Students built on their prior knowledge of black and white gradient painting from their previous lesson of ink wash positive negative space paintings for this project. Students focused on facial proportions and scale with this extreme light portrait, through practice sketches, paint mixing practice, and through their final stretched canvas portrait. Each student stretched and applied gesso to the hand made canvases for this projects. 

Students created 3D printed logo stamps using the online program Vectary. These stamps are part of a multiple step lesson that included hand lettered logo designs and building on their 3D printing project to create personal logo stamps . Students built on their introductory 3D printing lesson of abstract objects to create their stamps using the tools that they explored. Students had the opportunity to use a variety of pattern and word plug-ins that allowed for more creative designs to match their hand lettered logos. 

Lesson Plan PDF

Students built on prior lessons of reflective still life drawing and ink wash painting to create their reflective candy still life paintings. Students had a choice of candy options and explored creating translucency with watercolor techniques. This project is the students first use color for the semester and they had the opportunity to build their own still-life.

Lesson Plan PDF

Students will built on their prior knowledge of still-life drawing through a large scale reflective still-life graphite drawing. Students explored visual measuring and how to draw objects from observation with correct proportion and value. Students focused on reflective objects to practice and build understanding of the drawing techniques needed for translucent and reflective surfaces.

Lesson Plan PDF

Students built on prior knowledge of value drawing from observation and applied it to a positive/ negative space ink painting. Students explored a variety of ink techniques during a “Friday Try-day” activity introducing ink mixing and painting techniques. Students demonstrate understanding of painting techniques to create form and depth in juxtaposition to defined negative space.

Lesson Plan PDF

Students explored abstraction through nylon wire sculptures. Students were introduced to a variety of sculpture methods and styles. This lesson was to provide a multi-step process for building their sculpture, while providing choice in their imagery and form. Students had to plan, sketch and prepare all materials including sanding down the base wooden blocks to applying gesso to nylon for a more solid appearance.  

Students explored the 3D printing program Vectary to create abstract objects. Each student had choice in their objects shape, color, form, and if they wanted it printed in flexystruder or the hard plastic filament. These projects were to demonstrate their understanding of the tools extruding, building shapes, bridging, resizing, and other tool options.

Lesson Plan PDF

Students explored still life in a new medium of acrylic paint. This lesson explores acrylic glazing and the practice of visual measuring paired with a new medium. Students used a introductory lesson of a material quadrant painting to practice and demonstrate understanding of different painting techniques. Students could use this previous lesson as a guide and as a reference for their large still-life painting.

Lesson Plan PDF

Reductive Printmaking is a process that includes carving and printing on to paper in alternate steps to create a multi-layered print. This provides students with the opportunity to reductively carve with linoleum cutters into a material to create a dimensional piece of art. I have taught Reductive Printmaking to a wide range of ages, but mostly with 5th through 12th grade students. This builds understanding of color, color relationships, how to plan a projects with multiple dimencions. 

Students look at the art movement of Pop Art and the large sculptures by Claes Oldenburg. These sculptures focus on structural modeling, enlargement of an object, and the realism in details, but not in size. Students have choice of their object and its size, but they all must use a cardboard structure, plaster badages, and acrylic paint. Sketching and planning are introduced through in introductory packet with a planning guide and building technique step guides. 

This hand painted logo design project is an introduction to design elements and typography. Students are introduced to artists like Jess Hische, who have built careers around and focus on the use of words and design. Students use their own designs for inspiration for a 3D printed logo design stamp that is based of over their acrylic logos. 

`Students are working on how to create a composition demonstrating movement and unity only using a single still life object, visual resizing, and watercolor. Students have this project as a way to explore visual measuring and resizing, along with watercolor techniques. This piece looks that how a single object drawing in a variety of sizes and from different angles can create a feeling of movement and space. 

Students have this lesson as an introduction to still-life and observational drawing. Students practice value, form, visual measuring, and shading to create a cohesive graphite drawing. Students work on small sketches and practice drawing prior to their final piece and use this project to demonstrate their new knowledge and understanding. 

