P S Art 2016 Exhibition Schedule www.nyc.gov/schools/artseducation

Cool Octopus
Kaelan Cameron
Grade: 10
School: John Dewey High School, Brooklyn
Art Teacher: Martina Hooker
Marker stippling on paper
STUDENT: Being an artist for most
of my life has opened up a lot of
possibilities. Drawing gives me great
happiness and knowing that I can
have a career in the visual arts helps
to give my life a purpose. Ms. Hooker
has helped me to challenge myself by
using art methods that I’ve never used
before. She taught me about stippling.
Now it’s easy and it’s the method I
used to make Cool Octopus. The
most challenging part was drawing all
details of the octopus but I just spent
more time drawing and focusing on
making it look better.
TEACHER: This unit that included the
stippled animal composition project has
two main challenges for the students.
The first is to create an original
animal composition by cropping
photographs of large animal groupings.
The second is to use stippled values
that gradually transition from light to
dark to create the illusion of a 3D form.
These challenges are well aligned to
the 8th Grade Developing Art Literacy
benchmark in the Blueprint for
Teaching and Learning in Visual Arts
that summons the students to sharpen
their observation skill, develop visual
arts vocabulary, and use the Elements of
Art and Principles of Design. Additional
recommendations from the Blueprint
include developing in students a novel
way to represent a subject.
Kaelan did such an outstanding job
of precisely matching the gradual
transition of values in her reference
image while adding her own special
touch of varying the sizes of her
stippled dots. She is tremendously
talented and works very hard on
her art so I am eager to see her get
recognition for her work.
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