Skulls, flowers, and cloth

Students are learning drawing skills using exercises fro the book "Drawing on the Right side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards.

We started with upside down drawing of Van Gogh Coloring pages, and then quickly to Pure Contour Drawing, where students do not look at their drawing.

This trains the visual side of our thinking to come to the forefront of our minds and allows us to trust more in our eyes then our memories or ideas.  

Shortly after that we modify the contour drawing to allow students to look at their papers for about 10 percent of the time.  

These pictures are from the 2nd day of Modified Contour Drawing where we are trying to draw organic items, namely skulls, fabric, and flowers.  Each table has a small still life arranged for students to look at.  We are starting to get some amazing results!  Students are also able to draw for longer periods of time.  We are stretching from a painful 5 minutes to an easy 15.

Eclipse 2017!

As a fun extension activity, I'm showing students how to use oil pastels and masking to create wonderful effects similar to our total solar eclipse!  Simply cut out shapes from paper and color around the edges then smear.

In reality, it did not get this dark here in Carthage, but they really enjoyed recreating the effect with art supplies.

My classroom neighbor, Mr. Oberman set up his telescope with solar lens to take photos of the event as well.

End of the year hexaflexagon fun!