Quick & Easy Year End Activity #1

At the end of the year the focus isn't quite what it was at the beginning of the year - for both you and the students.  So some quick, easy and engaging art activities that keep the creative art muscles stretched is the only way to go to give you some peace of mind while you are starting to clean up the room, order supplies etc.

This first exercise is to have students cut out from a magazine one body part ... foot, head, lips, ear etc.  Once glued into their sketchbook they extend the image into something else.  I only give them one class and since some students work faster than others, some remain in pencil partially finished while others are more developed.  This could easily be stretched out to two days or more and elaborated on.  Good one for the substitute teacher also and you could have an envelope filled with body parts which students randomly select.  It's a good job to give students when they are finished early - cutting up body parts to fill up that envelope for when you need it.  Morbid but they seem to enjoy cutting up magazines and chatting with friends.

Pastel Landscapes

A quick little drawing that I had students do.  Working from other artists' paintings they had to imitate the painted brush strokes and colour palette using either chalk or oil pastels.  They could alter the colour palette entirely but most just made some adjustments as they were limited by the colour selection of pastels.  They also had the option to just copy a section of painting.  While this may not be the most creative approach to landscape drawing/painting I do find it helpful for students to spend that much time paying very close attention at someone else's work.  All of these students have a career in forgery!

Random Pieces of Art

Some random photos of artwork by grade 12 IB art students that I thought I had posted a while back.

Masks

I do this project every year my my grade 9's and each time the results are different.  Some years I have a theme in mind and other years, like this year, it's anything goes!  I have the students start with a plaster casting of their face - that experience alone is very entertaining to watch and I have to admit I rather enjoy the peace and quiet when half the students are sleeping while their plaster masks are drying.