Second Grade Portraits

Second graders created these beautiful portraits by examining the proportions of the human face, drawing them with pencil on black paper, and then going over the lines and shapes with glue. Finally, they used soft pastels to create blended colors.  At the start of each of the four classes, we looked at a work of art and discussed what they could tell about an artist by looking at their self portrait. 

Faith Ringgold

Frida Kahlo

Rembrandt van Rijn

Vincent Van Gogh

Eighth Grade Graduation GIF's

Every year since I’ve been at Rashi, I’ve led students in a collaborative graduation art project. Each year, it’s been a variation on the theme of a self-portrait. There have been clay miniatures, stained glass, graffiti tags, silhouettes made of tiny words, and much, much more. The challenge for me each year is to find the project that fits the class. It wasn’t hard to think of ideas for year’s eighth grade; it was hard to narrow down all of the projects I knew they’d excel at to just one project, one perfectly suited medium for them to express themselves and to leave their mark on the school.

This year, they created animated gifs. It’s an idea I’d been tossing around in my head for awhile because I knew how much fun it would be, in both process and product. It seemed fitting to have them use technology to express themselves, since that has become such a theme of the last few months. Now, we all know that technology has its limitations- and we’re all a little tired of our screens at this point- but I think you’ll love seeing all of the different ways the students harnessed their technological skills, blended these skills with imagination, and added the  spark of personality. Enjoy!

Eighth Grade Artists' Choice Gallery, 2019-2020

For our last assignment of the year, I asked my middle school students to choose their favorite work of art that they had created all year. They could even choose a project they made on their own, outside of art class. They wrote artist statements explaining why they chose the work. I was happy to see such a great variety of choices, and I will miss this group of students so much!

You can click on the name of the project to see the lesson, and/or further description of the project.

I chose to showcase the gif that I made as the graduation art. I decided to submit this art piece because I was able to be very creative and enjoyed making it. I also think that this was my best work from the year and am proud of it. (ID)

I have chosen to submit my Zentangle. I believe that it best represents my skill as an artist. It has a plethora of colors that weave together with the gold highlighting. I believe this is my best piece of art. (BL)

I chose my animated GIF self-portrait. This is one of the pieces that I’m most proud of. For the gallery, I chose the animated GIF self-portrait. Behind me on the left is the Prudential Center, and behind me on the right is the John Hancock Tower. I chose this piece because out of all of the art projects that I’ve done, this is one of the ones that I’m most proud of. (ZM)

I made this project as a part of the last Language Arts group project. It is based on a book about a Lithuanian victim of Stalin’s genocide. I drew both experiences that were traumatic, and those that gave her hope. Our experiences make up a large part of who we are, but they don’t define us. Lina was able to focus on what gave her the will to survive, and we should too remind ourselves of the best parts of our lives, especially in this trying time. (EG)

For this project, I was asked to create a self-portrait that had at least three moving parts. I chose to animate an airplane and a cloud moving in opposite directions in the background and my left eye winking. I chose to animate the plane and the cloud because I wanted the viewer to focus on the background and I chose to animate my eye because I wanted to have a part of my face move. (ZRB)

I chose my drawing from the “draw me a song” project. We were asked to choose a song and illustrate a lyric that represents the main idea of the song. I chose this piece because I feel that it is one of the best drawings I’ve done. I am very pleased with how it turned out and I think that I put a lot of detail in it which adds to the drawing without making it too busy. I also had a lot of fun making the drawing and I felt really involved with the project since I was allowed to chose my own song and lyrics to illustrate. (GG)

In this project, inspired by Victor Nunes, we were supposed to find an object around our house, and use it in an art piece. I decided to make it the top of a dress. I really liked this project because it was very creative and I had a lot of fun making it. (EJ)

I chose my Zentangle because I enjoyed working on it as one of the 8th-grade projects. This project was the one that I felt I put the most work and creativity into. (HR)

I  choose my animated self-portrait because I spent a lot of time on it making sure that it looked realistic enough. I did it three times before it looked ready enough. I am proud of this project because I think it represented me very well. (MS)

I have chosen to submit the assignment inspired by Victor Nunes. I have selected the specific drawing involving the pair of scissors and the piece of pizza drawn around it. I selected my drawing inspired by Victor Nunes as I felt that it really captured the current situation and the type of work we have been doing online. When told that we would be learning online for the remainder of the school year, both teachers and students were forced to improvise with the work that they would be doing. We were forced to come up with new ideas to complete tasks and express ourselves. We were forced to use the tools that we already had in front of us, and I felt that a photo utilizing a pair of scissors from my own home was the best way to represent creativity and improvisation. (IS)

The work I chose was the assignment draw me a song. I chose this piece of art because I really enjoyed doing this assignment. I also enjoy music and listen to it quite often so it was double the fun, music and art combined! (LT)

I’ve chosen to submit my 8th-grade portrait gif.

I chose this because it was really fun to make and I’m happy with the finished project. (HG)