This article presents the idea behind Projected Identities, an art activity wherein students fuse art-making processes and digital image manipulations in a series of exploratory artistic self-examinations. At some point in every person's life they've been told something hard to forget. Students might, for example, translate phrases like, "Good…

Masks, which are used in burial, ceremonies, initiation rites, for warding off evil spirits, and character development in theater, are great materials to study the history and culture of different nations around the world. This author relates that she always begins her art lessons with discussion of the historical and cultural uses of masks. She…

Kids always seem to like Surrealism and Op Art. This is a fun project that is popular with students. With Op Art patience and attention to details are required while Surrealistic collage needs strong composition skills for the image placement. Often, many images must be left out to create a clean design. Artistic decisions must be based on the art…

Abstraction has long been a concept difficult to define for students. Students often feel the pressure of making their artwork "look real" and frustration can often lead to burnout in the classroom. In this article, the author describes how her lesson on abstraction has alleviated much of that pressure as students created an abstract acrylic…

Students love the colors of Monet prints. The sunny yellows, misty blues, soft lavenders, and outrageous oranges. Using this as inspiration, Michelle Maroni wanted her students to discover new painting techniques and ways of planning a composition with more spontaneity. In this article, she describes how she introduced Claude Monet to her students…

Every Thursday evening, ten high school students meet at the Riverdale Art Project, a New York City-based art program that the author co-founded ten years ago. Students are participating in a semester-long color workshop where they learn about color theory in a structured and engaging way. Focusing on five essential characteristics of color…

This article demonstrates a totem project for the author's eight-grade students. Research on totems not only deepened the author's understanding of their meaning and value within the Native American culture of the Pacific Northwest, but also made her curious about contemporary totem forms. While searching online, she came across the work of two…

People influence lives in many ways. Through the author's desire to encourage high school students to reflect on the influential people in their lives, he developed this three-dimensional project in which they create a celebratory three-dimensional structure that shares their impressions of themselves and those who have influenced them. This…

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, popularly known as Grandma Moses, may be the most famous American folk artist. A fortuitous combination of original vision, innate talent, spunky character, and long life, Moses is known for her landscapes that depict nostalgic views of country life. In this article, the author describes an art activity she introduced to…

In this article, the author describes how her art class students were able to create, in just four class periods, clay relief plaques depicting nature. A lesson on texture speeds up the completion of such a project. Seeing that clay is a natural material with its own unique texture, it seemed fitting that the final product should depict a variety…

This article describes an activity that required students in third and fourth grade classes to create a life-size, standing self-portrait. The idea was not just to create a picture of themselves to display on a wall or board, but to make "another self" that could interact in the school environment. After completion, the life-size portraits were…

Images with narrative intent are ideally suited for beginning art viewers. As cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen has discovered in her research on aesthetic development, viewers at this stage-children and adults alike-look for stories in art, even when the artist did not intend them. In this first "Aesthetic Stage" viewers are considered…

Each school year, the author's intermediate art students look forward to this unique self-portrait assignment. Chuck Close's photorealistic portraits are the inspiration for this assignment. The lesson incorporates technology using digital cameras and an image-manipulation computer program. The lesson is introduced with a brief overview of Chuck…

In this article the author examines ways in which early childhood students can explore the building blocks of form to reveal meaningful content as exemplified in four Modernist works of art. Each piece reflects of the Modernist aesthetic, characterized by the simplification of visual elements into flat, bold colors and simplified geometric shapes.…

The author of this article describes using a Fantasy Landscapes lesson to get students expressing environmental issues through art. The Fantasy Landscapes lesson is an exploration of art elements and design principles through visual problem solving that links ideas, language, and theory to art. To get students thinking specifically about…