Ghali is a young Italian rapper beloved by my students. He usually wears colorful jackets, shirts and suits and we realized a collection of suits for him working on patterns. First we created in pairs some patterns, with different techniques and colors. After that we cut out the suit's shape from the photocopy of the singer in order to create a window. The picture has been pasted on the drawing … [Read more...]
Prints inspired by Portuguese Azulejos
June 7, 2018 by 1 Comment
During my last trip to Lisbon I discovered the beauty and the infinite variety of the Azulejos , the traditional ceramic tiles you can find everywhere on the Portoguese architectures. The Azulejo is a typical Portuguese decoration which consist of a Thick ceramic tile with a glazed and decorated surface. Traditionally it is square-shaped and its size is 12cmx12cm. After talking about the notion … [Read more...]
Paintings in scale of grays, inspired by B&W photos
March 23, 2018 by 2 Comments
This activity is an idea of the art teacher and friend Alessandra Tomasi. She is teaching at the Middle School of Fondo e Revò, in the North of Italy, and her students are Grade 8th. After introducing the history of Photography the students observed many black-and-white photographs. Students and teacher talked about shades, hues and colors in these pictures. The activity proposes to create a … [Read more...]
Emotions in abstract compositions
February 18, 2018 by 1 Comment
Composing a visual image consists of arranging and placing the elements on a support or in the composing space. This means arranging the elements of the image and giving them ORDER and UNITY. A composition's order is how we chose and determine the type of relation there will be between the different elements of art. With Grade 8th students we had a lesson about COMPOSITION in the work of art, … [Read more...]
Painting different kinds of lines
December 19, 2017 by Leave a Comment
The first element of art is the line, all ART starts with lines and we can create lots of images with simple lines! In this activity students learn how to paint a background with solid colors and how to paint different kinds of lines with different paintbrushes. The paintings could be assembled in a collaborative project to obtain a coloured modular panel. How to do this painting: 1.Write your … [Read more...]
Group work: mixed media leaves
December 5, 2017 by Leave a Comment
In groups of three we created this mixed media work, following the step-by step instructions. First we write our names on the back of the drawing sheet. Then we paint the drawing sheet with watercolors, all the three students of the group on the same drawing sheet. We use flat and round paintbrushes. We paint the background just with black and grey, the white areas depend on the … [Read more...]
SELFIE Artist Trading cards 2018
October 17, 2017 by 4 Comments
This year for the third edition of Artist Trading Card Global Swap 2018, we thought to focus our work on ourselves, infact the topic is our SELFIE! We collected all our selfie from mobile phones and then we worked on them with colors, in the style of Matisse and Expressionist artists. The swap project is created by Nic Hahn of Minimatisse website, and the aim is to bring Artist trading cards … [Read more...]
Vortex of textures
February 27, 2017 by 1 Comment
A colored vortex of graphic textures have been created here by students of 6th grade, to test their creativity. Here we have the instructions to follow in order to realize this drawing with felt-tip pens: - on a square drawing paper draw a central point with a pencil. You don't need to measure, you can trust your eyes! - from this central point draw eight curved lines, bended toward right. The … [Read more...]
Asterisk* with three ways to shade
February 9, 2017 by Leave a Comment
As in this previous lesson, we practiced three different ways to create value and shade with pencil. In this drawing, made with 7th grade students, we used artist tape on a square drawing sheet. We made an asterisk, being careful to stick the tape on any cloth before putting it on paper. In this way the tape becomes less adhesive and you avoid to tear the paper. With a soft pencil we drew the … [Read more...]
Like tissues at the microscope: shading exercise
December 29, 2016 by 2 Comments
In order to comprehend the shading effects in a drawing, it's very useful working on the perception of the depth. Adding shadows on a flat drawing helps our perception in seeing the three-dimensional effects of the depth. It's a sort of "magic": we can understand the different layers just if the shadows are in the right spots. I'm glad to show here below a great video tutorial from … [Read more...]
