Welcome to the online art studio, aka the wired atelier*!

This blog is designed for students and families in Allison Fuller-Mulloy's SMHS Art Classes. It is a site for posting our daily work and homework (IWs) each week, ideas and images to explore further, reminders and due dates. I hope this blog will help students by reinforcing the week's major ideas and activities, giving make-up work for absentees, and providing families a look into the atelier every day!

Please visit the links on the right side for more information, downloads and images.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Hard at work: Week 2

Sketchbooks, songs, and silliness, oh my!

This week was full of all three. Students continued work on creating their own sketchbooks from a simple bookbinding technique they learned in class. Their covers really reflected their personalities and interests and helped me get to know them even better!

Once finished, we began learning about the Elements of Art and Principles of Design. Here is a link to a great site that explains what these terms are and their significance. The terms and ideas are the basic language of Art, so it is important that students learn those early and quickly. After an intense note-taking session, I taught them a song to help them remember the Elements of Art and an acronym to help them remember the Principles of Design. And yes, I made them all sing it! Although it's a silly song to the tune of Row Your Boat, it really helps students remember and reminds us all we are not as cool as we think we are! :) We also listened to one student's new version created on Garage Band software to more of a Caribbean beat. Props to Baxter for the great new version! We will be quizzing on those terms until I feel everyone knows them by heart!

We also began our first project concentrating on the Elements and Principles. Our Line sculptures used simple cut white paper lines of varying thickness, lengths, and directions to create interesting forms on our white paper background. Since the sculptures were wall hangings, we created them in a style of relief sculpture. They look fantastic under the gallery lights in our hallway; the shadows created by the raised lines make them even more interesting!