Chris Uphues Inspired Hearts

These fun and colorful works of art were created by the students in grades one through three. We began by learning about street artist Chris Uphues and his eye-catching cartoon heart faces. We began by tracing different shaped hearts and drawing fun cartoon style faces on them. During the next class, students either painted in the hearts with one color or practiced blending two colors together. During the final class, we added some fun painted confetti to the background. Students had a blast drawing these wonderfully expressive faces and blending colors. 

Street Art Hearts

These adorable heart works of art were inspired by James Goldcrown. We began by tracing heart shapes and painting them in different colors of watercolor paint. We then used paper towel rolls in the shapes of hearts to stamp fluorescent colored hearts all over a black piece of construction paper. The final step was to cut out our watercolor hearts and glue them on top of our printed hearts. This is a very easy and fun Valentines Day themed lesson that gives every student an opportunity for success!

Subvertisements

International Academy students learned about the guerilla marketing style known as subvertising. Subvertisements are parodies and spoofs of corporate or political advertisements. Subvertisements may take the form of a new image or be an alteration to an already existing image or icon. Students were challenged to come up with their own original parodies to bring more truth to traditional advertisements. 

Street Art Cityscapes

Students in grades 4-6 created these street art cityscapes. We began by drawing out our names in bubble letters. I gave the students several different fonts for examples and also showed them how to create "wild style" letters. These were colored in with colored pencils and the students used blending to mimic the blended style of spray paint. We learned about several street artists and discussed the differences between legal street art and illegal vandalism. Street artists often are payed for their murals and create art that addresses social or political topics. The students printed a brick background in black for extra contrast and then painted a cityscape of downtown Dallas in different values of one color.