Students were tasked with recreating a photograph of a fruit using both graphite and watercolors. The students were given a a worksheet where they first sketched out the fruit and practiced identifying highlights, shadows, and mid-tones. Once they completed their grayscale sketch, they had to recreate the drawing on the second half of their worksheet and apply color using the watercolors. Students were reminded to keep their sketches lightly so the main focal point of the watercolor practice was to see the vibrant watercolors rather than the dark outlines from their sketches. They were also challenged to use at least 4 different techniques that we went over together as a class prior to this activity to show their knowledge of working with watercolors.
Students practice drawing, designing, and using their imagination to make their ideas come to life. Lotería is a traditional Mexican game filled with symbols. By making their own cards, they learn about the tradition while also giving it a modern twist. Each card can show something about their personality, family, community, or favorite things. It’s a chance to share who they are through art.
After working with value, students got a chance to work with different mediums, one being charcoal. Charcoal portraits help high school students improve their art skills by teaching them to understand light and shadow, master facial proportions, and express emotions through their drawings. Working with charcoal develops patience, precision, and the ability to create texture, leading to greater confidence and self-expression in their artistic endeavors.
After learning about color theory and introducing color into their work, students worked with oil pastels to create fruits, flowers, and portrait of an animal. As students practiced more and more with the oil pastels, they began to experiment with making new colors and values from a limited palette of colors. A challenge students had was working with the oil pastels in general due to the consistency of the pastel, being similar to a crayon but messier. Many students found the messiness of the oil pastels frustrating and difficult to blend out, so they had to find creative solutions for blending the smudges, or creating barriers so that their paper would not get dirty.
After students learned how to use different techniques with watercolors, students practiced using them to paint a lemon. Students did a walk-through with their teacher to draw the lemon in grayscale to review proportion, grid method, and create various values. By practicing values, students had a better understanding of where to identify highlights and shadows as well as see the relationship between value and color. After a demonstration of painting the lemon by their teacher, students then tried to recreate the lemon on their own using at least 4 techniques they learned.
Students understand how artists make flat drawings look 3D. Builds on 1-point and 2-point perspective lessons, showing the next level of depth. Students must carefully measure and line up to vanishing points. It trains their eye to see space, distance, and proportion in new ways. Even with the technical rules, students can design anything—cities, futuristic landscapes, imaginative worlds. They learn to combine structure with creativity.
For the first semester, we focused on teaching basic skills such as drawing geometric forms, creating value with graphite, and beginning to create more complex forms using perspective. With these fundamental skills, students were able to create drawings of geometric form still lives, 1-pt perspective drawings of various hallways on our campus, and 2-pt perspective drawings of a city or scene they either designed on their own or based on a reference. These are often considered the most challenging and difficult projects due to the varying skill-sets of students at the beginning of the year, but once students have a strong foundation of these techniques, they can utilize them in future projects for sketching, designing/planning, and creating more complex forms.
Students practice blending and shading using charcoal. For their practice, students took a picture of themselves and cropped it to just focus on their eyes.