After School Sewing Class (and other classes too!)

I taught several after school classes this year to help make ends meet. I taught a clay class, messy mixed media, printmaking and sewing. All of the classes were a big hit with the elementary school kids - we had a great time!

Here are some of the projects we did:

Middle School Tessellations

Never having delved into the work of MC Escher as a source of inspiration for my art classes, I decided  it was high time. We viewed a video about his life and art over the course of two days. I learned a lot about him that I had never had the opportunity to find out.

Afterward the I gave the students coloring pages I found in this book of Escher's tessellations and the students each got to color one in to try to understand how the back and forth of the tessellations work.

Next they learned three different techniques for making tessellations: reflections, rotations, and …

Once they figured out what tessellations were all about and what made them tick, they made their own tessellations and then had to make them look like something - an object or person or animal, etc.

The kids seemed to struggle but enjoy the challenge. I loved so many of these!

Sewing Sewing Sewing - Kids Love Sewing!

What a crazy semester it has been! I wanted my elementary school kids to learn about Faith Ringgold. I just love her and her story. Through challenges and being told she can't be an artist to major success - and all along she believed in herself. Makes a great motivator for the kiddos and they love her painting style and children's books too!

So, that being said, I wanted to teach them about her and do a project based on her work. Yes, I could have had them make a drawing and surround it with paper squares for a quilted look and I know that would have been a great project. Instead, I thought, why not teach them how to hand sew? That won't be too hard. Was I wrong about that one! BIG challenge, but totally WORTH IT!

Floral Still Lifes a la Van Gogh

This project was my favorite from the past school year! We looked at a ton of Van Gogh's flower still lifes. The students in each grade level were directed to deconstruct the images to figure out what techniques Van Gogh used to make the vases with flowers looked like they occupy a real space. They determined the following:

1. The vases had an oval for the opening, and an arc that has the same shape for the bottom.
2. The line that defines the back of the table is somewhere between the top and the bottom of the vase.
3. The stems of the flowers cross through the oval and stop at the bottom to make the flowers appear to be sitting inside of the vase.

Next, the students chose a sheet of colored construction paper, 12 x 18, and started to draw out their still life using oil pastels.

The next meeting I showed them how to create volume using white and black oil pastels blended with the color they used for the vase. These are the stunning results:

My Elementary Moms are Awesome!

I had so many volunteers to help me with my sewing projects this semester and I really wanted to give them something special to say thank you. I found this terrific DIY online and tweaked it a bit to suit my tastes…

This is a mason jar filled with tons of preprinted questions you can ask your child to jump start a meaningful conversation (beyond the usual how was your day conversation). Questions like: "What was the first thing you thought about this morning when you woke up?" and "Who in your class is lonely?" The tags have a short instruction on how to use the jar and I printed up labels along with them and mod podged them on the front and sides. I used rainbow yarn to tie on the notes and add a little bright color.

The Key Jars ready to be wrapped

Fantastic Apples

After exploring realistic color with colored pencils, I wanted to give my high school artists a chance to get a little more creative. I printed out black and white images of apples and had them draw them in color. They were allowed to make the apples any colors they wanted. Here are the first three finished ones:

Colored Pencil Veggies and Pooh

My high school students started working with color this semester, or more exactly, colored pencils. We started off making a color wheel to understand a little color theory. Then they got to work using their drawing skills to draw a bell pepper. These are some really nice ones:

Modigliani Inspired Self Portraits

My middle school students worked hard on their oral presentations right before finals, so I wanted to give them art project that was engaging and fun, but also not "super challenge" as my 5-year-old would say. We looked at portraits by Modigliani and found that his style had particular traits: necks are elongated, faces are oval, eyes are almond-shaped, and noses are sometimes twisted. We used Photo Booth on my Mac to take a picture of each student which I then printed out in black and white. Students used these pictures for reference and crossed them with Modigliani's style for their final projects. They had a great time using oil pastel and exaggerating their features!

Aram

Watts Towers Field Trip - A Great Time For All!

A view of the base of the towers and decorative surrounding wall.

In November we took the 3-5 graders to see the Watts Towers. This was one of my favorite field trip destinations when I was in elementary - I think we went every year or so it seems. Since then things have gotten even better. They have added on an art gallery and a teaching studio. The tour includes a video about the artist who built them by hand, Simon Rodia, a tour of the towers, a tour of the gallery, and an art activity let by a highly qualified art educator. We had 35 kids and I was impressed at how he held their attention as he modeled each step of the printmaking process they were going to do.

Middle School Surrealist "Handscapes"

For this project I showed my students videos about Dalí. They learned how he was influenced by his dreams and subconscious. They learned that many of the anthropomorphic forms in his paintings that resemble large rocks are based on rocks he actually saw in the landscape where he spent much of his childhood.

For the assignment they used their hands in a similar way that Dalí used the rocks - they drew them and then changed them into something else while still allowing them to be hand like.

Danila

Expressionist Pastel Drawings Have Feeling

Inspired by a fellow art instructor here at Ribét - thank you Mr. Impert! - I taught a mini-lesson on Expressionism to my high school art class. We looked at Van Gogh, Munch, Pollock, and other Expressionists to see how the line quality, color, and feeling differed from more constrained and realistic paintings. Then the students chose from magazine images and were instructed to make an expressionistic drawing inspired by the photo. Here are some of the amazing results: