Art

At CHS the study of visual arts includes traditional fine arts such as drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, and sculpture and media arts such as graphic communications and emerging technologies. Students create and present their art, choosing from a range of materials and methods of traditional and contemporary artistic practices to plan works of art and design. Students respond to art, analyzing the impact that an exhibition or collection has on personal awareness of social, cultural, or political beliefs and understandings. Students connect to art, evaluating the effectiveness of an image or images to influence ideas, feelings, and behaviors of specific audiences.

Courses

Art Fundamentals

Units

The Language of Art

Students apply line, shape, color, texture, and value, with colored pencils and markers on a block or bubble name design which is mounted on the portfolio cover.
Students analyze various works of art and identify elements of art as well as composition structure by examining the principles of arrangement.
Students select a piece of art and produce a written critique using steps in art criticism: describing, analyzing, interpreting, and judging.
Students engage in a vases and faces project which involves conceptual and perceptual drawing.

The Element of Line/Drawing

Students view exemplars and practice techniques of contour drawing. Using contour drawing skills, students create a composition with unity based on three contour drawings of the same object.
Students review color relationships on the color wheel.
Students choose an analogous color harmony to paint in the negative space of objects drawn with watercolor.
Students study the work of a famous artist and based on the artist’s style and work, translate, define and create their own visual symbols through a variety of exercises. They then choose a social issue or concern to communicate with their pictograms.

Mixed Media in Art and Collage

Students create a real or imaginary landscape using computer drawing or paint programs.
Students explore brush tools including chalk, pastels, pens, and spray paint. These tools are used to draw the basics of the landscape structure and creating a foreground, middle ground, and background.
Students compose a mixed-media design uniting visual and verbal symbols, choosing a poem, song, or saying and using cutout letters and words, drawing, and various materials and media in their design.
Students engage in block printing using leaves, ink, and color harmonies.

Cubism

Students select an object to draw, dissect, stylize, and transform into a cubist drawing.
Students explore the influence of African/Primitive art and masks on modern art movements and artists.
Students draw a stylized cubist/primitive face in black lines, adding color with oil pastels and finishing the work with a wash of watercolor resist.
Students draw multiple views of a still-life and then combine the views into one cubistic composition using a variety of materials such as colored papers, wallpapers, fabrics, paint, and newspaper to finish in the style of cubism.

Surrealism

Students analyze works exhibiting the metamorphosis of an object and brainstorm many ideas before executing an illustration that shows at least five changes in the chosen object.
Students create a Surreal environment with mixed media. They select a magazine image to expand and transform into a surrealist composition using at least three of the six surrealist techniques: transformation, dislocation, scale, transparency, levitation, and juxtaposition.
Students create a figure form from images from magazines and create space and depth in the finished composition on black paper with color paper strips dividing the space.

Black Artists

Sculpture and Clayworks

Students explore the history of clay and theories of discovery. They construct a pinch pot with uniformity of walls. They draw thumbnail sketches of surrealist transformations to clay and select a design to apply to their pinch pot.
Students analyze African art and mask design techniques and purposes and then apply them to their own design, theme, and character of a draped slab of clay over a form.
Students study and apply slab, pinch, and coil techniques as well as stylization of the facial features.
Students transfer a famous painting into a clay relief tile for an ongoing community art history project.
Students create an abstract cutout self-portrait, using flat stylized shapes and simple forms for the body parts and features.

Perspective and Design

Using one-point perspective, students transform their initials in 3-D with shapes going back in space towards the vanishing point.
Students select mediums to finish their designs.
Using two-point perspectives, students create their own city, world, or museum and finish the drawings with color and value.
Students study a famous artist to understand the connection between geometry and art.
Students create their own original tessellation.

Painting and Composition

Students create a monochromatic, non-objective painting using multiple tints and shades and considering composition skills.
As part of a study of Fauve artists, students use arbitrary colors to create a dreamy landscape which includes foreground, middle ground, and background.
Students select a land or seascape photo and recreate it in an impressionistic style with a focus on stylistic brush strokes and colors.
After studying Pointillism, students choose a photo and medium to create their own pointillism painting.
Students create a “Master’s Copy,” selecting a reproduction of a famous "modern" artist to copy with paint or oil pastels and modeling technique, quality, scale, and likeness.

