7th Grade Art
Week 1 (3 days):
Day 1: Introductions. Goals for the year.
Day 2: What Is Art?
How does art involve problem-solving?
What is a critique?
Pre-tests: Pencil drawings.
Day 3: Drawing Skills.
Observational skills - Drawing what you see.
Compositional skills - Placing objects accurately onto the paper.
Technical skills - Using a pencil, eraser, and blending tool to create a variety of values.
Week 2 (5 days): Still Life Drawing.
7 ways to create depth in a 2D artwork:
Size, placement, overlapping, and shading (values).
Linear perspective (cubes), foreshortening (ellipses), and atmospheric perspective.
Glue Bottle Drawing.
How well are you observing and drawing the size and shape of the bottle and cap? How well are you getting the proportions correct for each part of the bottle? How well are you seeing and drawing the curves of the bottle and the angles of the shoulders? How well are you drawing an ellipse for the top of the white part of the bottle cap?
Small Group Drawing.
How well are you seeing and drawing the sizes, shapes, and proportions of each object in the still life group? How well did you draw the objects in relation to each other in terms of size? How well did you overlap objects and place them on the paper to capture a sense of space? How well did you see and draw values on each object or on the table top?
Week 3 (5 days): Drawing Skills and the Color Wheel.
Linear Perspective: A 2 point perspective house and 1 point perspective road.
Value Drawing: Creating a nonrepresentational piece with a white border using lines (straight and curved), shapes, and values. This piece develops shading skills, creating a variety of values and a gradual change in values with drawing pencils, blending stumps, and erasers. This piece requires the use of a ruler for both measuring and the creation of straight lines.
Drawing Vocabulary.
Art History: The Renaissance.
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434)
Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation of Christ (c. 1480)
Raphael, The School of Athens (1509-10)
Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game or Lucia, Minerva, and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555)
Watercolor Color Wheel.
What does a color wheel look like? What are the primary and secondary colors? What are complementary colors?
Using watercolors, accurately recreate a color wheel with curved lines and circles for lighter and darker values of each color. In the space around the wheel, paint each color's complement.
Week 4 (3 days): Complementary Colors and Creating Values with Colored Pencils.
Copyright, Fair Use, Creative Commons.
Colored Sphere Drawing.
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With this piece, you will be using compasses to make circles and rulers to create straight lines. Using colored pencils, you will create a variety of values of primary and secondary colors, making each color gradually change in value from dark to light. Using values, you will turn circles into spheres. Using complementary colors, you will make one sphere visually "pop" off the paper. |
Art Test #1.
Week 5 (5 days):
Oil Pastel Fruit Drawing.
Using oil pastels, you will draw a piece of fruit (fake fruit) from real life. You will use complementary colors to create shadows, including cast shadows. If, for example, you are drawing a red apple, you would use green to develop the shadows because red and green will blend to make a brownish color. By using less red color combined with white, you can create highlights where you see them near the top of the apple.
Once you have drawn your fruit, you can use the dominant color's complement for the negative space around the fruit. So, for example, you can fill in the space around the red apple with green, placing a darker green along the bottom and a light green along the top so that the "line" in between looks like the back of a table or counter. By using red mixed with the dark green, you can create a cast shadow. The "line" and the cast shadow will help to ground the fruit, making it appear as though it is setting on a surface.
Art History: The Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Realism.
Caravaggio, Supper in Emmaus (1601)
Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas (1656)
Jacques Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801-05)
Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair (1852-55)
Color Vocabulary.
Abstract Still Life Drawing.
Using a pencil, you will compose your still life image while looking at a group of objects. Instead of drawing them realistically, you will draw only the outlines of the objects as you see them. In the negative space around the objects, you will use a ruler to draw a series of straight lines, creating several more shapes on your paper.
Using your color vocabulary, you will color in your drawing with analogous colors. You can choose any primary or secondary color to begin. Then you will use the primary or secondary colors next to it on the color wheel to make the tertiary colors needed to complete your piece. If green is you initial color, then all of the shapes will have a tone of gray in them. For some of those shapes, you can add yellow in order to create a yellow-green color; for others, you can add blue in order to create a blue-green color. Once you complete you coloring, you will go back over your pencil lines with a black pen.
By developing this piece, you are creating an illusion - you have drawn a series of colorful shapes on a piece of paper, but you have also given viewers a recognizable group of still life objects.
Week 6 (3 days):
Abstract Still Life Drawing (continued).
Week 7 (5 days):
Art Test #2.
Surrealism Drawing.
After looking at and talking about Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory and Kay Sage's Tomorrow Is Never, you will brainstorm ideas for your own Surreal pieces while working with several of the ideas and skills that you've been practicing this quarter.
The skills include shading with different values made with pencil (on your hand as it appears in your drawing), using warm and cool colors, using complementary colors, shading with complementary colors, using linear perspective, using overlapping to create depth, and using size and placement to create depth.
For your Surreal piece, you will develop a story and work with colored pencil to create an imagined world which helps you to tell your story. You will include a black-and-white hand reaching into or interacting with this world in some way - the hand will be your hand as the artist but also the viewer's hand.
Art History: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Modernism.
Mary Cassatt, The Child's Bath
Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon of the Island of Le Grande Jatte
Grant Wood, American Gothic
Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
Week 8 (5 days):
Throwing on the Potter's Wheel.
You will learn the basic steps for throwing a simple cup or bowl on the potter's wheel. You will also learn how to foot your thrown form. If time permits, you can carve into your ceramic form or add a handle or other details.
Ceramics Vocabulary.
Surrealism Drawing (continued).
Week 9 (5 days):
Throwing on the Potter's Wheel (continued).
Value Sheet (blended shading, stippling, hatching, cross-hatching).
Final Art Exam.
Final Critiques.