DeLand Crayon Company (DCC) is a large manufacturer of molded wax crayons. DCC sells three sizes of crayons, namely standard, large and jumbo. Standard-sized crayons, which account for most of the demand, include nine basic colors (red, blue, green, yellow, orange, violet, brown, black, and white), seven popular combination colors (red-orange,…

The purpose of this research was to carry out an interdisciplinary art education activity with Turkish coffee and to evaluate the views of prospective teachers. For this aim, an integrated single case study design with a qualitative research approach was used. The study group consisted of twenty prospective social studies teachers. A questionnaire…

Painting on silk has a magic all its own. Versions of painting on silk can be found throughout the world from Japan and Europe to the United States. Themes for the paintings can be most any type of design or imagery. Applying the liquid dyes is exciting, as the vivid liquid colors flow and blend into the fabric. The process captures students'…

Inspired by a beautiful bookmark one of the author's students made for him as a gift, he began a lesson exploring the vibrant bark paintings popular all over Mexico. The majority of his students have Mexican ancestry, so exploring the arts of Mexico is always popular and well received. Amate paintings can also be a great way to introduce the…

Popular culture is a relatively new area of study in the artroom, and combining it with the demands of a rigorous curriculum requires some thought. Combining threads from several sources was the key to an exciting exploration of pattern inspired by a newspaper headline. In 2006, a landmark case was settled in Austria, which repatriated five famous…

Oil pastels offer many advantages. They come in a large range of hues, intensities and values, and they lend themselves to blending and shading in a unique way that no other art medium offers. They can be worked and reworked from day to day by the students without the large mess and cleanup time that oil paints require. An artist whose works are a…

Louise Nevelson, who is called the "architect of shadow," was a "dumpster diver" of her time, collecting found objects in the wee hours of the morning before trash pickup. Recognition evaded Nevelson until she created "Mood Garden + One" (1958), when she was almost 60 years old. In this article, students create their own assemblage using…

The drab, cold days of winter were not helping to motivate the author's painting students. Still-life work appeared forced, tight, and overworked. A downed white birch in her front yard provided the author a resource and inspiration. In this article, students do some timed gestural drawings of still life using sticks as paintbrushes. (Contains 1…

In this article, the author describes a project wherein students created colorful underwater sea creatures. This project began with a discussion about underwater sea creatures and how they live. The first step was making the multi-colored tissue paper that would become sea creatures and seaweed. Once students had the shapes of their sea creatures…

There's something irresistible about squeezing out lines and shapes with a bottle of glue. It's fun, yes. But, even better: it's tactile. The glue dries slightly raised on the surface, lending itself to several exciting treatments. In this article, the author describes some activities that confirm how a simple art material like glue can be…

Deborah Rael-Buckley creates stunning figurative self-portraits in clay that layer "personal, cultural, historical, and biological imagery" in a narrative style. Her work provides an exciting challenge in three-dimensional self-portraits for eighth graders. In this article, the author suggests some exercises to get students brainstorming visual…

This article reports on the meaning potential of daily access to drawing/writing media for widening and deepening meaning construction. In a yearlong study in a second grade classroom, the author worked with a second-year teacher to see what would happen when art and language were encouraged ways of knowing in which children could construct…

This article describes a lesson inspired by Sicilian mosaics. The author first presented a PowerPoint presentation of mosaics from the Villa Romana del Casale and reviewed complementary and analogous colors. Students then created mosaics using a variety of art materials. They presented their work to their peers and discussed the thought and…

An abstract art project can be challenging or not, depending on the objectives the teacher sets up. In this article, the author describes an abstract papier-mache project that is a success for all students, and is a versatile project easily manipulated to suit the classroom of any art teacher.

In this article, the author describes the design for her advanced oil-painting class. In this class, high-school students created a self-portrait painting and learned a glazing technique. The author also describes the students' evaluation of the class.