Modern Masters

Research an Artist

Students select an artist and engage in research to explore three works of the artist as well as art criticism about those works.
Students evaluate the individual qualities of their artist including style, movement, aesthetics, history, subject matter, and mediums.
Students create sketches of a symbol of the sun that are similar to their selected artist’s composition, style, and mediums.
The students create the finished product of the sun, demonstrating skill, craftsmanship, and thoughtfulness in the selection and implementation of chosen media.

Portraits and Cartooning

Students study various types of portraiture and create self-portraits using mirrors.
Students create "fun" caricatures of themselves using personal symbols, ideas, and imagery.
Through the creation of characters, space, and a storyboard, students construct their own comics story in black and white that is based on a personal experience, delicate subjects such as war, peace, and human rights, or a current issue.

Advanced Art I

Units

Drawing and Design Basics

Students select a subject for a finished contour drawing composition with an emphasis on elements and principles of design.
Students select media for the project and apply various techniques and processes.
Students draw contour drawings of a model and finish in the style of a famous artist.
Students create an original work of art that demonstrates a connection between personal expression and the intentional use of art materials, techniques, and processes and the artist's style and/or period studied.
Students create a montage of images based on a specific theme, utilizing drawing skills and compositional strategies demonstrated in class.
Students apply comprehension and skill in incorporating the elements of art and principles of design to generate multiple solutions and effectively solve the compositional problem of a montage of images that expresses their personal experiences and vision.

Skillbuilders

Students apply drawing skills and presentation skills in the creation of a "skill builder book" of specific drawing techniques.
Students apply comprehension and skill in incorporating the elements of art and principles of design to generate multiple solutions and effectively create a book of skills.
Students utilize the grid to enlarge an image to perfect scale and proportion and use the elements of color, value, and texture to add realism to the piece.

Drawing Hands

Students draw several views of their hands using contour lines and gestural lines.
Students apply skills and techniques learned in contour and gesture exercises to a finished composition of "hand,” focusing on the principles of arrangement and design to their finished composition.
Students create a freestanding sculpture of a hand using clay construction and modeling techniques.

Still-Life Drawing/Volume and Space

Students draw the negative space of a still-life, focusing on the shapes of the space around the overlapping objects and creating their own techniques for the finished drawing, i.e., solid vs. pattern, value, abstract, or collage for the space.
Students execute a representational drawing of the still-life and apply color harmonies and media. Students create a window to view a close-up from the finished still-life drawings.

Pen and Ink Drawing

Students experiment with the media and pens, practicing with texture, various lines, and lines as value.
Students select an object or subject for a cartoon-like drawing.
Students compare works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture, justifying conclusions made in the analysis and using these conclusions to inform their own art-making drawings in pen and ink.
Students complete a self-portrait with an emphasis on value, line techniques, and expressive qualities.

Sculpture and Alternative Art Materials

Clayworks

Painting Workshop

Students create a monochromatic-abstract still-life or self-portrait on canvas with tints and shades of one color with an emphasis on value and composition.
After viewing the works of a famous artist, students create a mixed media painting in the artist's style selecting a theme of their own choice to express.
Using a personal photo as a starting point, students create a color-charged "fauvist" style painting in the style of a famous artist.

Pop Art

Students select an artist and style from the Pop Art movement and an image of their choice to combine into an original work of their own.
Students create a sculpture in the style of Pop Art from materials found at home and in the art room including clay, cardboard, plaster craft, plaster, and found objects.
Students compare their works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, culture, and movement justifying conclusions made in the analysis and using these conclusions to inform their own art-making.

Art History/Visual Research

Contemporary Art/Altered and Irrational

Advanced Art II

Units

Drawing and Design Basics

Students draw various objects using contour drawing skills: shoes, plants, objects, and hands.
Students choose a subject for a finished contour drawing composition with an emphasis on elements and principles of design and include a surrealist device such as transformation, scale, dislocation, etc.
Students select an artist’s quote to design a poster. Using the artist’s style, students create a composition of various images.
Students analyze and compare characteristics of the artist's works within a particular historical period or style with ideas, issues, or themes of that period or style and compose the image with the text.

