Visual Art for the Secondary Grades

by Kerrian Neu

Composed of over 60 lessons, this book covers a broad range of visual art creation. Students learn about and use the tools needed to produce works of art in various styles and techniques. They prepare portfolios of their best works and learn how to analyze and reflect on works of art. The lessons are grouped into ten areas of study, beginning with color theory. After lessons on mixing the color wheel, complements and tints, tones and shades, lessons proceed to the study of the elements and principles of art. The exploration of drawing techniques follows. Most of the two- and three-dimensional areas integrate art history with art creation. Eleven movements of art and 27 artists and their work are introduced and discussed. There are 22 types of art media included as well. Each area contains objectives, overviews, lessons, suggested supplies needed, media used, artist information, other support materials needed and grading rubrics. California visual art standards are addressed in each area and are listed by area in the appendix of the book. Supplemental color materials are available at www.svisualart.com for online viewing or free download, completing all that is needed to teach the lessons. www.sVisualArt.com www.sVisualArt.com

124 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2011

Reviews

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visual Art for the Secondary grades is by far the best text I have come across for my art classes. I struggled for a few years until stumbling (fortunately) on this book. It is concise, yet filled with web resources that provide a solid high school art curriculum. Gone are all the long, boring pages of art history that have little to do with the practical aspects of art. I recommend this to all other art teachers looking for a fresh and new art approach for their students.

[christinemm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is missing a lot of information and general guidance. For example there is a page and a half of text on Minoan pottery. They do not recommend showing any visual aids, I would never dare to teach this without supplementing with images. The lesson simply says show the students how to make a coil pot. There is no information there so the teacher had better know that that instruction and that lesson may take students a week to complete. In another lesson it says make a ceramic sculpture animal 10 inches long and show them how to do carving. Wow. That could be a pretty advanced ceramics project. We were given one month in college ceramics to do that project! Just saying, “start with geometric shapes” doesn’t give much advice. Luckily I have had five semesters of college ceramics courses so I would be able to teach these lessons but it is not thanks to the information in this book. The best part about this book is that there are about one page summaries of artists. This book is all right to use within your classroom but not to use to copy for the entire school or the entire district. The information on the surrealist is in accurate, often they carefully chose their subjects to group together with symbolism attached in the lesson has the kids writing a list of random objects that you’re going to scramble together in hand out for them to make a painting with. That misses the entire point of surrealism being intentionally selected images or dream content.