Course Outline

Course Description

Introduces students to the fundamentals of art making through creative drawing, painting, and ceramics art projects. Students experience a program of instruction that concentrates on art production.  Each project builds on prior concepts that have been mastered.  Mastery is the goal for all students through exercises, which emphasize technical skill development, creative expression, and proper material usage. Students are also introduced to art vocabulary and historical and aesthetic references in the art world.  Finally, Introduction to Art promotes art as process, and teaches both personal and peer evaluation skills of art projects.

Objectives

This course is aligned with the Alaska Art standards and reading and writing GLEs:

• Understand and use a process of deigning and creating artwork, including making multiple sketches, sketching out their final design, making revisions, and adding final details
• Understand and apply common art vocabulary
• Show creativity and expressiveness in the production of a variety of art projects
• Understand and apply the Elements and Principles of design
• Learn about art from a variety of times and places
• Positively critique their own and others’ artwork

Attendance

Students will be expected to be in class to make artwork. Work missed due to absence must be made up after school or as homework. You will have one extra week to make up assignments missed due to excused absences (five class days). Late work due to unexcused absences will lose points as outlined in the “grades” section. 

Academic Honesty

All work must be your own; using someone else’s work without proper attribution will result in a 0 on the project

Grades

• Projects: %50
• Exercises & Sketchbook: %25
• Tests: %15
• Treatment of materials/clean-up: %10

Late Policy

You will have one extra week to make up assignments missed due to excused absences (five class days) for art projects. Exercises are all due at midterm and the end of them semester, therefore students are expected to save them. Lost, missing, or late exercises and notes will be given 0 pts, and all  assignments for a quarter must be turned in at the same time.(students will be given a list of what needs to be turned in for sketchbook/exercise points).

Work that is late due to inattention in class or unexcused absences will lost %5 for every class period it continues to be late, up to two weeks, after which it will be worth %50. Unfinished work will be worth %50 until completed according to the project requirements. Projects can be made up by completing an alternative assignment, with it’s own deadline and criteria, outside of class – all alternative projects are subject to my approval.

 

• Miniature sculpture (first two weeks)
• Line (The Renaissance)
  • Pencil
    • Types of pencils – what they mean
  • Art is about learning to see what you draw – Realism
  • Exercise #1: Blind Contour
  • Charcoal
    • What is charcoal?
    • Experimenting with charcoal
    • Exercise #2: Gesture Drawing
    • Beginning to get depth – Weighted Line Drawing 
  • Composition tip #1: Using the viewfinder
• Shape (cubism)
  • Anything can be drawn using only line and shape
  • Exercise # 3: Negative Space
  • Why Composition is important 
  • Composition tip #2: The rule of thirds
  • Negative Space collage
• Value (Baroque)
  • Shading a sphere
  • Light and shadow
  • Perspective
    • 1 pt – Hallway & name drawings
    • 2 pt – Cubes in space
  • Still Life Drawing
• Color (Impressionism)
  • How to use and take care of acrylic paint
  • The color Wheel
  • Color Schemes
  • Optical color mixing
  • Impressionistic painting 
• Texture (abstract expressionism)
  • Real Texture
    • Collect real textures
  • Implied texture
    • Drawing & painting textures
    • Rubbings
  • Impasto painting
• Mass (ceramic art)
  • Hand building in ceramics
  • Firing
• Final Exam