Skillbuilders/Grid Work

Drawing Hands

Students draw several views of their hands using contour lines and gestural lines.
Students apply skills and techniques learned in contour and gesture exercises to a finished composition of "hand,” focusing on the principles of arrangement and design to their finished composition.
Students create a freestanding sculpture of a hand using clay construction and modeling techniques.

Printmaking

Students explore the oil paint monoprint as an art medium and immediate printing process resulting in "one" print.
Students create ghost prints as well. Students select an image to transfer to an E_Z cut lino block.
Students cut into blocks with a variety of marks and lines utilizing cutting tools to best illustrate the image. A proof is pulled, adjustments made if needed, and then a numbered "edition" of linocut prints are created.

Sculpture and Clayworks

Paint Workshop

Portraiture

Students discover measurement techniques while drawing their own faces using a mirror. The process of using the eye as a unit for measurement is explored while students learn how to draw the face with representative proportion and likeness.
Students select a famous painting to recreate by inserting their own faces into the subject. From an 8x10 black and white photograph, students draw a 16x20 self-portrait in pencil.

Visual Stories

Students practice storyboard skills by researching various styles of layout and generating a series of thumbnail sketches and planning the theme and story for their project.
Students experiment with various mediums and develop the main character for their visual story.
Utilizing design skills and knowledge of mediums and style, students create a visual story based on their own character creations and storyline as well as layout and presentation.

ECE Drawing

Introduction To Drawing

Students develop an awareness and understanding of how to draw from observation.
Students utilize skills that demonstrate the ability to draw “what you see”. Using still life in the classroom, students have experiences in working with perspective, composition, line weight, proportion, and measurement.
This comprehensive unit includes the following areas of focus: non-objective charcoal experimentation, drawing organic forms such as pond and house plants, drawing objects with colors such as gourds and squash, and planar drawing.

Student Studio Practice

Students focus on perceptual drawing although there are opportunities for conceptual development.
Students are engaged in systematically developing their ability to render what they see.
Students practice a disciplined approach, visual sensitivity, patience, and eye/hand coordination.
This comprehensive unit includes the following areas of focus: drawing boxes with angles and perspective, using negative space, drawing ellipses as they appear in objects such as cups and saucers, and using perspective and technique to draw blocks.

Studio Arts Workshop

Units

Design Collage

Painting/3-D Construction

Slab Construction/Working with Clay

Plaster Sculpture

Students study how to use plaster gauze in mask making and create plaster masks of classmates’ faces. These positive clay faces are then incorporated into an art project of the students' choice: possibly using a vessel, adding the face to a slab, making a 3-d head, etc.
Students engage in a stamping project, creating a plaster stamp and taking clay, and making repeated copies of their original design, joining them all together and making a new container.
Students show unity in the design of found objects that are pressed into recycled clay to serve as a mold. Walls are built around the impressions in clay and students learn how to mix their own plaster and pour it into their molds. After drying a "bas relief" in plaster is ready for students to clean, sand edges, and then finish with a patina of their choice.

Coil Construction

Students study the history of using clay and stone in creating different types of stamps, for showing ownership, adding names, etc.
The students sketch ideas for barrel stamps, wheel stamps, and common stamps, creating their own series of stamps.
Students create a coiled vessel, smoothing the outside, to roll the stamps onto, leaving imprints and making a continuous design.
Students design a shape for a coiled vessel and construct the vessel of coils by adding the coils on top of each other; blending the coils together.

Additive/Subtractive Sculpture

Found Object Sculpture

Nature and Public Sculpture - Maquette Design

Neo-Impressionism/En Plein Painting

AP Art History

Units

Introduction to Art History

Students discuss the many interpretations of the question, "What is art?"
Students consider the elements of art such as appearances, function, and form.
Students discuss influences that may affect the way art looks and what factors can lead to changes in the appearance of art.
In an essay format, students formally and contextually analyze various works of art based on their aesthetic appearance.

