Lesson 1: Teamwork Abstract Project
- Technical Skills: Students work with a variety of wet and dry art materials to create an abstract painting. Materials of choice include markers, colored pencils, sharpies, pencils, erasers, watercolors, and acrylic paints.
- Conceptual Skills: Working together in groups of 4-5, students create abstract marks on each other's projects. Working together, they use different materials and explore how to make abstract marks. Then, students have to "harmonize" the pre-existing marks with new marks to create a finalized project. During critique, students have to analyze the emotional expression that each abstract painting is communicating.
- History and Culture: Students learn about the history of abstract art and the conceptual reason why artists were interested to create abstract work. Students also debated as to whether abstract art is easy to create or not. Abstract artists and color field artists students learned about include: Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Klein, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Nolan, Paul Kremmer, Frank Stella, and Clyfford Still.
- Learning Benefits: Students learn how to collaborate to make an art project. They also create an analyze abstract artwork.
Lesson 2: Chinese Zodiac Sign (Level 3)/ Wester Zodiac Sign (Level 4)
- Technical Skills: Students are allowed to use any material they want for the project. This serves as a formative assessment to know what students' artistic abilities and interests are.
- Conceptual Skills: Students create an illustration of their own zodiac sign (Chinese for level 3, Western for level 4). The style and personality of the animal must be relevant to the personality traits of each sign.
- History and Culture: Students learn about what the zodiac signs are, how each sign represents a personality trait relatable to them, and what their cultural significance is. Students also look at different examples of professional artists creating a body of work based on each zodiac sign as examples of different artistic styles.
- Learning Benefits: Students have creative freedom to illustrate the zodiac sign in a way that speaks to their artistic personality. This requires some creative problem-solving and conceptual planning.
Level 3:
Level 4:
Lesson 3: Watercolor Landscape Painting (Level 3)/Acrylic Landscape Painting (Level 4)
- Technical Skills: Students continue to practice various techniques for watercolor (level 3) and acrylic (level 4) to improve their painting skills. In particular, students have the option to make their paintings using a realistic, impressionistic, or abstract approach. Students also learn about how to depict atmospheric perspective in their artwork using color theory. Lastly, students learned various compositional rules specifically for landscape painting. This includes the rule of thirds, framing, focal points in the foreground, creating a vanishing point/leading lines, diagonal lines, and reflection/symmetry. Students were allowed to include a figure or an object for the focal point in the landscape as long as it was small enough for the landscape to still be the focus.
- Conceptual Skills: Students pick any landscape they want for this project. They chose to paint a landscape based on their own reference photos or a collage of other online reference photos. Some students also chose to create a landscape from a fantasy or dystopian universe.
- History and Culture: Students saw the work of various history and contemporary artists in the style of realistic, impressionistic, and abstract painting. These artist include Richard Estes, Claude Lorrain, Edward Hopper, Bob Ross, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jason Anderson, L'orée du Bois, Mattieu van Riel, Nikolai Gritsanchuk, and Stephanie Villafane.
- Learning Benefits: Students learned how to arrange a landscape into an interesting composition and create atmospheric perspective using color theory. They also have an opportunity to experiment and refine their painting skills with watercolor or acrylic.
Level 3
Level 4
Lesson 4: Surreal Architecture (Level 3)/Rubik's Cube Architecture (Level 4)
- Technical Skills: Students learn how to draw architecture in two point perspective. Level 4 students create the abstracted Rubik's Cube look by using three horizon lines and six vanishing points.
- Conceptual Skills: Students design architecture in an environment and atmosphere that looks surreal or dreamlike. Surrealism comes from the colors and designs of the building.
- History and Culture: Students learn about what two point perspective is and how it's applicable to commercial art mediums such as interior design. Students also learn about the surreal arts movement and famous surrealism artists. MC Escher is a specific artist relevant to this project.
- Learning Benefits: Students continue to get practice with using two-point perspective. This time, they do it in an imaginary way.
