Free Art History Bell Ringers

 

If you've been following me for more than a minute, you know I'm a huge fan of sneaking art history into my classes in 5 minute chunks. Have you been wondering what that looks like? Now's your chance to "try before you buy." I just shared 4 FREE weeks of bell ringers for black history month. 

Go get em!

If you need more info on how I use these in my classroom, you can check out the original post with all the details here.

Abstract Lyric Painting

Paul Klee has always been a fun artist to introduce and discuss the ideas of abstraction with students of all ages. My high school students enjoy the opportunity to connect their favorite music to an art project. This brings together composition, the elements of art, color theory and art history. 

Several years ago, I did this lesson as messages of thanks placemats exploring warm and cool color schemes using markers with elementary. It's been fun to remix an old favorite for the high school level.

Teaching Art History Five Minutes At A Time

** UPDATE **

I have created a template of what this process looks like in my classroom. Unfortunately due to copyright law I had to swap out more of the contemporary artists - but you will get the idea of how to use it here.

** 

Teaching on a block schedule can be awesome. Except when it's not. Our department was recently discussing how the last ten minutes can feel like an eternity. This year it's been magnified because students don't need the same amount of time for clean up because there are half as many, and they have their own set of basic supplies.

One routine I had (pre-covid) was teaching my art history in 5 minute chunks at the beginning of each class. We were on a 6 day cycle. They would take their sketchbook and divide the left page into 6 spaces and answer one question about the artwork each day. The weekly sketchbook assignment would go on the other side so I could quickly walk around and grade both. In hybrid mode, I decided to drop this practice to give more studio time since they are only in half as much. Turns out, we still have that awkward time at the end of class, so I'm bringing it back for semester 2. 

Here is a typical week of prompts

Day 1: What do you think this work is about? 

Day 2: How do you think this was made?

Day 3: What questions do you have about this work?

Day 4: Describe the work using the elements and principals of art

Day 5: Copy down information about the artwork (Title, Artist, Date, Size, Media, Country)

Day 6: How does the work make you feel? What does this artwork make you think about? What philosophy do you think this artist holds?

Of course the specific prompts vary based on the artwork. Sometimes they have a lot of questions I may use day 5 & 6 to share out the answers to their questions. After going through the cycle for two weeks, we could then get into comparing and contrasting works. In a typical 36 week school year, we could get much deeper into 15-20 works instead of glossing over that many in a ten minute powerpoint. This is not to say that I never do an art history presentation, but it does reduce the amount of time they are experiencing "art in the dark."

Does your school require bell-ringers or exit tickets? How do you use that time?

Memento Mori Art Lesson

Fall is here and it's a bit odd not to be in the middle of the Yayoi Kusama mania and pumpkin patches that dominate the elementary art world. I was trying to think of what meaningful, natural connections could be made at the high school level this time of year. One of my students' favorite lessons was the vanita projects that I used to assign at the end of the year. By switching from vanita and leaning in the direction of memento mori, I'm thinking students may be drawn into the lesson a bit more.

Since students are partially working from home, it might be fun to have them consider the symbolic elements around them. At this time of year, they may have access to skull decorations that could be integrated into their pictures.

How do you handle "seasonal" art and inspiration in your high school art room?

Week 8 Distance Learning

After a week of careful observation with our 7th choiceboard, we decided to go in the opposite direction for the last week of lessons. Week 8 focused on abstract portraits. We left the media and methods fairly open, with some suggestions on things that might work well. The results have been stunning.

We provided some artists of inspiration.

 

But the idea was for students to use all of the things they learned to create their portrait.

It's always fun to see the whole family getting involved. The patience of this dog as a brother and sister completed their homage to Yago Partal is nothing short of amazing.

It's always fun to see how students interpret the prompts and featured artists. Above is a Sandra Silberzweig inspired artwork.

This student blew me away with his Picasso inspired work.

Distance Learning Week 5

This week we took on art history via our choiceboard.

We provided 12 images, but students were allowed to use other works if desired.
Our media options for recreating the masters included:
1. Fabric
2. Self-portraits (photos) with symbolic objects
3. Legos / Blocks
4. Food
5. Found objects/Collage
6. Drawing toys (magnadoodle, etch-a-sketch, spirograph, aquadoodle)


Some of my favorite works included students in costume with their families becoming the paintings.

