Treasure chests in Keith Haring style.

By Annelou, 7th grade

Working together with other subjects is quite easy when you teach art!  For several years now we work together with the subject called 'technique' here in Belgium.
They have to put together their own wooden treasure chest.
When that's finished they get to paint it in art class.  We have had several different themes.  This time we chose for Keith Haring style. 
When the paint and the varnish are dry the chest go back to the other teachers and they built a real alarm sound in the box.
Best not to do this before they have to paint it, because you'll go crazy with all the beeps in class :D

By Julie, grade 7

Surrealistic eyes.

By Hanne 7th grade

Every year we do a special project week.  We chose a theme and all lessons have to be adapted to that theme. 
Our 7th and 8th graders are mixed in new groups.
This year the theme was 'hearing, seeing and ...' 
Every subject has to make a new lesson that suits the theme.  We chose a lesson about eyes.  I immediately thought about the surreal eye of the Belgian artist René Magritte.
What's also special about this week is that teachers are mixed too.  I had to teach Maths and Dutch and my colleague of religion had to teach art.
We made a worksheet she could follow step by step.

The steps how to draw an eye from the website.  'How to draw eyes step by step'  were translated into Dutch so the kids could do this by themselves.

To show them what surrealism is all about they got a lot of pictures with surrealistic eyes.

By René Magritte, 'The false mirror'

The kids find it hard to find an original idea, but once they have found one they go all the way!  There were great results in both 7th and 8th grade!

By Kimberly, 8th grade

Portrait like Roy Lichtenstein on canvas.

By Melissa, 8th grade.

This is a project of my dear colleague.  I think the results are stunning! 

She took pictures of all the kids in class and let them trace the big lines of the picture in pencil. 
Those lines were transferred onto a flat canvas.

They students had to come up with an original sentence like Roy Lichtenstein's portraits in Pop Art.

They painted it with acrylic paint. 

By Kimberly, 8th grade.

Museum in one point perspective

By Mille, grade 7.

I want to thank Jaquelien of the blog 'Kids Artists' for sharing this project.  I'm quite happy with the results.  For most of our students this is the first time they ever get in contact with perspective drawings.  If you follow the link to 'kids Artists' you get more info about the project. 

Coffee cups filled with patterns.

By Tamyra, 7th grade.

The internet is one big source of inspiration.  Not just the famous artists, but also amateurs can be found everywhere.  Pinterest, flickr, etsy, blogger and facebook.  Rummaging through the net has become an addiction to many of my kind: 'the art-teacher'.  This project is inspired on a beautiful piece of art I found on etsty through pinterest. It's by Heather Galler and it is very colorful!

The example by Heather Galler.

What you need:* square piece of paper
* ruler
* thick black marker
* markers

Step by step :
1) Divide your paper in 6 rectangles.
2) Trace them with a black marker.
3) Draw 6 cups and saucers.
4) Draw a line behind the cups (table).  Make sure the cups aren't floating in the air.
5) Trace the cups and the line of the table with thick black marker.
6) Fill up the cups, saucers, background and table with markers and lots of funny patterns.

A collection of colorful cups and saucers.

Surrealistic snow-globes.

By Zoë, 8th grade

Snow-globes are arising on many blogs, it must be the layer of snow I'm watching at when I look out the window!
I connected this project with surrealism.  I explained what surrealism was, gave some examples and asked the kids to come up with the most original place to put the snow-globe, somewhere special, somewhere you wouldn't expect a snow-globe at all.
They had to trace with a black thin marker and color with colored pencils. 
The background was totally their choice.  Zoë (top of this post) chose to use colored pencils, while Giel (at the end of this post) chose black paper and paint.

By Giel, 8th grade.

The ATC Drop-Box

This is our ATC Drop-Box.  An old shoe-box got a hole and some paint and was placed in the art-room on a shelf. 
We have a digital school platform called 'Smartschool'.  Every subject has its own space.  On the art-class forum the theme is announced, but also in class on the board ('cause just like adult people not everybody like using a computer) The kids get a 'deadline'.  If they want to join in they can just drop their ATC in the drop-box. 
After the deadline has passed I make envelopes with the names of the kids who participated and swap the ATCs.  I always ask my envelopes back. (We have to teach them to think about the environment, so I re-use the envelopes several times!)
The drop-box is getting more and more successful. 
Fast workers often ask if they can make an ATC in class and that works well too.  Some kids make 3 or 4.  I'm always amazed with the results.
Introducing ATCs here in Belgium has been a great success up to now!

Our themes for the drop-box were Halloween, Christmas and now it's Valentines Day off course ...
I'm guessing Easter and summer holiday will follow.