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. 

Sketch books!

This project took a little while to complete because we created our books from the outside in!  Students got to pick their sketchbook covers and they learned how to assemble a book.  We used rafia for the binding, and a great thing about these books is that we can take them apart and add more pages as we need them.

The books have a "hinge" so they fold back and lay flat, which was great for practicing portraits, value scales, and eyes in our books.  There are tons of instructions for books online, so if you're interested in making your own, it's easy to find a quick online tutorial for them.

One day when we had a crazy picture day schedule, we folded envelopes to glue inside their books.  I plan to use these for sub days too, so they can work on them throughout the year.

 They look so good in our display case! 

 Many of their sketchbook drawings were unfinished and they will have a chance to work on those later in the semester.  We did several days of faces, taking notes on the proportions and doing detailed drawings of eyes.