Art

About this course

Tenth grade art is the most self-contained of the high school years, in the sense that nearly everything it asks for can be done at a kitchen table with a sketchbook. Drawing covers one-, two-, and three-point perspective in turn, contour and blind contour, gesture, figure drawing, negative space, and rendering texture with hatching and stippling. Color theory works methodically through the wheel, warm and cool families, simultaneous contrast, color psychology, and the split-complementary, triadic, and analogous schemes, closing with value and with tinting and shading. Painting covers acrylic wet-on-wet, dry brush, impasto, and glazing over dry underpainting, then watercolor wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry, precise color mixing, painting from life rather than from photographs, and landscape painting treated as a form of worship.

Sculpture is deliberately low-equipment: pinch, coil, and slab clay building, carving a relief from an ordinary bar of soap, building a wire armature, papier-mache, found-object assemblage, an architectural model, and a lesson applying composition and proportion to objects seen from every side. The mixed media unit combines studio and Christian practice, covering Cubism, watercolor with ink, acrylic layering, linocut printing, digital art, assemblage, devotional art journaling modeled on the honesty of the Psalms, poster design for church and ministry use, and a synthesizing final project.

The art history unit runs through the Renaissance, Michelangelo and the Sistine ceiling, the Baroque, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism with Cezanne, German Expressionism, and a lesson on how thoroughly Christianity shaped Western art from the catacombs onward. It then turns practical with two lessons on criticism, teaching the four-step method of description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment, and asking for a full written critique of at least 300 words on an artwork your student chooses. The course is 72 lessons in eight units at about 45 minutes each, so it is a light subject rather than a daily one. Units seven and eight go back over perspective, contour, gesture, proportion, and the color schemes with fresh and somewhat longer treatments, including the history behind Chevreul's discovery of simultaneous contrast at the Gobelins tapestry works. Each lesson is a clear reading of roughly four hundred words ending in a specific assignment, usually beginning with the words in your sketchbook, followed by a ten-question quiz that grades itself. The making and the studying are well balanced, and there is a real amount of writing. Supplies are modest for a course at this level: a bound sketchbook, drawing pencils, watercolor and acrylic paint with brushes, air-dry clay, a bar of household soap and a carving or paring knife used with care, craft wire, newspaper and paste, a linoleum block with gouges and printing ink, glue and collage material, and access to a computer for the digital art lesson.

What the course covers

• One-, two-, and three-point perspective
• Contour, blind contour, gesture, and figure proportion
• Negative space and texture rendering
• Split-complementary, triadic, and analogous color schemes
• Acrylic impasto, glazing, and dry brush; watercolor wet and dry
• Painting from life and landscape painting
• Clay hand-building, soap carving, armatures, and assemblage
• Cubism, linocut printmaking, and digital art
• Renaissance through Expressionism and Christianity's influence on art
• Devotional art journaling, ministry poster design, and formal critique

What your student will be able to do

• Construct accurate space using one-, two-, or three-point perspective
• Choose and apply a named color scheme deliberately in a finished work
• Paint competently in both acrylic and watercolor and know each medium's habits
• Build and carve three-dimensional work from clay, soap, wire, and found objects
• Write a four-step formal critique that separates observation from judgment
• Keep a working sketchbook and art journal as a regular discipline

Scope and sequence

All 8 units of Art for Grade 10, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 72 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 72 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.