2nd semester sketchbooks!

We began our 2nd semester in January, so I have a new crop of students for art! We started working on sketchbooks as our first project.  Last semester we made books using rafia binding.  This time I used a comb binding machine to make them.  I can't decide if this was a better way or not, since I ended up binding most of the books myself.  It's a little tricky to get the pages onto the teeth of the combs. 

We painted the covers before binding, and if students had time, they painted a back cover as well.  We practiced some abstract designs for a couple of days before they picked their favorite to transfer onto their cover.  They learned about some of the basic elements of art, like line, shape, and color.  We also discussed a few of the principles of design like repetition and emphasis to make their design more effective. 

Paper sculpture

The last few days before Christmas break, my students worked on these gorgeous paper sculptures.  Each grade level did something different, but all were required to create a three dimensional sculpture with paper.  As much as I'd like to give my students a little more freedom, I honestly end up with not much of anything, simply because they just don't know what to create! So we save that for free draw time when they are finished with projects.  In the meantime, I teach them step by step for most of our projects, and when they finish, they're often inspired to create a variation of something they've learned.  For example, my 6th grades created these amazing cone paper sculptures in all white, and a few students that finished early made a smaller sculpture in different shapes and/or colors.  

My 7th graders got a little taste of quilling with these paper snowflakes. 

These looked so pretty stacked up as I was on my way to the display case!

My 8th graders worked on an origami style sculpture, I'll put those in my next post!