Search

What is art criticism and why do it? Art criticism is talking or writing about art. We do it because we want to know what artworks mean and what their [...]

Carmen Lomas Garza's Barbacoa para Cumpleanos (Birthday Barbecue) depicts her childhood memory of a birthday party for her sister Mary Jane. Family, friends, and neighbors have gathered to celebrate at [...]

The Arabian Nights This image, Sinbad Plots Against the Giant, was conceived as an illustration for an edition of The Arabian Nights published in 1906. It shows Sinbad and his [...]

Students in Pittsburgh are learning to think like artists. Through a program called PROPEL, students engage in self-assessment; teachers have writings and visual images that show student development and achievement [...]

Center Senior High School Kansas City, Missouri The Center School District is small, independent and located within the boundaries of a major metropolitan city and is surrounded by four major [...]

The goals of my writing projects are based on the belief that thinking and writing about artwork enhances understanding and enriches creative experiences associated with art production. The shacks created [...]

The Harvard Arts Propel Project inspired me to rethink the way I teach portraiture. For my grade eight students, portraiture is now a domain project. A domain project is an [...]

Last spring, the Notre Dame Academy Fine Arts and English Departments introduced ninth grade students to Asian arts and poetry. During the past few years, the number of Asian students [...]

Elementary Children, especially elementary age children, draw people in almost every work of art they create. Therefore, I thought it was time to teach my second graders the techniques necessary [...]

'This process works well, and the student work reflects personally expressive results. The students' sense of proportion, quality of line, and use of media increased, as did their awareness of [...]

Middle School Recently, while covering the artroom tables with butcher paper, I decided to write and illustrate a few quotes about art, imagination, and creativity. When the students walked in, [...]

Elementary/Middle Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, has proven worthy of study throughout time and history. But, in this modern age, isn't it about time Mona got a face-lift? I [...]

Elementary My elementary students love artworks that are open to various interpretations. One of their favorite lessons is to create an artwork in the style of Marc Chagall. I even [...]

Second-grade students at Friends School Haverford spend several months studying colonial America. Many of their art projects tie in with the social studies curriculum, but one in particular--weaving --brings together [...]

Always looking for a different way to present a story-starter for my elementary students, I remembered some papier-mache bowls I saw in the book, Sculpture in Paper by Nicholas Roukes. [...]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES Students will... 1. expand their knowledge regarding cultural diversity. 2. learn how to unify a design derived from multiple motifs. 3. gain movement and focal-point awareness. 4. apply [...]

I work at a YMCA after-school program. Recently, I planned a month-long after-school curriculum featuring the work of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf. These three artists work in [...]

Elementary The work of Eric Carle, author and illustrator, is well known to teachers of primary students. The first grade teachers at Yates Arts in Education Magnet, School chose to [...]

Elementary The drama and color of Japanese Kabuki theater inspired this life-size Kabuki figure project. First we had to make the Kabuki mask. We purchased mask molds, covered the mask [...]

Elementary Integration of art with other subject areas has long been one of the goals for my art program. As our third grade classes began their Social Studies unit on [...]

High School The ability to see things differently is certainly one of the keys to creativity. But what is creative thinking and how can it be visualized? A good deal [...]

Elementary The purpose of this lesson is to create a forest scene that shows depth by overlapping forms and using color intensity to make them project and recede. The idea [...]

Middle School 'Smile,' I said to my sixth graders on the first day of class, as I took their passport photos for a trip around the world. For the next [...]

In my eighth grade drawing and painting class, the students traditionally work with landscapes in a variety of media--pen and ink, marker, and watercolor. Last year, we explored a new [...]

High School Recycling is a concept with which today's students are both familiar and sympathetic. We designed this project, using recycled student paintings from years past, to teach abstraction, composition, [...]

Elementary What is one of the best things about Maine in May? The lilacs are blooming! I collected enough lilacs so that every table in the classroom had a vase [...]

Art education has long been considered a vehicle not only for teaching art as a means of self-expression but believed to be a panacea to build the self-esteem of children [...]

A wise man once said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But, when visual symbols are used in place of words to express an idea--or to evoke a [...]

This project was developed for 'gifted and talented' elementary students in grades three through five as part of a summer enrichment program at a local community college. As an accelerated [...]

Several years ago my husband was asked to make a few figures for a parade float. He devised a method of laminating styrofoam pieces, for bulk, and 'macheing' them for [...]

CARDBOARD SCULPTURES Development for this project began when the custodial staff from our school approached me with cardboard boxes that had been used in our move into the new middle [...]

Wrapping up the semester in a ceramics class can be a tricky venture. Drying, glazing, firing, loading and unloading the kiln up until the last second of the last day [...]

This is one of my favorite lessons because the kids are so impressed with themselves when they find that they can actually work abstractly. I introduce abstraction through a two-dimensional [...]

STANDARDS Evaluate Subjects in Visual Art Individual Development and Identity To familiarize my fourth and fifth graders with the work of Norman Rockwell, we study his Saturday Evening Post covers [...]

An introductory two-dimensional course is often the only art class a student will take in high school. I try to make this course as all-encompassing as possible, giving students experiences [...]

Faberge eggs are a beautiful symbol of Russian history and culture. When the Birch Wathen Lenox School decided to study Russia, the entire K-12 student body created elaborately jeweled Faberge [...]

There is little argument that the study of art history is an essential component of discipline-based art education. As art teachers, how can we make art history more enticing and [...]

The age of the clipper has been called the most remarkable ten years of sail in the history of the world. From earliest Colonial times shipbuilding was an important occupation [...]

Handmade slides have two terrific advantages: first they are inexpensive to make and most of the materials are easy to find; and second they can be a wonderful art experience--your [...]

Elementary I begin this lesson by discussing realistic, abstract, and non-objective art, as well as triptychs. Students choose one subject that will be depicted in each of these three styles. [...]

Looking for a project that would be an appropriate transitional experience from drawing into painting for my high school general art class, I chose the colorful Indian miniature 'Jain' styled [...]

Clay! It's the medium of choice for all middle school students. My eighth grade ceramics students are always enthusiastic about the projects they create. One especially fun project is created [...]

As an introduction to Cubism for fourth grade (or any intermediate grade), I explain how the Cubists attempted to reduce natural forms to geometric forms, an idea started by Cezanne, [...]

Middle School In many schools, part of the art curriculum involves integration among classroom studies. The Medieval period is a favorite for creative projects. The following lesson yields successful results [...]

Elementary This is a project which was successful with students between the ages of five and ten years old. This lesson introduces students to a traditional Asian art form, as [...]

Bamana peoples, Mali. Elephant Puppet-Mask, Sama Kun, Length 37' (95 cm). UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Museum purchase with Manus Fund. Photograph by Denis J. Nervig. Today the Bamana [...]

High School Collecting art cards is a source of pleasure for me. One card I came across a few years ago was particularly interesting, and I wanted to teach an [...]

Each year our sixth grade studies ancient Egyptian history and culture. They are awed by mummies, hieroglyphs, pyramids, and the many myths and stories of the gods and pharaohs. Lessons [...]