Art with Mrs. Kennedy: What's Happening in the Art Room?

Well I was trying to think of something new and cool to post about today but everything that we are doing in my classes right now are things I have done before. So I thought I would fill you in on what we are doing and share a few things that I have done earlier this year.
My 7th grade 3-D class is currently working on the Rodin Hands project that you can read about here.

They have come up with some incredibly creative ideas and I have had more students than ever want to plaster their faces, and most of them were girls! The students worked really hard and worked well in small groups to help each other get everything plastered.

Here are some of their projects so far...we will start painting tomorrow.

8th Grade Drawing is currently working on drawing cans. In the past we have done shoes but I wanted to switch it up this 6 weeks. Next time, I think I will try something else, the kids are sick of the cans. I am having some struggles with drawing right now. Even though we spent a ton of time on value scales and shading, the kids are not putting a full range of values into their drawings. Some of them are only looking for one value and leaving everything else white or unshaded. I also have the kids drawing on smaller paper because we are doing a series of can drawings (contour, can, slightly crushed can, fully crushed can using a different type of shading) and they are drawing super small. I'm talking like a 2" drawing of a can. It's nearly impossible for the kids to put in enough detail and get all of the values in with the can being so small. Hopefully we will finish these up this week and be able to move on to the portrait drawing since we only have 13 days with students until the end of the 6 weeks (and winter break!). Here are some of the awesome can drawings that we have finished so far!

8th grade Ceramics is once again doing piggy banks. It's such a fun project for the kids and hits all 3 hand-building techniques that it's a keeper in my book.

Can't wait to see this rotary phone bank finished!

A shark with "hipster" glasses and braces. LOVE!

Some other projects we have done include Cupcake Wars (they will be glazed later this week or next)

Last 6 weeks, we did Dia de los Muertos Sugar Skull Masks in 7th Grade 3-D! While the project turned out ok, I don't think I will do it again. They all looked too much a like and there wasn't a lot of creative freedom.