Title – Ceiling Tile Masterpieces

By – Andrea Schemmel Ormond

Primary Subject – Art

Grade Level – MO

Materials:

• Ceiling tiles to be hung.
  
  If your room or school does not use drywall type ceiling tiles, ask a senior citizen center, or hospital/clinic if they would like your students’ artwork to place in their ceiling.
  
  
• Sketch paper
  
• Pencils
  
• Crayons
  
• Tempera paint
  
• As many baby food jars and small yogurt containers as you can get.
  
• Pictures of master works.
  
  My students always seemed to prefer pop artists and Georgia O’Keefe. But give them a variety from which to choose.
  

Procedure:

Have students work in groups of two or more. By looking at prints or books, they should decide as a group which masterpiece they would like to work from. They each draw their OWN copy. The teacher then decides which will transfer best using an opaque projector. If you do not have access to an opaque projector, just transfer the general lines onto a transparency and use a regular classroom projector.

After transferring the sketch from projector to TILE, have the students mix many colors of tempera paints to match those in the masterpiece. They need to have ample paint to work on the entire project, otherwise you will be trying to match paint later-which never works well.

The students paint the tiles as a group.

Evaluation:

The easiest way to evaluate this project is by judging their group work and individual contribution. This is definitely not a project for a lazy teacher. The teacher needs to constantly float the room with advice and monitoring the group dynamics. Another evaluation I used for the upper levels was to assign a small art history report on the original artist, theme or style of painting.

On the back of the tiles they should print the name of the original artist and the title of the piece they copied.

Have them proudly sign the front with a fat sharpie marker.

I have never had anything but success with this project. Every teacher and administrator in our building wanted a ceiling full. They really appreciated the students’ work and the students had a constant source of pride.

E-Mail

Andrea Schemmel Ormond

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