64 Colors

To kick off painting in my middle school classes this year, grades 6, 7, and 8 all did an exercise where I challenged them to mix 64 different colors using only primaries (red, yellow, blue) and white paint. I gave them a grid with 64 pre-printed squares (I just made it in Microsoft Word by using the table maker) on 11x14" copy paper. We didn't bother with water and instead blotted brushes on dry paper towels between colors. The paper towel method has been a favorite of mine this year...in a room with no sink it really saves time now that I don't have to fill water containers on painting days! Another perk: my students have much more sophisticated colors due to the inevitable color mixing!

Charcoal and Pastel Owls

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have 2 bonus class periods with my 6th graders while my current middle school group (8th grade) was in Washington, D.C. for the annual 7th/8th grade travel week.  Because I hadn't had my 6's in a couple of months, and I only had a little over 1 hour of usable art making time with them, I knew I needed a project that would get them excited and keep them on task so that we would have finished pieces of art at the end of our time together.  I decided that something BIG and a little bit messy would be right up their alley.  For whatever reason, kids have a very high success rate with bird images (and cats, too!) so I decided we would draw owls and focus on drawing big, using lots of visual texture, and variation in value (lights and darks).

To help the kids dive right in, I had some owl images available for them to look at (photocopied from Animals: 1,419 Copyright-Free Illustrations).  They worked in charcoal on 19 x 25" tagboard that I had cut down from larger (25 x 38") pieces that I found in the paper room.  To make their work really pop, they selected an area or two (usually the eyes, background or beak) to add color to using chalk pastels.  The results were stunning and several are proudly on display in the lunchroom for all to enjoy!