Tribal Tagging Self-Portraits in IB Art

My name is Leighton McDonald and I am a Senior in a Higher Level IB class. I have taken IB art for 2 years and am now in my second year. This is a self portrait done in acrylic on wood canvas. This piece took me about one school week to complete. I began to express my new "electronic tribal" style in this piece. This new style makes the painting pop and it makes it seem busy but not to busy that it takes away from the main focus of the painting. The facial details contain many other colors that minor artists would not originally use. Purples, yellows, reds, and greens helped me build the facial shading that I originally wanted. The bold lines that surround the face make the face seem like a comic book illustration. In a recent critique, another artist said that the lines make that painting look 3- dimensional in a way. After wondering what made the painting pop, i came to the conclusion that the artist was right. The bold lines completely changed the way the painting looks. The lines and colors on the outside of the face were a free style of my imagination. I didn't purposefully mean to freestyle the painting, but I'm glad I did. I have gotten many great comments about the painting, but I still think there could be something else done to it.

Working with Realism in IB Art

Hello. :D My name is Darya Kaborda. I am in IB Art for the next 2 years. My field is realism. I love making things look realistic. If the drawing or painting looks like you can reach in and touch it, I will love it no matter what the subject is. I am sort of trying to achieve photorealism, in a way, but this piece doesn't demonstrate it. To start off, I gridded the canvas, and drew the lines in. Somehow, I ended up skipping or adding in a block at the bottom near her arm, so I have to fix that and incorporate the error into the drawing. The hair is what I was afraid of the most. It took the most time and patience. I usually never spend lengthy periods of time drawing hair in portraits, and, to be honest, this is my first real portrait of a person I know. The drawing is of Caley Doud, a good friend of mine. She took the picture for me, and I printed it out on 2 pages so it would be bigger than just one page. I wanted to be able to see the detail, but it failed. My printer didn't allow me to see most of the detail that the actual picture shows. I have to work from a torn up, colored, messed up photo of her, and that's a shame because I feel like I will not accomplish what I desire through that sort of reference. I wanted to make focus the main part of the drawing in the face, and I hope I have done that, even though the amount of hair can be distracting. It's difficult to shade accurately because of the reference picture, too. So far, I like the face the most. Her arm is poorly drawn, though. I need to fix it, still. At the moment, I am still going to spend some more time touching up the face, hair, and shirt. I have gotten a critique that the shirt needs to be worked on more, so I will take that advice and try to make the shirt look more realistic. After I finish the hair, I will be satisfied, and then I will do final touch-ups. That's about it. :D Thanks for reading. ^__^

- Darya Kaborda

Still Life!

Art 1 is advancing quickly and has begun work on a large still life. We've spent the past several classes learning all about value and developing observational drawing skills using graphite. Students use a viewfinder to choose a composition that features a wide range of values and a variety of forms and textures. Drawing what you actually see instead of what you think you see is harder than you think! So far, these Art 1 kids are pros.

Third Block Art II - Working with Clay

This week, Art II students finished basic pinch/coil pots and began on basic slab work. Their pinch/coil pots are egg separators called Snot Pots - after you break an egg into the pot, the whites drip out of the nostril holes. Students had fun creating these and reviewing basic hand construction techniques.


Moving from pinch/coil pots to slab work, students created ceramic fish by rolling two slabs and cutting the fish shape from each using a template. After stuffing the fish with newspaper, they sealed the halves together and decorated the design using at least five distinct textures.

Too provocative?

Woodmont High School declined to hang this self-portrait in the school library because of "provocative" content. It's by former IB student Elise Ellisor, and won Best in Show at last year's annual Woodmont Student Art Show.
What do you think? Is the content too provocative for a public space like a school library? Why or why not?
UPDATE - Mr. Imperati, our principal, viewed the painting this morning and agreed with the Art department that the painting should be on permanent public display in the Library.

First Block Art 1 - Basic Drawing

For their first week, Mr. Davis's first block Art 1 class studied basic observation and drawing skills. Students began by copying a drawing upside-down, using the unfamiliar orientation to force themselves to draw what they actually see. This assignment is designed to encourage students to look carefully at the objects they draw, avoiding the use of symbols.

Students then moved on to negative space drawings. On their handouts, photos from Sports Illustrated Magazine had been converted to black and white shape drawings. Students traced the format or outlines of the boxes, then copied the negative or background shapes into the boxes. Filling the negative shapes in with bright colorful patterns reinforces the idea that these are shapes. This is another exercise designed to help Woodmont Art students observe and accurately draw the actual shapes of objects.

As part of their art routine, students finishing their assignments work in their visual journals. All Woodmont High Art I students are required to create three entries per week in their visual journals. These entries center around an artifact - for example, a drawing, a photo, a ticket stub, or any other 2-dimensional object they find visually interesting. Students create a full-page design around the artifact, incorporating text and design elements into their work. Visual journals count as 20% of each student's grade.