I like to begin the year with a series of preinstructional drawings. One of these involves drawing from a small still-life and then drawing from a similar photograph for comparison.
Category:Tools & Techniques
Ruler Deposit
I supply 18″ plastic rulers for my students. They are thin, cheap and fit well in our folders. They are, however, smooth and slippery…
Pumpkin Carving Tutorial
This is a re-post of a previous tutorial due to an older platform causing some incompatibility.
Near Extinct Artist Palettes
For years, I have used glossy magazine pages as paint mixing palettes in my middle school art classes. They work in most situations where wax paper palettes would be useful. They are free, resistant to liquid paint and, until recently, plentiful. That has been the perceived problem for a while now. Clearly, magazines in our …
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Tempera Cakes in Muffin Tins
Large tempera cakes fit very well in cheap muffin tins. You can buy the cakes in various sets or individual colors. Tempera can be used like watercolor as well as more opaque techniques. Muffin tins are common in 12 or 6 cup varieties. Use hot glue on the bottom of the cakes. If you want …
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Marker on Toned Paper Demo
Reflective Metal Illusion Demo
Mystery Grid Drawing Demo
YouTube Channel
I’ve recently begun to update my YouTube channel.
Grid Jig
I have a couple of projects that make use of a 2″ grid. Students create their own grid for use in a drawing but there are always a number of absent students, students who fail to complete the grid correctly, and students who have to begin again. There are also new students added mid-project sometimes. …
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Metallic Scratch Art
Students recently completed a scratch-art project on silver or gold metallic scratch board. In this example, the student used a reference animal graphic and chose to fill in the sections on the design using intricate patterns and designs. The lesson emphasizes the use of texture shading and using value and contrast to make details easily …
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Linear Perspective Demo
We’re working with one-point linear perspective in 6th grade at the moment. I like to use my TV display for demonstration. I’m having pretty good results from laminating drawing paper and using wet erase fine-point markers to draw the steps while students follow along. Dry erase was handy but I prefer pens with a finer …
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Beste Liner Brushes
I recently purchased some Beste Finest Golden Taklon Hair liner brushes from Jerry’s Artarama for use on our comic panel paintings in tempera paint. I chose these brushes primarily because of the price and I was particular in wanting a long haired liner brush for those students who wished to try outlining their paintings in black …
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Publishing on Demand
Last year I decided to experiment with on-demand publishing. This refers to companies who offer to print your publishing projects one unit at a time as needed. Automated printing and binding technology now allows this to be done in an affordable way.
Mechanical Drawing Heart Designs
This week, students began creating Kaleidoscope Heart Designs. I like to have them do some variety of this type of art each year. Our first step is to create a blank heart template on 18×18″ white paper. Each student creates theirs from a demonstration I lead using a compass and ruler. One of the primary challenges is …
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64oz. Yeti Growler Handle
I’ve always like taking something to drink to work in a large container. I like to make a beverage (ice tea for example) in the morning, have it last all day at work, and even have quite a bit left to finish up at home. I’ve been through a number of refillable convenience store mugs …
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Sanitary Wipes
One of the handiest things I have “discovered” for art class use are Pampers Sensitive Wipes. When working with messy materials, chalk pastels for example, my hands would tend to get very dry from all the excessive washing throughout the day. These wipes have a bit of moisturizing effect and are quick and easy for …
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Photo Booth
Each year, my more advance art classes do a project using a photo of themselves as a reference. I have a number of projects that may use these and I add to the list regularly. Earlier in the year, I have the students take digital photos which I keep on file until we are ready …
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Camera Rig
Moving into my renovated classroom required me to design a new camera rig for my display system. I still haven’t seen a better adjustment solution than the long handled mount that I took from a discarded video camera tripod. I had to purchase a 1/2″ steel rod, which fit perfectly in the camera mount. The …
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Free Mystery Grid Puzzle
Download this free Mystery Grid Art Puzzle of a coyote. Check out my TPT store for more ready-to-go activities. Grid Drawing Tips
Doodle Techniques
My students are currently working on their Doodle Design drawings. We are working on glossy rainbow paper with Sharpie. When a paper is glossy and the back is white, any color printed on the paper is typically sitting on the surface of the sheet, rather than permeating into the paper fibers. This allows for a …
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Op-Art Designs
My students began working on op-art designs this week. The designs are actually pre-printed copies. The activity is centered around applying color to the images. It’s a good opportunity to introduce a new technique or medium. This group is using watercolor pencils. As the designs are printed on regular copy paper, special considerations must be …
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More Presidential Progress
Earlier this week, students began applying color to their Presidential Portraits. We used watercolor marker for our color medium. When I know this project is coming up, I order a supply of red, blue, and black markers. Those happen to be the colors that tend to be used up quickest anyway, so its good to …
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Foam Carving Tiles
I like to do a foam tile carving project with my Art 2 students each year. It’s an easy way to incorporate simple three-dimensional relief sculpture into a curriculum. The material carves easily with scratch art type tools and tongue depressors cut down to a flat edge.This year, we are doing contour names. It was …
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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