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This year has been such a crazy and exciting time in 2-D art! This is my first year at MRMS, as well as my first year teaching. I couldn't have asked for a better community to belong to, the staff, parents, and especially the kids are incredible to work with!

In 8th grade advanced art the students have been creating amazing pieces starting with the surreal hands projects. Students in this class are just finishing up their impactful portraits in which they have chosen someone to create a mixed media portrait of. The portraits are inspired by an artist named Florian Nicolle. Check out the finished work in the pictures below!

8th Grade has been doing an incredible job learning how to draw realistically using graphite pencils, and also drawing doodle portraits inspired by the famous photo realist painter Chuck Close.

7th Grade has learned the properties of watercolor, working on their idiom paintings. These are so much fun to guess what their painting represents! 7th grade has also done fantastic work drawing realistically, learning to investigate like DaVinci! They have created three still life drawings using close observation to capture realistic representations!

6th Grade students have worked on learning the properties of watercolor as well, representing their favorite foods in a grid style portrait like Chuck Close. These turned out amazing! 6th grade also worked on their visual literacy skills, creating their own comic strip. Each student chose a favorite story and "re-wrote" it in a different characters perspective. They then turned it into a giant comic strip.

All groups of students have shown enormous talent and creative thinking throughout their time in 2-D art. Great job Grizzlies!

Deciding what to create can be one of the toughest parts of a project. The two previous posts will not only assist you, but so will observing your surroundings. Are the zig zag lines from your backpack interesting to you? Does the circular motion of the throwing wheel have your mind set on spirals? Does the splatter of clay on your pants inspire you to try "Jackson Pollock" style painting? Inspiration is everywhere!

Choice Art offers a new opportunity for students to explore materials and techniques as they so choose. The difficuly for some students is simply figuring out what to do! Here are some suggestions to get your creative juices flowing. Look around you at colors, textures, patterns and lines. You need to do research...VISUAL RESEARCH! What looks cool to you? What intrigues you? Dig though books and magazines and snip out things that catch your eye. Make a page in your sketchbook without giving it much thought - fill that page with your collection of eyecatching bits and pieces. Now, look at the page and see where it takes you. Start doodling...fill a page with doodles. Can you put the two things together? Take some 3D bits and manipulate them into different forms. How could you add those forms to your collection of eyecatching bits and your page of doodles? Add a poem. Add words. Tear something. Fold, paint, rework.

Remember to look at the links on the left side of this page. There are sites with lesson plans that include instructional videos to guide you into new arenas. Look at the Blick site under lesson plans (they aren't just for teachers)! Lots of those lesson plans have videos. Look at a few of them and figure out how you can personaliza that project and make it your own.

Challenge yourself and get put of your comfort zone. Stop doing things that you know how to do! Take artistic risks! Fail once in awhile...there really is no failure in ART - you are learning all the time.

You might not think the Elements of Art and the Principles of Design have anything to do with your daily routine. An assignment we give our students is to think of two colors and two elements or principles and write about how those art basics will impact their weekend. Responses include everything from the TEXTURE of the grass on which they play soccer, baseball or football. The COLORS of their uniforms, rooms or clothing. LINES on the football field or in the spokes of their bicycles. RHYTHM as they move along the dance floor. Those Elements and Principles really are everywhere!

Look at that mosaic on the bench. What Elements and Principles are staring at you?

Now, slowly look around where you are at this moment...what else do you discover? Can you find PATTERN? Anyone see VALUE? FORMS or SHAPES? Be careful, those last two can be pesky and easily mislabeled. Have fun with your new vsion of art!

Art is all around you. Do you know where this sculpture is located? Look around and find the art near your home and in your community. Art pulls us together as a community. Let's explore and see what we can find! Challenge on!

New student work will be posted in the next few days. Be sure to check it out on the link to the left!

Which Art Principles can be found in this painting?

1. Did you know that Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime? 2. In 1962 Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was valued at $100 million. That was in 1962!! 3. In the painting by Edvard Munch, "The Scream", the person in the painting was scared because a storm was on its way. Terrifying!

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