Art

About this course

Eleventh grade art is written at the level of a serious pre-college studio course. Drawing assumes the basics and works on advanced linear perspective, foreshortening, the figure, architectural drawing with orthographic projection, texture rendering, sustained observational study, contour, value structure, and composition treated as principles that can be broken on purpose. Color theory goes deep into pigment behavior rather than diagrams: which specific pigments to use for a given mix, why yellow and violet have different inherent values, transparent versus opaque pigment, what causes muddy color and how to avoid it, the color logic of medieval stained glass, and how outdoor light changes through the day. Painting introduces real oil technique, including how oil dries by oxidation, the fat-over-lean rule and why ignoring it cracks a painting, grisaille underpainting, glazing, impasto, and alla prima, alongside watercolor, acrylic, plein air, and portrait work. Take note that the oil lesson discusses turpentine and mineral spirits, warns plainly that extended inhalation is harmful, and recommends good ventilation or water-mixable oils instead.

Sculpture covers three-dimensional form and composition seen from every angle, wire armatures, bas relief, additive versus subtractive approaches, mold making and casting, assemblage, tactile texture, and a sculptural portrait of a specific person's head. The mixed media unit functions as professional preparation: collage, printmaking, digital tools, fine art photography, sketchbook discipline, how to give and receive a critique, how to write an artist statement, and how to assemble a portfolio for art school or a design program. It closes with a lesson on beauty, truth, and goodness as the classical transcendentals, which argues that these are objective qualities reflecting God's nature and that sentimental or lazy work dishonors them even when the subject is explicitly religious.

Art history runs from the Italian Renaissance and the High Renaissance through the Northern Renaissance, the Reformation, the Baroque and the Council of Trent, Rembrandt as the great Protestant religious painter, nineteenth-century Impressionism, early twentieth-century abstraction under Kandinsky and Mondrian, and contemporary Christian artists. The Reformation lesson deserves a mention: it lays out Luther's tolerance of images beside Calvin's and Zwingli's rejection of them, calls the Reformed position a coherent theological argument deserving serious engagement, and then asks your student to write a one-page essay for or against visual art in worship, engaging both sides honestly before concluding. The course is 72 lessons in eight units at about 45 minutes each, so it is a light subject rather than a daily one, though the essays and studio projects will run past that. Units seven and eight revisit drawing and color at greater length, adding the history of perspective, Mantegna's foreshortening, the sight-size plumb-line method, Newton's prism, the Zorn limited palette, and why ultramarine once cost more than gold. Each lesson is a substantial reading ending with a specific assignment, followed by a ten-question quiz that grades itself. Supplies are the heaviest of any grade here: oils or water-mixable oils with linseed oil and a solvent, primed canvas board, watercolor and acrylic, a full range of drawing pencils and a sketchbook, clay and armature wire, plaster or another casting material, and printmaking and photography materials.

What the course covers

• Advanced perspective, foreshortening, and architectural drawing
• Figure drawing, value structure, and composition
• Pigment chemistry, transparency, and avoiding muddy color
• Oil painting: fat over lean, grisaille, glazing, impasto, alla prima
• Watercolor, acrylic, plein air, and portrait painting
• Armatures, bas relief, casting, assemblage, and sculptural portraiture
• Renaissance, Reformation, Baroque, Rembrandt, and abstraction
• Iconoclasm and the argument over images in worship
• Printmaking, digital tools, and fine art photography
• Critique, artist statements, portfolio preparation, and the transcendentals

What your student will be able to do

• Handle oil paint correctly, including layering, drying, and safe solvent use
• Mix any needed color from a small, deliberately limited palette
• Draw the figure and complex architecture accurately from observation
• Model, cast, and finish sculpture in the round and in relief
• Argue a position on art and faith using specific historical evidence
• Prepare a portfolio and artist statement suitable for an art school application

Scope and sequence

All 8 units of Art for Grade 11, 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.