Studio Art with Ms. Hopenwasser: Oil Pastels

Friday, December 21, 2012

Grade 6: Drawing Cupcakes!

Students have been working on their cupcake drawings over the past few weeks to reinforce the techniques and skill sets involved in drawing a 3-D Form on a 2-D surface. The majority of my talented students have not learned this skill yet! This is a great drawing project to follow up with after learning how to draw spheres and cylinders. Students really enjoyed this project because who doesn't like a tasty cupcake! It also makes a great connection to careers in the culinary arts and the creativity and science that goes into cooking and designing cupcakes.

Grade 6 Sstudents transformed their cylinder shapes into cupcakes for this drawing project that used oil pastels and/or colored pencils. Students are in the process of completing these colorful drawings that will be due at the start of 2013!
Check out students at work in art class.

-->This project is a great entry point into the world of Abstract Art and introducing students to The Elements and Principles that make up a work of art.

Grade 7 students used oil pastels to explore The Elements of Art, specifically, line, shape, value and texture with silver, gold, black and white oil pastels on a variety of colored papers. Students were encouraged to smear, blend and layer the materials to see the variety of effects they could produce with oil pastels and learn how to manage and manipulate this medium. Students created a variety of papers that would be used to make an Abstract Collage for the next step in their art exploration.

As a class we discussed "What is Abstract Art?" and generated ideas, questions and shared experiences about Abstract Art. Next, students used The Principles of Art (Balance, Contrast, Emphasis, Proportion, Rhythm, Repetition, and Unity) to guide them as they cut up and assembled their unique papers to create an abstract collage.