Student Art

7th Grade Art by Kai Geraghty-Sari

Masco has many unlimited activities and events throughout the school, but one that most people probably know of is the art program! The art program for 7th grade is run by Ms. Amsler who has created an outstanding lesson for the students of the blue team this semester. Ms. Amsler stated that she came up with this idea about three years ago when thinking of doing some sort of lesson based on the old fashioned, vintage, creepy image. This project is titled “Blood and Bones”

Speaking of, Blood and Bones is an insanely interesting art lesson that Ms.Amsler had materialized. It's based on the idea of taking a bunch of old spooky items or reference pictures of bones and anatomy and drawing them, cutting them out and tracing them to create multiple images to eventually forge them all together. They use a lot of different materials when indulging in this project such as pencils, sharpys, watered down tempera paint which they use as “blood”, chalk pastel, water based markers, wire and brass fasteners. To create the old timey feeling they learned and used quite a few techniques. One very prominent technique was called the “water technique”, basically they take a marker and some water then begin to spread the color throughout the page making it seem as though their work had been made 100’s of years ago. I genuinely couldn't be more anticipated to create this type of artwork at some point in the school year. 

To expand more on the limits and materials of this assignment, here are some rules to follow that helped the students to better grasp the idea and the execution. Draw largely and don't be nervous to take up space on your page. Draw only one object per piece of paper to create a more focused and concentrated environment, and don’t draw on the back, don’t spend time shading or adding a lot of detail, keep your drawing limited to contour lines and finally carefully observe the reference pictures and try to draw as realistically as possible. A lot of these rules were put in place to make sure that everyone is able to comprehend the task at hand. Now about the materials. Like I stated earlier the materials consisted of water based markers, paint, etc. The process in which they used these in were the pencils used for planning the format, sharpies that were used at the end of the sketch for contour lines, watered down tempera paint was splattered onto the pieces for the illusion of “blood” to create more tension within the art. All these things were major factors in creating their art pieces.

Personally this art project makes me envious of the students who take art classes at the moment. I’m fascinated by the effort put into these works by both the kids and Ms. Amsler. As someone who enjoys art myself I think that if I were given the opportunity to create something similar I would paint it with acrylics although I did love the creativity and thought behind the materials used for the project. If you haven't yet, please take a look at the art pieces made by the students of the 7th grade blue team.