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Welcome to 8th grade art online!

Please feel free to browse what our class has done and look through our online art gallery!

Aboriginal Bark Paintings

In this painting project, students are to choose an animal native to Australia and decorate it with Aboriginal symbols and motifs. A border must also be included with additional patterns and designs. Everything is painted on top of an applied texture background created by students to act as bark just like the traditional Aboriginal People used thousands of years ago.

Reflective Silhouettes

In this project, students were able to create a background mostly of different word fonts to describe themselves. On top of the background, students made a silhouette image of their own portraits. Students learned how to add value and shading with black marker. Some words and some parts of words were covered up by this...just like some of our personality traits are sometimes covered up for various reasons. 

Impressionism

Students learned about impressionist painter, Claude Monet. Coinciding with their current science curriculum, students created ecosystems in a visual way using oil pastels and watercolor paint. The environmental topic was lily ponds, just as French artist, Monet,  painted in from the 1870s to 1920s.

Movement & Rhythm in Figures

Students learned about the art principles of movement and rhythm. Students discovered how and why these principles are used in artwork. The art period of Futurism used these two principles so students were introduced to this also. For their projects, students created people in motion from cutting out figures in magazines who were doing something active. Using the principles of movement and rhythm students had to be creative and come up with an interesting composition combining colored paper figures and cut out shapes.

Op Art

Students learned about different kinds of op art and how they are made. Op art sometimes plays mind games with our heads. These optical illusions are simply created by placing lines and shapes in specific ways. Students practiced this using protractors and rulers. 

Kirkland Dot Paintings

Students learned about artist Vance Kirkland and his famous "dot" paintings. Kirkland suspended his body from the ceiling so he coud br right on top of his large canvases. Then, he randomly splattered paint everywhere. After it dried, he added controlled dots around the random markings. We decided to call this "controlling the chaos". 8th grade students experiments with this technique using their new knowledge of color harmonies...and here are some results. 

Claes Oldenburg Sculptures

Students learned about American artist, Claes Oldenburg, and his extremely large sculptures. Here is how Oldenburg describes his work: “In public sites, our sculptures reflect both the surroundings and their context, but through our imagination and selective perception which is what makes them also personal.”

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He uses various materials to create gigantic everyday objects to place in public areas around the world. Students were able to create clay maquette sculptures to stand for a real giant sculpture that could be made by Oldenburg one day. Students also came up with a place to put their everyday object sculpture. 

Paul Klee Trees

Daily Monsters

Students learned about German and Swiss artist, Paul Klee. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was also known for his color theory artwork. Eight graders learned about color theory including warm, cool, and neutral colors. Klee also worked a lot of geometric shapes. He was actually influenced by the whimsical look of children's art. Students used geometric squares for their tree drawings and chose to use either warm or cool colored oil pastels for their background and vice versa for their tree's leaves. The tree trunk and branches were painted using neutral gray colors using paint. Students added rippled or swirled organic white lines to contrast the geometric squares. Some students chose to add fireflies throughout for an extra detail.

Students looked at the work of artist Stephan  G. Bucher. He uses an unusual technique to create an ink monster everyday. He uses a straw to blow out black paint onto a piece of paper. He takes the random markings and turns them into creative monsters by adding details. Students were able to create a monster everyday for five days using this technique and their imaginations to create them. 

2 Point Perspective Tree Houses

Students were able to design their dream tree houses including their style, location, and special features. The houses themselves were drawn accurately using 2 point perspective. Color was added by mixing colored pencils and watercolor paint.

Lichtenstein Onomatopoeia Pop Art

Students learned about pop art, which is art based from objects and ideas from popular culture. Working like pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein, students used explosive and dynamic onomatopoeia words for their projects using newspaper (popular culture item), paint, paper, glue, and cardboard. Students also used primary colors along with black and white to imitate Lichtenstein's work. Students also shad a brief English lesson on onomatopoeia words, which are words that imitate or suggest the source of the sound that it describes.

Op Art Hands

Students learned how specific lighting can effect shadows and highlights. Students created op artwork to appear as if their hands were popping out of a striped background. Using the rules of shading, lights and darks, students were able to get a really cool optical effect.

Architectural Letters

Students built three dimensional letters from poster board, paper mache, and paint. Students learned how to create 3D armatures before they covered them in paper mache. It was a challenge to apply the paper mache, but after a few coats the letters took their shape. Students were able to paint and decorate their letter to fit their own personality.

Ms. Sontag's Art Room

Munising Public Schools k-12

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