In the Beginning...Global Prehistory

Students complete vein diagrams, comparing and contrasting formal qualities of various works of art.
Students research artwork and take virtual tours of the Lascaux Caves in France and Stonehenge in England.
Students make predictions about how art was made (tools used, application of medium, light sources, lifting stones, transporting stones, etc), presenting their theories to the class.

Ancient Near East and Egypt

Students compare and contrast the appearance of prehistoric vs. historic painting, drawing, and architecture, evaluating how context affects appearance.
Students assume the role of an archeologist and analyze how they would handle a discovery of a new and monumental archaeological site.
Students interpret and analyze unknown works and classify them into specific cultures and time periods, using specific visual and contextual evidence to back up their claims.

The Classical Era: Greece and Rome

Students analyze Greek, Etruscan and Roman temples, considering unique architectural features, contexts, and functions.
Students analyze Greek and Roman ideals of the human form, vases, and sporting events reflecting on differences and similarities.
Students consider interactions with works of art in their original context vs. in a museum and write about the change in context and how this affects their experience.
Students prepare brief presentations on specific art mediums found in Roman art and their significance in a political, historical, and/or cultural context.

Faith Around the World: Religion and Art

Students analyze various religious temples / sacred spaces, considering unique architectural features, contexts, and functions.
Students analyze narratives that are used in different religions and interpret how the artist rendered the narrative for intended audiences, hypothesizing why these choices were made.
Students analyze how changes in modern worship traditions relate to changes in sacred art traditions today.
Students analyze and interpret variations in architecture, paintings and sculpture found within each religion.

South, East, and Southeast Asia

Students analyze the use of ceramics in Asian cultures, speculating on how the ceramics were made and the context in which they were created, as well as how and why these vases were so desirable both in and out of Asia.
Students analyze the meaning of Japanese Zen garden designs, interpreting traditional versus newer elements that account for a blending of styles.
Students compare monuments from Asia with those previously studied from around the globe, focusing on how each monument relates to themes of knowledge and belief and identity and power within each context.

Indigenous Americas

Students research differences and similarities in the form and function of various religious sites, considering how the context of each work determined the materials used.
Students analyze various symbols as components of complex works articulating sacred rituals, cultural identity, and power and authority.
Students judge to what extent the contact with Europeans changed the materials and imagery used by indigenous American artists and vice versa.
Students interpret the effectiveness of a work of art created from natural materials and explain the meaning transmitted by the use of material.

Africa

Oceania: Art of the Pacific

Students analyze how Oceanic kings demonstrate power, wealth, and authority to their audiences, focusing on the cross-cultural convergence of Oceanic and Western traditions of artistic expression.
Students research the relationship between knowledge and belief in art, analyzing how specific art created supernatural connections with certain audiences.
Students judge the impact of iconoclasm on our understanding of art through the analysis of sacred materials in Oceanic art.
Students analyze and evaluate a performance work of Oceanic art, explaining how the work was performed, roles of performers, materials used, and audiences.
Students reflect on how the art object supports the intent of the performance from a visual and contextual perspective.

Medieval Europe

Students research the use of icons during Medieval art, analyzing how icons were painted, adorned, and worshiped, and how this led to the causes and effects of iconoclasm.
Students connect books from Medieval Europe to Non-western books from around the globe, noting similarities and differences in material, narrative, figure style, context, and content.
Students compare two works of art, writing a descriptive summary of the defining characteristic of Gothic art and architecture and how it was influenced by the earlier Romanesque period.
Students write an essay responding to the question "How did the decorative arts enhance religious devotion throughout the Middle Ages?"

Renaissance and Baroque Art

Students compare the innovative work of Renaissance artists to those of artists from the medieval period, explaining the cultural shift and break from tradition that is seen during this time.
Students analyze how specific Renaissance works of art may have been inspired by specific ancient works.
Students study High Renaissance artists and analyze unknown works of Mannerist art, identifying the elements of this new art movement.
Students discuss the relationships between patron and artist, the intended audience and how the Baroque style is used in architecture.

