TODAY IN MY CLASSROOM

I teach a variety of high school classes.  On any given day you will find some students drawing in pencil, others watercoloring and some may be making paper mache'.  I love the variety of media I get to teach but it can be overwhelming trying to keep up with all these different supplies.

I try to plan ahead so my classroom and supplies can be arranged in a way where each unit can live happily in the same space.  Here is a taste of what's going on today.

My Art 1, beginning students are half way through a linear perspective unit.  Fortunately this doesn't require much more than paper and rulers.  This fall I bought a hanging shoe holder and its been great to keep track of classroom sets of rulers, scissors, glue or whatever I want to provide my students.  These little classroom supplies don't cost much but I don't want to constantly have to buy replacements.  I see at a glance that my rulers are back at the end of class before I dismiss my students.

While my students are finishing up perspective next week, I will be organizing tempera paint and brushes to start a unit on the element of color.

My craft students are just beginning printmaking.  We start out with carving little rubber plates and then move on to more difficult linoleum.  My goal is to push my students to be innovative, little mad scientists so I require them to make creative prints on all sorts of unusual surfaces.  Right now this requires keeping track of their personal gauges and some ink pads.  Soon I'll add lots of brayers, ink plates, printing ink and even a table sized printing press.

I was fortunate to have friends buy my class some gelli plates for mono printing.  My advanced students are making background prints to use in an upcoming painting.  I am requiring them to make 10 small monoprints and then develop a drawing/painting on top of one.  It's messy but a whole lot of fun.

My second year students are just starting a unit on pastels.  I do all sorts of fun projects to get them familiar with hard and soft pastels.  Next week we buckle down and do a realistic portrait.  The student in this picture is collaging pictures on a piece of masonite as the background for a painting.

Here are two of my advanced, 4th year students gluing wallpaper, scrapbook paper and images on their masonsite.  We will then slop gesso and watered down acrylic over them before they paint or draw their work.

Here is an example I am doing to show my students how to work on a collaged surface.  I am building on photocopied $5 bills.

Meanwhile my other advanced students (3rd year) are creating dimensional watercolors.  They are to create a background watercolor painting then on separate watercolor paper create cut outs that they attach with foam dots.  All of my advanced students are doing something that requires layering images and solving composition problems.

Well, that's today at Guymon High School.