Tinga Tinga Inspired MN Paintings

In the Cultural Arts class we go country by country creating art inspired by a style of the area. In this project we looked up African Tinga Tinga paintings and mixed the African style with Minnesota animals. Students learned how to create a gradient background and paint using a stylized cartoon rendering. 

Tyrus F.

Erinn W. 

Kaleigh L. 

Madisen P.

Marriah S. 

Paige T. 

Jacinda K. 

 Sam T. 

Kaylee L. 

Master Copies

Students attempt to copy the masters. Sometimes the best way to learn is to copy, until you can do it for yourself. Can you figure out what artist they are replicating?

Ashton O.

Bekah T.

Josie M. 

Finn S. 

Kaycee J.

Nina K.

Jenna C.

Terrance S. 

Printmaking

Printmaking. The last art class I took in college, but one of my absolute favorites.

In my very first year of teaching, I taught the intro students how to do collagraph printmaking out of found materials. They turned out... interesting. It looks like modern or contemporary art I suppose.

The second year we explored block printing with linoleum stamps. This was a huge improvement. Here are a few products with the students' own designs. This was such a silly class. They turned out pretty nice, and some of the extra prints even appeared all around the school for months after the project was complete.

 Alex                      Josie                     Ashton

This third time around, I wanted the project to be more about the process and technique and not so much about taking time to create their own design. They explored watercolor techniques for the backgrounds and looked up pop culture images to copy from for the carved print. The project went even smoother this time.

They look great on the corner wall leading out the school doors!

Grid Ink Portraits

One of the first projects I have my upper level drawing and painting class do is grid portrait drawing. I let them choose absolutely anybody as long as it's a portrait image. They learn to use a grid along with different shading styles in pen. These are a few from last year, as well as this year. They usually turn out pretty amazing and helps build confidence in their drawing abilities. 

Misha Collins by Cheyenne

Tupac by Coelina

Jimi Hendrix by Kaycee

G Eazy by Nina

Ice Cube by Chuck

Mr. North Korea by Jake

Frankenstein's monster by Mariam 

Environmental Awareness

A couple projects stand out from last year that I'd like to recognize. I gave my recycled art class a choice based project to show awareness toward the environment. There were many good ones, but these two from a few seniors stood out the most. Sea turtles and plastic aren't the biggest environmental a concern in Northern Minnesota, but for some reasons it's what students think about first when it comes to environmental harm.

Maggie and Ali created a three panel painting showing the evils of plastic on sea turtles. It still hangs above the front dest area. 

This may just be a still image, but Nathan also made a great stop motion movie of this pac-man replica using a clay turtle and colored plastic bags as the bad guys. 

Scratchboard Art

When I was in high school we had an assignment to create art from scratchboard. I've only ever done it the one time. I thought it would be fun to introduce it to the intro class this year while learning about line and texture quality.

This is my own project from high school. It was based off an image of my pug/chihuahua dog. I'll be honest, I have no idea how I accomplished this back then. It's amazing to me. 

I think I ordered some poor quality scratchboard for my class this year because it was actually quite difficult for the students to scratch and work with. We couldn't use the wooden sticks provided so we used paper clips. It worked for the most part. 

Here are some fun works of art produced from the ERATS intro class. I love when their little practice piece matches their larger one. 

Alyssa's beautifully textured rose. 

Alayna's majestic eagle.

John's very textured face icon.

Wyatt's whimsical dinosaur.

Spray Paint Stencils

My art students have been creating some amazing projects in the last two months since school began. We're doing projects I've never even tried, but have been having so much fun exploring.

My lovely 2D (Drawing/Painting) students created some great spray paint art. We don't get to use spray paint very much, but I figured it'd be fun, and it was! They had to create art on the back of some drawing boards using multi-layered stencils and spray paint. I've got a pretty talented class.

We did most of it outside so it didn't stink up the place. Good thing this is the last class of the day because the room still smelled of spray paint fumes.

Mariam's album cover inspired stencils

Jake's space and planets #1

Jake's space and planets #2

Chuck's crazy all seeing eye 

Natasha's love-ly t-shirt designs