercolor by AP Drawing student Sophie Ouyang

AP Drawing students have really been in the zone, with just over a month until their portfolios are due! They've been finishing up Breadth 11 and Concentration 10, making really strong works! I'm super proud of this crew for their hardworking. We're getting very close to the end and we've  started matting quality work. As an AP teacher, I'm very curious about how the changes to the exam starting next year will affect the way I teach the course. I'm looking forward to sharing my ideas on it when we finally get more info!

That sums up what's been going on this month, although I'm sure there are a ton of other things I am missing. As always, if anyone has any questions about a lesson idea you see here and want more info, please send me an email: [email protected] or message me via my instagram @daniellelivoti

For the pixel art project info be sure to access my shared google drive folder from the menu above called "The Pixel project!" Be sure to tag me in any posts with your student outcomes :)

XO, 
Danielle