Art 7: Acrylic Graffiti Piece

Ok, Mrs. Impey...it's time to get back into your blog!  I don't know what it is about this year, but I am so UNORGANIZED it isn't even funny!  It must be the 1-year old toddler I have running around EVERYWHERE!  I am so backed up on artwork...getting it graded, photographed, up on Artsonia, and on my blog!  

These are my 7th graders graffiti projects from this year.  Last year, we did the final project on the cover of their sketchbooks.  This year, I had them do it on 10" x 14" canvas board, and I like the results much better!  You can look back at last year's project to get the gist of the planning behind this.

Of course, after I had already completed this project, I attended the NYSATA conference and one of the workshops I attended was about graffiti.  I'm SO EXCITED about the new concepts and techniques I learned...I wish I could do this unit all over again!  One of the websites I learned about is Graffiti Creator.  From what I understand, it's been around for a while, but I don't know how I missed it!

Usually, I have the students free-hand all of their lettering, and I usually only get a hand full who are naturally talented with the wildstyle fonts.  Next year, I plan on having them do the brainstorming process to come up with their tag name, and then, instead of designing everything from scratch, I'm going to let them play around with the Graffiti Creator website!  Once they've designed a tag, they will then transpose it from their print-out to their canvas.

Art 7: Initial Tags and Progress of Sketchbook Tags

Woohoo!  Check out what I finally got for my classroom!  My computers!  Just in time too because we're starting our next unit in my elective class, which is based on Ben Heine's Pencil vs. Camera series.

Here are the Art 7 student's initial tag designs and the rubric I used to grade them.  I saw a really great display on the Art Teacher Facebook page a while back where the teacher created a fake brick wall to attach the tags too.  Originally I thought I would have them tag their portfolio and their sketchbook, but after I saw that post on Facebook, I changed my mind.  I made a similar brick wall and had the students do their tag first on paper, cut it out and place it on the wall.  Students used markers, colored pencils and the Crayola Marker Airbrush pumps I purchased last year from Nasco with grant money.  (Unfortunately, between the constant use and students not taking care of them very well during this project, I think I am down two out of six air brush pumps...not sure if it's really because the students were rough on them or if it's the quality of the pumps themselves...)

I passed back the graded rubrics and asked students to reflect on their tags.  Their last homework assignment was to finalize and redraw their tags using my feedback from their rubric.  For example, some students used their first name and didn't brainstorm an actual tag nickname...others only used letter text and did not have any flourishes, symbols or arrows.  Here are the final sketchbook tags in progress (these are aiming to be more of a "piece" than just a tag) as well as the rubric I will be using to grade them...students have spent two days so far and as of today, I have four that are finished...they will all get one more day and then the unit test for graffiti.  Then we'll FINALLY be able to move onto the next unit, which will be perspective!

Just wanted to share my bulletin board display of fall artwork...I decided to display the fall birch trees and pastel pumpkin patch drawings together!