elements of art: art journal pages

       The following pages are from a journal created by my child when she was in seventh grade. Her teacher was Alvina Becker. Mrs. Becker taught her art students from a manual that she wrote herself, “Elements of art: a practical  approach for teaching art in the upper grades:  step-by-step projects for one full year."

       The first example is the cover page of her "Elements of Art" art journal. I have included only a few of the sample pages but, I think most of these will give teachers some ideas about what is normally assigned to this particular type of art journal.

In this journal, she was required to take notes
about the elements of design and then complete
simple projects demonstrating these elements;
space, light, color, line, shape, and texture.
After the completion of the project, students
were then required to include a few design
pages to demonstrate the use of materials.

This page and the one just above demonstrate
the use of positive and negative space. I did
not include the notes among these pages for
obvious reasons. Should I ever need to give
a similar assignment, I want my students
to write their own answers, instead of copying
what they may find here.

I think this magazine collage demonstrating a "textured
landscape is my favorite page.

Texture is experimented with again in this
rubbing.

This is her texture duplicate page. Those of you
who are art teachers know, texture must be assigned
several times in order for the student to demonstrate
both literal texture and implied texture. This
was her implied texture page.

Here is her exploding shapes page. This is fun
for students to experiment with, I think.

Here is her light source page. This is her first
attempt at shading, I'm happy to report that
Natalie became much better at this process
over time!

This is perhaps the most difficult page her art teacher assigned, the
reflective light page.

This is the paper strip design demonstrating line.

Above is a crazy quilt design showing monochromatic
color relationships.

This design shows the use of oil pastel medium.
I believe students were required to demonstrate analogous
and complimentary colors in at least three of the
squares above. What I like most about these
art journal pages is that students were encouraged
to "show case" the aesthetic qualities of the
art elements. My daughter's journal included
notes but these were even written attractively.