This blog is focused for teachers and individuals who have found my art resources useful.
Category:Art Class
Preinstructional Drawings
I like to begin a new group of students with a series of preinstructional drawings. One of the series makes use of a small still-life object. One is placed in front of each student to be drawn for a example of drawing from life in order to compare that activity with a number of other drawing types. …
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I like this thing…
I picked up two of these from Harbor Freight over the holiday. It’s already proving to be as useful as expected in the classroom. The price was $18.99 in-store. I notice that the price online has gone up (since a week ago) to $19.99. I don’t know if this price has been updated in the stores yet …
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Nutcracker Graphics
My wife’s students were going to see a performance of The Nutcracker this week so she asked me to help her out with an activity for when they return. I prepared a set of nutcracker inspired faces for her students to color. They are full page designs but also set up to print in other …
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Drawing in Linear Perspective
Quite a line-up of projects have come and gone since I began teaching. Linear perspective, however, will always have a place in my curriculum. It’s one of those fundamental techniques that can be put to use by a wide range of skill and experience levels. There are also endless varieties of drawings that perspective can …
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Shading with Texture
My classes will be moving on to Scratch-Art soon. I always like to precede scratch-art with some texture shading lessons. I have quite a few handouts prepared for this but I only use a selection of them depending on the grade and skill level. Currently, I am working with 6th grade. We began a few …
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Classroom Muzak
As students work on projects, I find it beneficial to play some instrumental background music. With the right music selections, it tends to set a relaxing mood and helps them stay on task. In this post, I thought I would comment on what kinds of music I have found to work well.
Mystery Art
I have not arrived at the perfect solution to students neglecting to identify their artwork. There always seems to be a handful of papers with no name and so, cannot be graded. One helpful strategy has been to designate a place that students can retrieve unidentified artwork. For me, installing some clips at the back …
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Little Red Caps
I keep a few of these in my desk. Very simple little rubber caps that roll out to to seal a nozzle like one would find on a glue or paint bottle. Squeeze bottles often have caps that are easily lost. They also work well to cap a marker or pen when the original cap is misplaced.
Aestheometry Designs
Students are currently working on their Aestheometry design. Pictured here are the materials that we use daily. Upper left: Nineteen different aestheometry practice sheets that are distributed over several class periods. Upper middle: The large paper with the number four is a student folder that we create at the beginning of the year. It’s a 18×24″ …
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On the Board
My sixth grade classes are currently creating a drawing in one-point linear perspective. They then color the designs using a monochromatic color scheme.
On the Board
Students are working on their Aestheometry Designs. I provide several days worth of design exercises and encourage students to experiment with a variety of materials before beginning the final designs. Each student will complete a design on white paper and a second one on black paper. I provide metallic colored pencils for the black paper …
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Student Art
PDF Editing
My TeachersPayTeachers store consists primarily of resources in PDF format. A number of customers have inquired about editing the files. The majority of these files are not intended to be edited by customers and I would not encourage it. Rather, if you find an error in a file, let me know through the TPT question …
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Overhead Display
My classroom is equipped with video display for demonstration purposes. I chose to use a cheap video camera that cost about $120 twelve years ago. I mention it because I have compared it to ELMO document cameras costing in excess of $1000 and I prefer my set-up in every way. Expensive document cameras seem to be …
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Marker Multiplied
When using marker in class, I like to encourage students to try applying additional layers. It tends to deepen the color and lessens some of the characteristic streaky texture that marker is notorious for. Some colors and brands benefit more than others. Black, for example always seems to look richer and less…marker-ish. I give a …
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Elusive Gel Pens
Students are currently working on their Hidden Lizard Drawings. We color the background and leave the creatures blank at first. Once the background is done, they can visualize and make a more informed decision about what to do with the design on the animal itself. At this time, I discuss some of the materials and techniques to …
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Prison Tool Control
I don’t use them all the time, but for some materials and situations, these blocks make things much easier. Dad calls it prison tool control because it’s among the methods of accounting for tools used by inmates.The advantage being that one can see at a glance if all the materials have been returned before dismissing students. If the …
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Subtle Reminder
I’m the type who will lose track of time while focusing on other things and be caught off-guard by the bell to dismiss class. Of course, the bell ringing before my students have been instructed to put away materials once in a while is not a big deal. Still, I would choose to be consistent …
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Harder is Easier
While I don’t see much benefit in large sets of drawing pencils of various hardness, one shouldn’t overlook the fact that a standard, no.2 pencil is not necessarily the best choice for every task. I find 6H and above are often preferable. I understand they even go up to 10H but these are difficult to find. I …
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On the Board – Hidden Lizards
Students have begun their Hidden Lizards drawing. They design a background over which they come up with an imaginative way to “camouflage” a lizard, frog or snake.
