Value Ribbon Words

Now, let me first say that I am currently a bit obsessed with Pinterest! Many (ok most) of my projects and assignments are stemming from there as of late. I've always looked online for project ideas, but now to have so many of them in one place? Well, it's almost too much for me to deal with on a daily basis, but I'm trying! I am slowly pinning away and trying to weed out the good from the bad. It doesn't help that I often get distracted and start pinning tons of things that I'd like to eat! Anyway, my point was that yes, I take a lot of my project ideas from there, but I do try to make them my own, and my students always have unique results. I love having such a huge idea bank at my disposal.

After their Value Scales, my high school Drawing and Painting classes did these 'Ribbon Word' Value Drawings...

Pretty much sums up life, doesn't it? Hee hee. These came out better than i could have possibly imagined! Students had to construct their word out of strips of paper 'ribbons' and tape them down onto a piece of scrap paper. They then had to do a drawing of their word 'sculpture' from observation (Some of them ended up taking photos so that we could maintain consistent lighting conditions, etc.) This was a great way to further practice achieveing value with pencil, and the kids had fun doing it. All of them were really pleased with their drawings. Pin It

Value Drawing

This year I am teaching two Drawing and Painting 1 classes and two Drawing and Painting 2 classes. Since I am new to my school ( and the students) I decided to start both classes off with the same projects in an effort to guage where the students are in terms of their skills before deciding which direction I wanted to head in.

I had my students start with a basic value scale in pencil. They had to use the classic method of making 10 boxes and shading them from light to dark to achieve as many shades of grey as they could in between the black and white squares.

To make this project a bit more exciting, I then had them create a stencil that allowed them to cut their chosen shape out of their shaded boxes. They then had to arrange their shapes in a fun composition to display their value scale.

The resulting pieces turned out quite nicely, and took what i feel can be an otherwise boring "warm-up" project and made it a little more fun for the students.

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