Cityscape Project

No homework tonight or Friday.

Today in class: We started the new Cityscape project. Each student drew three distinct layers of a city skyline using just one line per layer. Many chose to draw "cutout" shapes like windows and bridge arches, which will be colored with the next value up. On the board, I demonstrated how to map out the four different values used. The darkest is at the bottom of the paper; lightest at the top. Each student had also been assigned a color from the simple color wheel and instructed to use just one colored pencil for the entire artwork - no blending of different hues allowed!

Our goal is to finish all the coloring for this project by the end of class on Friday, then hang the artworks after the long weekend. We'll have to find a good location to hang all 88 individual skylines in line!

New Vocabulary:

monochromatic: from mono, one, and chroma, color. A monochromatic artwork uses a single color.

hue: the name of any color on the color wheel.

Right brain drawing, color, value

Homework: 2 line worksheets are due tomorrow.

Classwork today:

1. Introduction to color. Discussed primary, secondary, and tertiary (intermediate) colors. Students worked on simple color wheels, mixing their secondary and tertiary hues from primary colored pencils.

2. Introduction to value (light and dark shading). Value is one of the visual artist's most valuable tools for making shapes and lines on a two-dimensional surface appear to have three dimensional qualities, like depth and mass. Students were given value scales with examples of different techniques, like shading, hatching, crosshatching, and stippling.

3. Continued work on Right Brain Drawing exercise from Picasso's portrait of Igor Stravinsky.

Planned activities in Fine Arts for Friday: Complete Right Brain Drawing, complete color wheel and value scale worksheets, display Unique Drawings, finish any incomplete artwork.

Tomorrow is an Early Release Day, so classes will be only 40 minutes long and there wil be no lunch break. Students are released at 12:25 pm. There will be no homework assigned over the R&R weekend. Have a great week, everyone!

"Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet." - Paul Klee