The 19th and 20th Centuries

Students analyze how national ideals are illustrated through different artworks, focusing on interpreting how each work is represented by the artist and received by audiences.
Students study how the invention of photography offers different perspectives and qualities than painting.
Students analyze two art movements taking place at the same time, identifying areas of overlap and features of distinction and what caused them.
Students explain why mass-produced, commercial, institutional images and objects have become accepted as works of art.
Students analyze public artwork around their community, discussing form, content, placement, audience, and function.

Art of the Modern World: Global Contemporary

Students analyze contemporary artwork that appropriates images from the past, discussing how images referenced are used and how the artist builds on past representations to inspire a new understanding of past events.
Students analyze how artists address ethnic issues in artwork by viewing artwork by contemporary Haitian Americans, African Americans, Iranian Americans, and Native Americans.

Introduction to Photography I

Units

History of Photography

Photoshop Techniques

Camera Angles

Students define and identify the use of various camera angles in existing photos: low angle, high angle, and birdseye view, etc.
Students apply and experiment with the use of different angles in taking photographs, studying the effect on the composition of camera angles.
Students learn the Rule of Thirds and practice and experiment using the grid with their own photographs, studying the effect on the composition.

Iconic Painting Modernizations

Self-Portraits

Students define a self-portrait as an artwork, differentiating it from snapshot photography or selfies.
Students practice taking self-portraits which provide a creative expression of themselves.
Students import their self-portraits into Photoshop and experiment with different styles of self-portraits, creating a comic effect as well as a self-portrait in the style of a famous painter of self-portraits.

Lighting

Surrealism

Students study the features of surrealism and how they are applied to photography.
Students research a famous contemporary surrealist photographer and examine how the photographer creates the elements of surrealism in photographs.
Students design and take their own surrealist photographs, selecting their best work to self-assess. Peers critique each other's surrealist photographs using school-wide rubrics.

Advanced Concepts in Photography

Units

Portraiture

Haunted Imagery

Mental Health Unit

Independent Project

Students communicate ideas consistently at a high level of effectiveness in photography by conceiving their own original themed projects.
Students then apply media, techniques, and processes with sufficient skill, confidence, and sensitivity that their intentions are realized, and a connection between personal expression and the intentional use of art materials is demonstrated.

Silent Film

Commercial Photography

For each commercial photography topic, students research the specific type of photography (food, fashion, product, interior and exterior/architectural) and how it is being used today by professional photographers.
Students then create a photograph in the style of that specific topic and create reflection based on their success with this style of photography.
Students focus on elevating their work to the professional level, considering the quality, attributes, and audience associated with each type of commercial photography.

Famous Photographer Project

Final Theme Photographs

Ceramics

Units

Intro to Ceramics

Students learn about the development of functional and nonfunctional ceramic work.
Students analyze and interpret various ceramic artworks throughout time in terms of form, cultural and historical context, and purpose.
Students analyze and compare characteristics of ceramic pieces within various historical periods with ideas or issues of that period, and analyze common characteristics of ceramics across time.

Students learn the techniques and processes pertaining to ceramic hand building. Including the following: pinch, coil, slab methods of construction, stages of drying (leather-hard, greenware, bone dry,) firing, glazing, and various decorative techniques.

Pinch Method

Students view examples of various artworks utilizing the pinch method of construction. They sketch ideas for their artwork and apply the techniques and processes for pinch construction in their own work with sufficient skill, confidence, and sensitivity that their intentions are understood.
Students learn to apply the media, techniques, and processes specific to various methods of surface decoration: sgraffito, slip trailing, glazing, or painting.

Coil Method

Slab Method

Students conceive and create original works of art utilizing the slab method of construction that demonstrate a connection between personal expression and the intentional use of ceramic properties, techniques, and processes.
Students choose between creating a ceramic tile or creating a tiny house using the slab method.
They then sketch ideas for their artwork as they apply comprehension and skill by incorporating the elements of art and principles of design to generate multiple solutions to effectively solve the visual problem given.

Ceramic Sculpture

Students view examples of ceramic sculpture exemplifying the visual problem/technique specific to the given assignment.
Students learn techniques and processes specific to the construction of the ceramic sculptures.
Combining these techniques and processes with previous learning, the students strive to apply them in their own work with sufficient skill and confidence as they work through the greenware phase of their ceramic sculpture.

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