Oil Pastel Eyes - Summit College Preparatory School

Spring is here! Student work from the last few months!

Here are some fantastic examples of several projects my students have been working on over the last few months!

• Celtic "Illuminated Manuscripts" in ink w/ watercolour and/or watercolour pencil

• Acrylic Painting Unit

Miscellaneous Drawings

Colour Wheels!

Weeks 4 & 5 have started and students are deep into exploring colour theory & acrylic paint. Students spent the first few days transferring the tone & value activities from last unit, by mixing tints & tones. They then spent the rest of the week creating complex colour wheels, using only the primary colours, black & white paint to make a unique design. Students were required to include primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Here are some wonderful examples from Rainier & Shasta!

Drawing & Painting: Week 2

Students' drawing skills were seriously "upgraded" through an intense week of shading, lighting and value lessons. The results were incredible across the board and nearly every student hit a new personal best in drawing. These were drawn from observation over several days using graphite pencils, chamois and kneaded erasers. Background textures were then added in as seen or with online references. Compositions needed to present an interesting view of the object and blow it up to larger than life. Bravo to all students featured!

Stellar Scratchboard Finals!

The culminating project for Week 3 combined student's knowledge of pen & ink techniques, texture and pattern making in a new media for most: scratchboard. This is traditionally made from a clay board covered in a thin layer of India ink. Scratch tools, paperclips, erasers and even sponges were used to create the unique effects below. Three of the schools did an intense week of practicing, playing and planning for the final bordered animal or landmark image.

The students at Summit College Prep also explored pen & ink techniques using a dip pen and india ink. For their final scratchboard piece, students created a postage stamp design of a person, place or creature, including a clever price for mailing. They then incorporated their knowledge of patterns using Zentangle to create unique black & white compositions. Enjoy!

New School Year, New Schools....4 of them!!

After a rollercoaster of a summer, multiple interviews and no results, I finally landed a job teaching art! I am now teaching one section of the Visual Arts course at Summit Public Schools. As part of the Expeditions program, students experience mini-intersessions for one or two week periods that allow in-depth exploration of a topic. The Visual Arts course is broken into two sections: Drawing & Painting and 2D/3D Design, with students attending one section in the morning for 2.5 hours with a 15 minute break and then the other in the afternoon for another 2.5 hours with a ten minute break.


I rotate between four charter high schools: Shasta in Daly City, Rainier in San Jose, and Everest & Summit Preparatory in Redwood City. Most students are freshman or sophomores, with a junior acting as a teaching assistant/independent study at Summit and several seniors thrown in. Since I have not taught high school yet it has been quite a learning curve, but I am enjoying the challenge and reward of it so far. For most students, this is the last (possibly only) art course they will take, so the curriculum combines some of the fun projects from middle school with the format and experiences gained as a freshman illustrator at Ringling College of Art + Design.

This month I have been at each school for one week, focusing on establishing expectations, learning how to draw themselves in proportion, head-to-toe, exploring optical and linear perspective, and plenty of drawing in sketchbooks. They are given prompts to start the class with sketching, moving on to "freebies" of their own choice for extra credit in the time given. After sketchbook work, students are taught a new lesson or concept and use the remaining time to complete the activity, such as optical perspective drawings of a desert or one-point perspective abstract shapes. The culminating project for this first week is a two-point perspective drawing of a store front. Students followed along to establish the general layout of stores, using the ruler and try adding doors/windows in perspective. They then were encouraged to be creative and personalize their buildings. Here are some more examples!

Multimedia Art

     

I have been very busy this semester, developing, planning and teaching a new digital art course at JLS: Multimedia Art. It has been a highly rewarding and freeing process to implement my professional experience and phenomenal training from Ringling and make it accessible, fun and interesting for middle schoolers. The class is lightly approached as a design studio, with the teacher (myself) acting as art director and leading the junior (beginning) & mid-level (intermediate) designers on each project.

We have been working extensively with Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator to create donut posters, digital collages, spot the difference puzzles and logos. As we enter the final quarter of the school year, we will be moving from still imagery to motion graphics & animation. For more information and a gallery of all student work, please visit our class blog. In other news, I have finally completed my teaching credential and Master's program!