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2D Art

Handmade Artist Books with Watercolor Pages

I’m so excited to share one of my all-time favorite art class projects: handmade artist books. I love using handmade artist books in my classes because they provide a way to practice techniques and address new concepts in my class throughout the year. They also are works of art in their own right, and I find that students take greater ownership of artist book assignments than they do with sketch book assignments. All in all, handmade artist books provide a great way to frame each of our art projects and to get greater engagement out of my students, and what teacher wouldn’t want that?

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From the standpoint of a busy teacher who preps for five different classes, artist books also allow me to start the year with a little more wiggle room in terms of planning time. We start our books off by creating watercolor washes on all of the pages and that usually takes up three to four class periods right at the start of the semester. This allows me to have more time to prep and plan for our larger projects while students are painting. Students also enjoy this time as it allows them to ease into the year with a fun and low-pressure art activity.

In terms of teacher prep time for this project, it’s quite minimal. I cut the railroad board to size and then I show the students how to fold and rip 18 inch x 24 inch pieces of watercolor paper so that they get 10 sheets of 9 inch x 12 inch paper (they have to split their last large sheet with another student). I then show them how to create a watercolor wash on their paper and let them loose. The more challenging part comes when students need to prep their covers and complete their binding. Luckily for you, I’ve created a tutorial video that will walk them and you through this process, which I’ve included at the end of this post.

You do need some specific supplies to create these books but you can change up some of the materials to save money. For instance, instead of railroad board use old cereal boxes. You can also substitute high-end watercolor paper with a cheaper version or even drawing or construction paper. You can also skip the ribbon altogether or substitute it with a braided yarn. The standard supplies for this project are:

Book making supplies. Supplies to make artist books.

Check out the video below to learn how to bind the pages and finish off the covers to create your own handmade artist book.

Photography, Printables, Resources

End of the school year activities – photo scavenger hunt

Hurry up and wait — that pretty much sums up the feeling of the last few weeks of the school year. There are so many things that need to be accomplished, but there is also a lot of downtime as students are finishing up final projects and studying for exams. It’s both relaxing and stressful, and I inevitably end up needing some end of the school year activities for students to do while I am finalizing grades. Luckily, I found a fun way for students to stay engaged in our photography material, and have some fun — a photo scavenger hunt!

I created a scavenger hunt that includes photos that test my students’ DSLR knowledge, as well as compositional skill. I also threw in a bunch of fun and unusual types of subject matter so that students would find it challenging to complete all of the photos.

Photography students challenge with a photography scavenger hunt.
Photography students can test their knowledge in a fun end-of-the-year activity by completing this photography scavenger hunt.

The best way I’ve found to assign the challenge is to have interested students team up. The members of each team of students can all add photos to one list. Once the team feels like they completed the most of the items, I can check their photos with them and then mark down the number that they completed. The team with the most items completed gets a prize (usually candy).

My students have always seemed to enjoy this activity and it still reinforces many of the skills and concepts we learned throughout the year. You could take this idea and adapt it to fit with other art classes or other subjects as well.

This scavenger hunt tests students’ knowledge of their cameras, photo lighting, and compositional techniques, as well as offering them a fun end-of-the-year activity.

The great thing about assignments like this is that students have to work together to figure out what some of these terms mean and how to capture them in a photo. It also makes the students have to apply what they learned during the year, helping to solidify the concepts in their minds.

If you teach a photography class, feel free to download a printable .pdf of my scavenger hunt list below. Enjoy, and here’s to the end of another school year!

photo scavenger huntDownload