AP Studio Art allows students to work on a collection of breadth, concentration, and quality pieces. Students work on their concentration pieces in class, in order to focus on a common theme or ideal. Students have a wide range of ideas and this exploration provides opportunities for choice and practice. 

This is a mini lesson constructed to be an introduction to Gelli printing and the tools provided to create an abstract and layered print. Students had the opportunity to work on a new material every Friday and this was one of our "Friday Try-day" activities. Students were introduced to the materials and tools provided, as well as the printing techniques that were bring used. This was followed by experimentaiton, practice, and clean-up.

This lesson is for students to practice and learn about one-point, two-point, or multiple point perspective drawings. Students were introduced to one-point perspective and were gradually introduced to two-point perspective for these projects. Each student explored a packet that included, steps, material techniques, and examples for their final project. Following their planning sketch, students had the opportunity to work on a large final project that had choice in the type of perspective drawing they would like to create. They had the option of pen and ink, watercolor, or acrylic materials for this project.   

This sculpture was a school-wide project of a collaborative kinetic sculpture. Students were working to create a sculpture that moved when people walked by it in the hallway. This was an exploration of value, organic shapes, paper mosaics, and collaboration. Students uses a paint chips to create the gradient from our chip-art cart. 

Students explored an introduction to reductive printmaking through styrofoam radial design prints. Students explored mandalas and the radial designs that are created using patterns. Students used a single square styrofoam printing plate to create a single print that could be turned to create a radial design.

This middle school lesson, introduces the practice of two-perspective drawing through a creative building textures and watercolor techniques. Students practice perspective drawing and watercolor techniques in a practice packet before their final drawing. In their final two-point perspective they are to demonstrate proper measurements and drawing techniques.

Linoleum printing is a method of carving away the linoleum material to create a unique stamp like image. Students have the ability to also use linoleum in a reductive method to create a multiple layer print. Students need to review safety practices, tool uses, and materials for this lesson, due to it using sharp carving tools and specific process steps.

Students used color sticks, Sharpie, and crayons to create their colorful cubist portraits. Students explored the artwork of Picasso to create their own unique masterpieces. The artists focused on warm colors, cool colors, and shape to create their portraits. 

Students looked at the Philadelphia Keith Haring mural as inspiration for their own Keith Haring inspired drawings. Students looked at how to portray movement and form with a pattern, design, and color. Students placed their paintings together to create their own Keith Haring inspired mural. 

Students looked at Magritte and surrealism for their personalized portraits that included a favorite food or object. Students explored how to make self-portraits identifiable without seeing someones face, much like Magritte and his top hat. Students had to determine what their clothes, hair, and object was needed to make them identifiable in a surrealist way. 

Students were learning about personification in english, while we were looking at texture and color. So, as a collaborative lesson students created animal personification portraits. Students explored textures, form, color, and space to create their animal portraits. 

Students looked at Paul Klee's cityscapes and discussed how simple geometric shapes can be used as building blocks for their drawings. Students had the opportunity to use tracers as an adaptive tool or to use a ruler to create their own shapes. Students then used crayon and watercolors for a resist painting technique. 

Students went to the Wild exhibit by Michael Nichols at the Philadelphia Museum of Art to look at the wildlife photographs. The students looked at and discussed the animals and their habitats. We explored how to draw landscapes and animal textures to create a cohesive watercolor painting. 

Students created Kusama inspired dot paintings with mixed materials. Students looked at the artwork by Kusama and her dot installations. The materials used included canvases, crayon, pencils, and acrylic paint that was applied using Elmers glue bottles for easy grip and application. Students layered materials for depth of space. 

Students used cardboard to create practice plate for an introduction to collagraphs. Students had the opportunity to explore how with simple spaces they can create a layered images. Students started with simple practice shapes and then built on that knowledge to create collagraph mask prints.

Students looked at artwork at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and discussed what the differences are between portraits and self-portraits. We explored painting techniques and how artists get multiple textures in their artwork. For this lesson we discussed pointillisim and students used their fingers or an eraser on a pencil to "point" their paint onto the paper.