January 31st-February 4th

Marc Chagall. America Windows, 1997

Art Institute of Chicago

This week,the eighth graders will complete their section to our own interpretation of Chagall's America Windows. The windows will be covered with symbols that are important to the students with a blue "Chagall-like" background. This is a work in progress and we have had some difficulties with the paint, however, I believe the transformation to our classroom windows will be beautiful by the end of the week.

January 24th-January 28th

The eighth grade students just completed their painting mixing/line design project. The results are fantastic. This week, we will begin learning about Marc Chagall. Our next project will be inspired by the famous stained glass windows that were created by Chagall for the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1970's. After an absence of five years, the windows have been restored and re-installed in 2010. I had the pleasure of viewing them in November just after their big reveal. They are still one of my favorite pieces at the Art Institute. Hopefully, our interpretation will be just as inspiring.

January 17th-January 21st

All eighth grade students continue to work on the "Color Study through Design" project. We will be completing this project by the end of the week. Each student is mixing paint colors according to specific guidelines in each section of their design project. On Tuesday, the students who have completed the painting portion of this project will begin outlining their sections with black marker. These projects will be graded based on color mixing skills, painting technique, and overall design quality and presentation.

January 10th-January 14th

The eighth grade classes continue to work on a brand new project: "A Color Study through Design". First, each student created their own design based on four specific directions that I provided. Then, they repeated their design seven more times on a 12 x 18 piece of drawing paper. Once their design was completed, they began painting. This project is an exercise in mixing paints and and developing a better understanding of color. In addition, the students are becoming acquainted with art vocabulary words such as analogous, complementary, monochromatic, opaque, neutral, shade, tint, and value. Each of the eight sections are being painted with a different color scheme. So far, the results have been quite impressive. This is a wonderful group of talented artists.