Tessellations 2015

Tessellations are a pattern made across a flat surface by repeating a shape with no gaps and no overlaps.  There are many techniques for making tessellations, the technique we will use is called the paper cut method. Students are to trace their tessellation template in their sketch books 4 times and try to envision what it possibly could be. Once they have a good design it is applied to a sheet of drawing paper and colored in with alternating colors.

For fun I tried out the triangle shape and got a wolf's head.  Here it is being traced over the surface using a light box.

Student work

Rhino project

Albright Durer made an amazing drawing of a rhino without even seeing it in 1515. This lesson is originally found in the book "From Ordinary to Extraordinary", an art and design book by Ken Vieth.
 Students are manipulating this famous rhino to add new content.  They trace a simplified version of the rhino 4 times in their sketchbook and try to come up with 4 different themes.  The best one is applied to a large rhino that they traced from an original large scale template on 11x17 paper.

This time around, we used watercolor pencils to complete.  Really nice results.  They color just as if it were a colored pencil project, then use a small brush and some water to move the color around.


As a neat side note, our incoming superintendent came in while students were working on this project and I got to give him the history lesson on Durer just like the students!

Celtic Knot Designs

Based on art from millennia past, the Celts spread across Northwestern Europe.  We commonly think of this as an Irish art form, and the students mostly just saw this as a visual challenge.  They needed to work out how to create the over/under pattern to successfully complete this project.  We started by practicing with the trinity knot.  Then students practiced in their sketchbook with 10 overlaps.  Only then did we move on to the radial design.

A great blog post to use as guidance can be found here.

In one quadrant, students needed to make a design with 20 overlaps.  They needed to make sure that some components went off the edges to other squares to make the lines rotate all around.  

The image is transferred from side to side by coloring in the lines dark and pressing on the back with something hard.  we used hand pencil sharpeners.

Once the design is transferred, its time to color.

Shading should be used to make the "Over/under" pattern really stand out.

Here is our grading scale.

20 successful "over/under" paths in 1 section.      30 points

Design is repeated correctly in all 4 sections        30 points

Use shading to show depth                                    30 points

Total                                                                      100 points

1 point perspective cities and rooms

Students followed up their name drawing project with a fairly intense double drawing:  Use perspective to draw a cityscape and a room.  In both cases, students could choose whatever they wanted to go into the city or room.  Here are the rules of perspective we cover and reiterate as we work:

1. When an object goes back in space, lines go back to the Vanishing Point (VP).

2. On round objects, you connect the outermost point to the VP (this is hard to describe)

3. If something gets in between your line and the VP, then the line stops. (overlapping rule)

4.  Front and Back edges match.  (they go same direction.  same for top and bottom.)

5. As things go back in space they appear smaller.

We also covered vertical, horizontal, diagonal and orthagonal.

We used t-squares and triangles to create true verticals and horizontals, which most of the students had never used before.

1 point perspective names

We are drawing our names using 1 point perspective.  Here is how we go through that.  

1.  We use a template to trace our letters.  I found a block alphabet and printed it large on 11x 17 paper.  I also drew a top and bottom registration line on them so the students could line them up.  Here is the two templates.

2.  The names have to have at least 5 letters.  Students draw a vanishing point far below in the middle of the name under, also, they trace their ruler under the name to help form some parts of the back edges.

3.  Students draw the orthagonals, the lines heading to the VP.

4. All along the way, I start introducing the basic rules of 1 point perspective.  Here they all are together.

1 Point perspective Rules:

1.  When objects go back in space, the lines go back to the Vanishing Point (V.P.)

2.  On round objects, the outermost point gets connected to the V.P.

3. If something gets between the line and V.P., then the line stops (overlapping.)

4. Front and back edges match (go same direction.)

5. As things go back in space, they appear to get smaller. 

5.  Students have 2 out of 3 parts then.  Fronts and Sides, missing the back edges.  Rule 4 and 5 help to explain how these are finished.

6.  Students embellish the fronts using the worksheet I downloaded from www.awesomeartists.com.

7.  As time allows, students should also add an interesting background.

Here are some of the results.