Designer Ray Eames and her husband were the most well-known artists of the Mid-Century Modern movement--a style of furniture and industrial design that embodied clean lines, geometric shapes and neutral colors. Ray Eames famous "Eames Chair" is still used today. Students learned how to draw accurately in one-point perspective and had desig their own room interiors including an piece of original furniture.  To make things even more interesting, they had to incorporate magazine pictures of furniture and textures into the deisng  and color with colored pencils.  

Precisionism is a little-known art movement created by American artists in the 1920's.  The style was all about simplified shapes, minimal details and smooth surfaces.  The best-known artist of this movement was Georgia O'Keeffe became well known for her close up paintings of flowers and animal bones.  She would paint her subjects so close up that the shapes would capture areas of negative space which she would paint with smooth gradients.  We did this by drawing and shading everyday objects close up and painting the negative space with a range of values.  

Surrealism was an art movement pioneered by Salvador Dali that introduced art inspired by the subconcious or dream world.  Dali was known for painting animals in strange ways--like elephants with long giraffe legs. We created our own Surrealist artworks by combining two animals (drawn in ink with detailed textures) and placing them in collaged fantasy landscapes.  These are so fantastic I had to share a ton!

We looked at the incredibly detailed hand painted books of the Medieval Age.  Typically pages of those books began with a highly detailed "illuminated" initial letter.  Each student created their own version using the first letter of their name and inspired by Medieval design elements.

We started out the school year with a relaxing neurographic artwork.  Students wrote their name and other words that represent them in angled spaces, then smoothed and connected the lines through a neurographic process.