Just Desserts à la Wayne Thiebaud

Everyone loves dessert! Sixth grade artists were introduced to the work of Wayne Thiebaud and his desserts a plenty. We chose a photo from a magazine of our favorite dessert and made 6x6" sketches that we transfered to 6x6" canvas. The students were encouraged to work slowly to build layers of acrylic paint, resulting in an impasto surface that mimicks real icing perfectly. YUMMY. Click on the lemon meringue to see more paintings:

Chuck Close, graphite and charcoal close ups

From Grid Self Portraits -ART I

Middle School self-portraits. The agony, the arguments, and sometimes surprised and pleased outcomes for students. Basing our lesson on the technical portraits of Chuck Close, students enlarged a black and white photograph to three times it's original size. Students worked one square at a time, allowing them to concentrate on values in each fragment rather than making the overall paper 'look good.'

Grid Self Portraits -ART I

Prismacolor Flowers for Beginning Art

Sixth grade art students are capable of amazing things. They are so willing to try and they soak up instruction like brilliant artistic sponges. For this project, each student selected a photo of a flower or plant, and then they made sketches of of image in their journals. Next, students practiced enlarging the image to twice its size while still keeping the same proportions and textures as the original. Finally, we transferred the image to colored Canson paper and after several Prismacolor training sessions, students began adding color to the images. The results are amazing and the beginning art students were very proud.

Prismacolor Flower Gallery