Hearts of Hope (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Hello Rashi students! We are going to participate in this great Hearts of Hope project. The Dedham Square Circle group wants to help people feel more happy and hopeful. So, they are collecting heart drawings, and they will hang them up in stores in Dedham Square. You'll create a heart, and then ask your parents to mail your drawing to them.

Materials:

• Paper (regular size, any color)
• Drawing or collage materials
• An envelope and a stamp (ask parents for help with this)

Don't know how to draw a heart! It's ok! I'll show you on Thursday. Not a Rashi School student? Here's a cool video I found about how to do it with simple circles and a triangle. 

1. Draw your heart so it takes up plenty of space on the page. If it ends up smaller, add some more hearts- no one said you should only draw one!
2. If you're doing a collage, draw your heart first and then cut it out.
3. Decorate your heart and the page around it- make sure to really fill up the page so people have lots to look at!
4. Write a message of hope and/or happiness if you'd like
5. Ask your parents to send it to the address below.

I was so excited to hear about this project, because there are some famous hearts in Art! 

They are by an artist named Jim Dine. He loved hearts and he made lots of paintings and big sculptures with them. 

Four Hearts, 1969

The Heart, South of Naples, 1986

The Orchard, 2006

Parents: Here is the information you need to send out the hearts. Thank you for your participation!

Texture Comics: Part 2: Creating a Comic Strip (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Hello everyone! This is a lesson for my students at The Rashi School. By now, you've probably seen my lesson Texture Comics, Part 1 and created four texture comic characters, using texture lines and shapes.

Here are mine, remember?

Materials:

-Paper

-Ruler or straight edge

-Pencil

-Black pen or sharpie for outlining

-Markers or colored pencils for coloring

Now, it's time for those characters to have an adventure or two!  First, write down the answers to these questions, to plan your stories:

• What is the title of your texture comic strip?
• What are the names of your characters?
• Are there good guys and bad guys? If so, who is who?
• What is going to happen?
• First...
• Then...
• Then...
• Then...
• Finally...

Got some good ideas? Now, take a piece of paper and use your ruler and pencil to divide it into either 6 or 8 boxes. You can do more, too- depending on how long your story is. 

Your first box should include your name and the title of your comic. The rest are up to you, but you must fill them all! My comic ends on a cliffhanger...

Spoiler alert: Don't worry! Coco the Fuzzy Chick doesn't get eaten by Sam the Scaly Snake- she was just stuck in Fifi the Fluffy Sheep's wool! 

Digital Graffiti Art (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Hello artists! We've been learning about graffiti art at The Rashi School. Artists like Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring have created expressive works that tell the world about who they are, what they believe, and what they have experienced. 

"Smilz" by Mrs. Smiley, 2020

Assignment 1: Create your name in graffiti style. Feel free to look up reference images for inspiration, but all work should be your original design. You may use the mirror (radial symmetry) function for your design, but you do not have to. Click on my MyOats tutorial for how to shut this on and off.

Assignment 2: Create a graffiti-style illustration of a word that describes an emotion that you've felt about what's going on in the world

Requirements for both projects:

1. Use at least two different kinds of brushes (taper, airbrush, round brush, line)
2. Use at least three different line widths
3. Use at least three variations on opacity

Stained Glass Drawings (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Today we are going to create drawings that will look like a kind of art called stained glass. Stained glass is made with colored glass and metal. It is not easy to do, I have tried it!

Here are some famous artists who have made stained glass.

Marc Chagall, Tribe of Benjamin, 1962

Kehinde Wiley, Saint Remi, 2014

Nasir al-Mulk Mosque, Iran, 1800's

Materials:
-A small object, about the size of your fist
-A pencil
-A piece of white paper
-A black marker or pen
-Something to color with (colored pencil, marker, crayon)

Here's what we're making. I created it by tracing something I found in my house. Can you guess what it is?

If you guessed a roll of tape, you're right!


1. First, choose an object. It can be anything you want, as long as it's about the size of your fist.


2. Ready? Now, use your pencil to trace it onto the white paper. You can start anywhere you want.



3. Now, trace it again. BUT make sure that you put the object down so that it is on part of your first tracing.

   

4. See how some new shapes were created with the two tracings? Here, I will show you by highlighting it:



5. Now, continue to trace and overlap until you've filled the page. You should trace the object at least 8 times.














6. When you have it traced at least 8 times, go over all of your lines with a black marker or pen. this is what will look like the black lines in stained glass.



7. Then, notice all the new little shapes and start coloring them in.

Texture Comics, Part One (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Hello! This lesson is for my third graders at The Rashi School. Today you'll be using your texture-drawing skills to create comic book characters. Next week, we'll turn them into comic strips.

Here are some famous characters from the comics who you may know:

Snoopy, by Charles Schulz

Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

Garfield, by Jim Davis

You'll need:

-White Paper
-Pencil with eraser
-Black pen or Sharpie for outlining
-Something to color with

1. Look at the texture lines sheet to refresh your memories about how to draw textures:

2. Fold your paper into four parts. Using pencil, draw four characters with four different textures. Each should have a first name, a texture word, and a noun. For example: Sam the Scaly Snake. They don't have to have the same first letter, but that does sound nice. It's something called alliteration.

3. Go over your pencil lines with black pen or Sharpie. The outlining is what makes a cartoon look like a cartoon.  

4. Color them in and label them with their names:

Radial Designs (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Hello everyone! This is a lesson for my students at The Rashi School. I hope you'll join along.

Today you'll be exploring the online drawing app Myoats. First, watch the tutorial below. Then, go the webpage and experiment with the techniques I've demonstrated in the tutorial to create a design with radial symmetry. Finally, try out some of the techniques by completing several design challenges.

MyOats Tutorial Video

Prompts:
Plan to spend approximately 10 minutes on each project.

1. Create a radial design using just black and white.
2. Create a radial design that expresses how you're feeling about what's going on in the world right now
3. Create a radial design that makes you feel calm. 
4. Create a radial design by writing your name in cursive with your finger or mouse, at least four times.
5. Create a radial design that makes you feel dizzy.

Skills reviewed in the tutorial:

• Mirror 
• Changing brush colors
• Choosing number of axes
• Darkening/lightening colors
• Changing brushes
• Varying brush size
• Varying opacity
• Creating dots
• Undoing work
• Downloading finished work
• There is a guide to all of the functions on Myoats here

Vocabulary:

• Opacity
• Radial Symmetry

Ten Plagues Digital Art: Eighth Grade Work

Eighth graders at The Rashi School used the drawing site Myoats.com to create artwork representing the Ten Plagues.  The site has a function that allows the pieces of art to have radial symmetry. You can choose from various background colors, brush strokes, and brush sizes to create different drawing effects. 

1. Blood 

2. Frogs

3. Lice

4. Wild Beasts

5. Cattle Disease

6. Hail

8. Locusts 

9. Darkness

10. Death of the Firstborn

Second Grade Nature Sculptures

Second graders at The Rashi School learned about artist Andy Goldsworthy, who creates incredible sculptures using only materials from nature. They located a "sign of spring" in their yard and gathered materials to create a frame around it.