Middle School Art Students Capture Life In The Lowcountry
We are blessed to live in the Lowcountry, surrounded by waterways--marshes, ocean, beaches, creeks, swamps, lagoons. Just as Jesus is our living water (John 7:37-38), the Lowcountry is filled with life because of our waterways. We have seafood, wildlife, birds and people coming from all over the world because of the water and life here. In fifth grade through eighth grade, students have been working on observational drawings from life and photo references. Learning to "see" the world around them opens new worlds for art students to study value, light, shadow and form. We began with value pencil drawings of shells, each grade with advanced complexity, and then moved into Lowcountry creatures in fifth grade (oil pastel and chalk pastel), sixth grade marshes (chalk pastel), seventh grade marshes (oil pastel) and eighth grade Angel Oak trees (charcoal and chalk). Learning how to control messy materials is a valuable lesson. In art, we aim to expose students to many media and techniques so that when they arrive in high school art and beyond, they are able to know which material will be the best solution to achieve an artistic goal.