Teacher Reflections: Character Designs
- colringbk
- Mar 9, 2014
- 2 min read
Another full week and a lot of great art was made. The first big project we're undertaking is a character design project with the 7th grades. The challenge was to create a creature that expresses a personality of their choosing. First, we looked at Zack Lydon's work on Gugor from the Creature Department. He talked about looking at the creature's personality from the book and adding visual qualities that emphasize those personalities. That was the motivation. Some students struggled with that idea, but others jumped right on and began their sketches. After the sketch phase, they created a painting using the previous knowledge on shading forms. So, as part of their assignment, they needed to shade their creature. That was all just part 1 of the project. Part 2 is to create a 3-D papier mache sculpture. Again, they use those forms to begin their armature. Armature is an important word for them to know. Some of them don't understand that the details of their creature are added at the very end. So, as a result, several students wanted to get the paint out to put onto their armatures way before the papier mache has even been made. Most of their experience with papier mache has been those Volcano models from back in 3rd grade.
I added another Lego Gothic artwork in this because this is a really great painting. The details look fantastic. If you wanted to see the previous thoughts I had on this project, check out this Teacher Reflections.
Now, moving into more 3-D forms and shading, I challenged my 6th graders to create an image using a spherical form. I showed them how to use chalk pastels for color, shadows, and highlights. That's done on one piece of paper. Then, they get another piece of paper and design a background, or a setting, for this round drawing. I'll let them paint that, and then we'll put it all together.
That's it for this week. It was an up and down week with some great surprises early on, and some hard times at the end of the week.
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