Mural is Done!

We've finally finished the mural in the art room, which we've been working on slowly all year. Check out my first post about it by clicking here, and the second in-progress post by clicking here.
For the past few weeks I have had two high school seniors helping in my room for their Senior Work Project and they were so helpful getting some details finished (like putting a face on Mona Lisa). Last week, we spent some time in advisory painting the frame and putting some final touches on it: Here is the final product, measuring in at about 7 feet by 9 feet, followed by the artists posing with their masterpiece!

How many famous artworks can you identify in the mural!?!?

Knights in Shining Armor

Fifth Grade boys were inspired by the chivalrous knights of the Middle Ages in this metal tooling project. They designed their knights' armor by looking at books for inspiration and adding authentic details like chain mail and weaponry while focusing on the art element of texture. Students used special wooden tools to emboss pieces of 36-gauge aluminum to create a low relief. Then they covered the metal in black ink and used steel wool to buff them to a shine before cutting them out and adding feathers with a flourish! The knights stand about a foot tall and are displayed gallantly guarding the main stairwell from the lobby to the second floor!

Van Gogh Inspired Sunflowers

In this observational drawing project, sixth grade artists were inspired by one of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous subjects- sunflowers. After creating a contour line drawing of a sunflower, students used various graphite drawing pencils to shade their flower using Van Gogh’s signature marks of dashes, hatched lines, dots, etc. and incorporated distortion, exaggeration and direction in the mark making. Here is a picture from a critique we participated in mid-way through the project, followed by the final pieces.

Man's Best Friend

In this sixth grade clay project, 4th quarter students brought in a photo of their family dog, a dog they know, or a dog they wish they owned. They used two pinch pots to create the hollow bodies and added coil legs and necks, pinch heads, and little details like paws, facial features, ears, wrinkles, tails, hairy texture, collars and more! Sit... Stay... Good Dog!

Georgia O'Keeffe Inspired Paintings

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986), a major figure in American Art from the 1920’s on, received widespread recognition for her technical contributions, as well as for challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is primarily known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones, and landscapes of the American Southwest in which she synthesized abstraction and representation. Her paintings present crisply contoured forms that are full of subtle tonal transitions of varying colors. She often transformed her subject matter into powerful abstract images by monumentalizing, enlarging and cropping her subjects to fit her canvas. She stylized (simplified) her shapes and modeled their edges, often creating abstract patterns.
Seventh graders were challenged to create an acrylic painting on canvas using O’Keeffe’s techniques and her favorite subjects as inspiration- zoomed in flowers, shells and skulls (which we borrowed from the LS science room!). Some chose to paint more abstractly while others chose to be more representational. Every student focused on gradually blended bright colors, bold shapes and the intricate structure of their chosen forms.