Hello Friends of Art with Korb! Mr. KORB welcomes you!
We have just wrapped up our Wisconsin Art Education Association Statewide Convention for 2026 and has it been great. There is NO OTHER WAY to get as much relatable professional development than to be around other art teachers and share the knowledge and wisdom with one another. From Digital Photography to Glazing Technique sessions, Standards and Studio Habits to Shaping Behaviors with Intentional Words, a lot was brought back to the school studio that can be implemented on Monday. Even OUTSIDE of the session great conversations were had. How can I use a spreadsheet and conversation with kids to help modify their Studio Habits? We will find out on Monday!
The 10th Annual Running With Scissors was a small but GREAT SUCCESS – Next Year let’s get 11 for the 11th Annual!
Onto the classes.
6th Grade Artists have wrapped up the making of photographs and are now going to spend 2 days editing them down. The final photo-count on their computers will be 30 images – so file maintenance is going to be a good thing to teach (and learn) as well. We have studied the Camp Snap camera and the challenges it has as well as the STRENGTHS that is in the simple mechanism. From Close Ups to Fun With Animals, Point of View to Elements of Art… we have covered a lot of ideas in the unit. After this week we are onto CLAY (I hope).
7th Grade Artists are wrist deep into Adobe Photoshop (clay next for them too). We have begun the digital portrait and biography unit. Collage and what makes up a person (12 and 13 have some good memories behind them already – and so many more yet to come). With layer masks and non destructive photo editing, we are going to make some GREAT works. Portraits are in the bag and importing is on the agenda. This is a complicated project and the results from last year were phenomenal. I am excited to see what the artists come up with this year!
8th Grade Sculptors are working out the pottery wheel and watching a few artists online (and me) for more inspiration and tips. Thank you Florian Gatsby, Earth Nation Ceramics, and Jon the Potter (and Frank Korb) for the videos and helpful advice. What’s the hardest part? For some it is keeping their elbows down. For others it is coning up and down. Centering is the biggest challenge in order for anything else to happen. And the challenges just keep growing as they move forward. The expectations have also grown this year as the 5 rubrics (thank you Joshua Simmons and The Good Pottery for your help) have pushed the group to a specific goal of the height and width and trimming and walls and SO MUCH MORE to a good work. Even Mr. Korb falls short on earning a 4 on all of his works – I can do it! The other half of the concurrent assignment is the Bas (BAAAA like a sheep) Relief sculpture – and even the storage of the works is challenging for some of them. We are looking at architecture and the ideas of building up the sculptures from a flat surface. The soft clay is tough to work with at times so – failure and challenges abound. They will do great!
What are YOU doing in your studio? Being an art teacher and an artist means more than calling yourself one. The ideas that are in your head are ideas that should be made into art – big or small, long studio time or short. We need to be ACTIVE as artists! Keep making great work!
Here are all of our Studio EXPECTATION
6th Grade: Photography
Here are the 6th-grade semester Lesson Plans to show you what our day will look like.
Photography with the Camp Snap camera allows us to make photos and not worry about the results until we upload them. This is going to be a new challenge as well while we log into the Apple Computers in the digital lab and work through Apple Photos to do our editing and uploading. This is going to be FAST and FURIOUS! What kinds of new ideas have you come up with about cameras so far?
Vocabulary and the use of the camera – no thumbs – is important as we learn how to make a great photograph. Some kids are easily sidetracked into he other things that Apple Photos can do so, it is up to them to redirect when told and stay on task all on their own.
How do you make strong photographs?
Here is the assignment for Photography
7th Grade: Visual Biography and Photoshop
Here are the 7th-grade semester Lesson Plans to show you what our day will look like.
We all make photographs, we all have passions and interests, and we all have a silhouette. What can we do with those in PHOTOSHOP? We are about to find out.
Using Photoshop and the internet to gather images (or maybe you can gather some of your own) we are going to spend time working with layers and masking. This is a high end artowkr with some high end computer skills that you are going to learn (and master?)! Beginning with yourself we are going to trace and import and erase and layer and resize and the list goes on and on and on… excited? I hope so!
Not one of our artist’s works but this is an idea that can take you places! What do you think about this artist and what they are interested in? Let’s get editing and layering!
Visual Biography Assignment is HERE.
8th Grade Sculpture: Wheel Throwing and Slab Building
Here are the 8th Grade Sculpture semester Lesson Plans for you to see what our day will look like.
This post is the same as last week – the only thing that has changed is that the standards for height in the cylinder and a 4 is now 4″ versus 5″
As an artist for my entire adult life, this is what I have landed on for the past 5 years. This is how I start my day and end my day. My life and business partner do this work together and keep our little potter up and running in Korb Pottery. What the artists in the studio will be doing is the same… but maybe not as much or as large.
Starting with one pound of clay and working to pull up a cylinder is the goal. How hard can that be right? Yeah – right! The biggest challenge is going to be the centering, then the opening, then the pulling, and don’t forget to keep the arms locked and the hands in place, and don’t forget to breath. Wedging? No way am I going to try and teach that – well maybe a little. One pound of clay kids…
AND at the exact same time we are working on SLAB constructions of a work of architecture. Their homes or another work of architecture that is important to them. Maybe I’d choose a work of Brutalist Architecture from our nation’s capital – I LOVE that work. Basic techniques will be revisited AND the work will be on their own. Solve some problems, work it out, don’t let it dry out. Ugh. All that one has to remember.
- BELOW are the ceramics assignments
- Wheel Throwing
- NEW – Cylinder Formative Rubric – Thanks Joshua Simmons
- Slab Building
