High School Visual Arts

Monochromatic Self Portraits: Acrylic Painting

ART 1 students learned how to paint monochromatic self-portraits inspired by Shepherd Fairy. Students learned how colors can express emotion and how to create a range of values using one color with acrylic paint. Students were then prompted to use one color, a stencil, and a word to describe themselves.

Breaking the Frame: Needle Felted Reliefs

ART 1 Students learned how to create needle felted relief sculptures in 5x7 inch frames inspired by nature.

Tone it Up: Charcoal Drawings

ART 1 & 2 students learned how create charcoal still-life drawings on toned paper using additive and subtractive drawing methods. Students drew their still life from a black and white photo.

Lover’s Eyes: Clay Sculpture

ART 1 students learned how to create clay relief sculptures inspired by historic Lover’s Eyes.

Stepping Out: Clay Shoes

ART 4 senior students learned how to sculpt clay shoes inspired by Tinker Hatfield through creating their own shoe pattern, and cutting and assembling it using the clay slab method.

Crushin’ It: Soda Can Triptych Drawings

ART 1 & 2 Students learned how to draw from observation using a soda of their choice.

Mono-printing with Nature: Flower Pounding

ART 1 & 2 students were introduced to the Japanese art technique of flower pounding, hammering plants onto watercolor paper. Some students made Mother’s Day cards while others decided to further explore the technique by combining their natural prints with pen and ink drawings or watercolor paintings.

Life’s Blueprints: Cyanotype Printmaking

ART 1 & 2 students were introduced to the historic use of cyanotypes for blueprints, and how contemporary artists are reimagining this medium in their own art practice. Students were prompted to create a stencil that reveals their connection to nature using positive and negative space.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Photography Collage

In the spring of 2022, I developed and created a photo collage project for a freshmen photography class that emphasized the big idea of different points of view. In this six week unit, students learned about how to read photo collages that comprise of multiple photos through exploring contemporary photographers David Hockney, Justine Khamara, and Brno Del Zou. Students created their photo collages inspired by cubism, an idiom, or surrealism, using foam core to pop and emphasize their point of view.