Organizing Reference Material
In efforts to better organize my room and materials, I put a lot of time in preparing student reference materials to be used more easily year after year. Student reference materials are simply hard copies of examples and instructions. Some are, of necessity, printed in color…which means they are not cheap to produce and need to be …
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Bumper
If a classroom door needs to be left ajar, these door cushions work well. They are intended to keep toddlers from getting fingers pinched but they also work well to prevent a door from slamming or latching. Tethering with some cord keeps it from wandering off. It’s a simple shape constructed of dense foam rubber, …
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Student Rulers
Each of my students is issued a 16″ printed ruler for class. I used funds from my art fees account to order them custom printed. The cost was about $80 for 1000 rulers.That was several years ago. I will most likely have rulers through the 2015-2016 school year before I need to look at ordering more. I also printed my class rules and a color wheel on them. They are printed on heavy card weight paper with a gloss on the printed side.
On the Board – Implied Form Hand Drawings
Classroom Clip-Art Library
I have found that a well-stocked library of clip-art is very handy for art class….So long as you can use it efficiently, that is. It’s good for creating resources and students can use images for reference when the project calls for it. I’ve spent significant time collecting and organizing a library of digital clip-art over the years. …
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Keep Your Students in Line
You think you know who you’re dealing with? How many of your colleagues glue their desks to the floor? Mmm hmmm. That’s what I thought. I’ve been doing this for about fifteen years so its clear that I think it’s awesome. Clear acrylic furniture cups…The little plastic discs that are intended to protect the floor …
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Where Did I Put That?
Art teachers jealously guard their collection of artwork examples. Irreplaceable. Some are teacher-created examples to be sure but the bulk of the collection often consists of student art that has been abandoned or left behind over the years. A few years ago, I set up a method for organizing my project examples. It has proven to …
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Care for the Chair
These things are great! Nylon caps with felt pads for the feet of your classroom chairs. They are silent and they prevent those streaks, scuffs and worn areas on the floor. Forget about those ridiculous looking tennis balls stuck on chair legs. When I got these, my concern was that the felt base would not last …
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Portable Pencil Point Processor
It’s probably unusual for a teacher to prefer not to have a sharpener permanently installed. For the most part, I rely on handheld sharpeners in my classes. Even before I shifted to the manual sharpeners, I didn’t care for having a wall-mounted crank model permanently installed. My solution was to have a crank sharpener mounted to a …
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Easy Receipts
Gotta love a good stamp. There is a student art fee at my school to help purchase some of the supplies used in class. A few years ago, my school began to issue student planners. I promptly purchased a custom date stamp so that I could stamp the “receipt” in a student’s planner and stop …
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Stump Blending
For my Art 2 classes, I demonstrate how to use and make available some medium-sized blending stumps for use with colored pencil. I only provide them as an option as, at this level, some students really take to them while others could not care less. In my experience, the stumps can’t salvage poor shading. Rather, one …
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Repurposed Shoe Racks
Thanks to my wife for pointing this out to me a few years ago. Inexpensive, door-hanging, shoe racks are great for art supplies in the classroom. They are particularly well-suited, I have found, for pencil and marker sorting.
Organizing individual student supplies
I buy several dozen of these at a time. Another use I have found for the zipper bags I purchased from Dick Blick is for individual supply storage for students. I created a laminated, numbered insert for each bag that corresponds to a seat/table in the classroom. Each student is issued a bag for the …
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Zipper Supply Bags
I’ve had a lot of luck in my classes with these zipper supply bags. The ones I purchased were from Dick Blick and I was originally concerned that the zippers would not hold up. A couple of year later they are in good shape even with daily use. One had a zipper tab fall off…just …
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Sharpener maintenence
Even custom built monster sharpeners eventually need replacement blades. One can prolong the useful life of a sharpener by swapping blades on the dual hole models. This is due to the fact that one blade will likely get more use than the other. In my classes, the sharpeners are used most heavily for extra thick Prang colored pencils I provide, resulting …
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