Level 3
Level 4
Lesson 5: Character Design Project and Futurism Figure Drawing (Level 3)/Technology Themed Figure Drawing (Level 4)
- Technical Skills: Students learn how to draw the human body using gesture drawings, boxes and cylinders, and muscle anatomy overlay. Level 3 students also learn about character silhouettes, which are the visual characteristics of a character pose that communicate his/her/their personality without details visible. Level 3 students created three futurism figure drawing projects to practice gesture drawing in motion.
- Conceptual Skills: Level 3 students are tasked to create two original characters, each with opposite characteristics (hero vs. rival, hero vs. villain). Gestures of each character need to demonstrate his/her/their personality. Level 4 students are tasked to create an illustration with a main character that makes a commentary on technology use in society.
- History and Culture: Character design and concept art for movies, TV shows, and video games. Professional artists that make statements about technology use. The futurism art movement.
- Learning Benefits: Students understand figure drawing skills, as well as how to create a gesture that serves a narrative purpose.
Level 3 (Character Design)
Level 3 (Futurism Figure Drawing)
Level 4
Lesson 6: Teen Advocacy Portrait (Level 3)/Artist Branded Portrait (Level 4)
- Technical Skills: Students get another opportunity to practice portrait drawing. In level 3, students learn how to make artwork in the beyond the border style using warm and cool color schemes. Level 4 students create a portrait in their preferred artistic style to sell their artist brand.
- Conceptual Skills: In level 3, students create a portrait that communicates and advocates about a teen issue. These issues include academic struggles, technology and social media, mental health, coming of age with a personal identity (LGBTQ+, cultural background, neurodiversity, etc.), and social relationships (friends, crushes, bullying, peer pressure, etc.). In level 4, students create a portrait that communicates their artist's brand. This is a portrait that represents what they enjoy drawing and what type of work they would promote for commission opportunities.
- History and Culture: Level 3 students learn about artwork as a form of advocacy. Examples of artists include Adrian Brandon, Rae Senarighi, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, Adam Rappe, and Dorinda Tveit. Level 4 students learned about how famous artists make iconic, publicly recognizable self-portraits in their signature styles. Examples include Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, and Pablo Picasso.
- Learning Benefits: Students learn how to create portraits in personally meaningful ways. Technical skills are customized to fit this personal preference.
Level 3
Level 4
Lesson 7: Day Without Hate Group Exhibition
Level 3 (Spring 2022): What Connects Us
- Technical Skills: Students learn how to create a cohesive body of work in a team based on the class level that they are in. They can choose to display the work separately or together. Materials are open-ended.
- Conceptual Skills: Students have to create a body of work based on a theme related to Day Without Hate.
- History and Culture: Day Without Hate is a student led, grassroots organization that promotes nonviolence, unity, and respect in our schools. There are Day Without Hate events promoted during the school, and this project contributed to that.
- Learning Benefits: Students learn how to create a body of work as a team, rather than working individually.
Level 4 (Spring 2022): Singularity
- Technical Skills: Students learn how to create a cohesive body of work in a team based on the class level that they are in. They can choose to display the work separately or together. Materials are open-ended.
- Conceptual Skills: Students have to create a body of work based on a theme related to Day Without Hate.
- History and Culture: Day Without Hate is a student led, grassroots organization that promotes nonviolence, unity, and respect in our schools. There are Day Without Hate events promoted during the school, and this project contributed to that.
- Learning Benefits: Students learn how to create a body of work as a team, rather than working individually.
Lesson 8: Monster Bash
- Technical and Conceptual Skills: students randomly select five monster body parts and are challenged to put the parts together to create a strange monster hybrid with a background and backstory. The monsters have to be posed in a way that show their personality, how they attack, and whether they're friend or foe.
- History and Culture: students learn about the YouTube Monster Bash challenge, created by various YouTubers that are known for crafting and sculpting.
- Learning Benefits: imaginative creative problem-solving without any pressure to draw something realistically.
Level 3
Level 4