Todd Parr Portraits

First grade recently completed a pop art portrait painting inspired by the whimsical illustrations of Todd Parr. I just love the positive messages in his books.  We started off with a reading of "Be Who You Are"

Students viewed the illustrations along with the pop art paintings of Andy Warhol and noted the similarities. On the first day we drew cartoon portraits with black marker on bright colored paper. 

For the second session students chose a color palette. Using 3 colors they painted the face, hair, shirt and background of each space using tempera cakes.

Cubist Guitars

Students are wrapping up their cubist inspired guitars. So proud of them.

We ended up extending a week to include some sheet music in the background.

I love how their choice of guitar shape gives different feeling.

Original post with lesson details. 

Teacher samples:

Cubist Guitars

I have taught Picasso a few different ways over the years and have taken a few years off to explore some other artists. This year students are creating cubist style guitars and they are very excited to do so. They have been warming up with some value scale exercises and are starting to put color onto their pages and I can't wait to share.

As I was working on my support materials it hit me that this would be a fun project to go digital with. What's your favorite way to teach cubism?

Want the quick, easy download to try it in your classroom? Check it out.

Art Response Cards

Getting students to talk during a critique can be SO. VERY. PAINFUL. While most elementary kids really love to talk and give their opinion, I'm finding my 4th and 5th grade students are sometimes coming up a bit short. The art response cards that I used with my high school students have become very helpful in giving students a nudge in the right direction and expanding their art vocabulary.

Whether it be a class critique or an investigation into an art historical style, students are empowered and engaged when they have cards to choose from.  I like to color code the cards (it just makes sorting things out easier) so I have a set that are based on elements and principles, a set of descriptors and a set of purpose and function cards.

 If you're a fan of DBAE and the Feldman model of art criticism, you are probably no stranger to this idea. This set of 96 cards is available here to download.

Balloon Animal Paintings

Lately there have been a lot of teachers posting the adorable Jeff Koons balloon dog ornaments that are available right now. I'm in no way prepared to think about Christmas on the first week of summer break, HOWEVER, I am totally down with some lesson inspiration.

I love the way painting with parker lends itself to the transparent quality of a balloon. If you'd like access to the video tutorial, lesson plan and support materials they are posted here.

Magritte's Marvelous Hat

Last year I tried a new lesson with 3rd grade. They did printmaking after reading the book "Magritte's Marvelous Hat." It was a little bit of a stretch for 3rd grade, so I may look to move it up a grade or two in the future. But I really loved the book so we did them as a straightforward watercolor painting this year and had much more success. I let them choose either a floating hat or an object in front of the face. They did a great job.

If you haven't seen this book, I highly recommend it. The illustrations are amazing with transparent pages that transform the pictures like magic.

Wayne Thiebaud Cake Remix

The Wayne Thiebaud cake lesson. If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. That's how I was feeling. This lesson had gotten stale and I needed to kick it up a notch to keep my 4th grade artists engaged.

A few weeks ago I reached out to one of my favorite instagram artists. Anastasiya Levashova is an amazing contemporary illustrator who paints drool-worthy confections among other things. It was the perfect balance to the artwork of Wayne Thiebaud. To get started I asked the artist for permission to print some of her cake images to inspire my students. I was so delighted to hear from her the very next day and she even asked to see their work when finished. How sweet is that?

In this remixed lesson I presented Thiebaud as the past, Anastasiya as the present and suggested that they could be the next great cake artist.  Sharing a little about Levashova opened the conversation up to different career paths and options for artists today. This was the missing link. Adding the contemporary artist into the mix made the lesson much more relatable to my students. The next logical step was to move our media into the 21st century.



Our district purchased a class set of apple pencils (I know, spoiled!) for the 7 elementary schools to share. So when it was our turn, I knew I had to make the most of it. Not only were they using a stylus for the first time, we were using the procreate app on their ipads (yes, completely and utterly spoiled).



Here are some more of their amazing cakes:

 If you like this lesson you will surely want to follow Anastasiya on Instagram.



My lesson plan and support materials to help your students succeed are available here.