You Can Think Like an Artist!

I created this design in Illustrator and had it printed on canvas to hang up in my art room at school:

We refer to it often during lessons, and students will sometimes point out how we are thinking like an artist when I forget. Its been a great tool this year, as I am really working on teaching my students that art is not just about how real you can make something look. There is much more to artistry than that, and I think they are starting to really get it!

Triangles Galore!

Triangles are our shape this month, so I supplied the lambies with triangles in a variety of paper types, sizes, and colors. We had tissue paper triangles, construction paper triangles, and tag board triangles. I sorted them into color families (pink/purple/red, red/orange/yellow, blue/green) and paired them with one color of paint and some white glue. The lambies know what to do by now - they just go for it!

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:

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

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.

Beginning Drawing Still Lifes Are Awesome!

This year my drawing students are not allowed to rub and blend their pencil to do shading. They must use cross-hatching and other line work to show the different values in their drawings. After only a few weeks of learning drawing these total beginners belted out these beauties! I love how each one really shows the hand of the individual artist. Take a look:

Water Safety Poster Contest

All my elementary and middle school students are participating this year in California's annual Water Safety Poster contest (see details here). After a lesson on some important things to know about water safety, here are the results! I hope at least one of my students gets their artwork in the annual calendar.

Middle School:

Drawing With Scissors - Matisse Name Collages

For our first project this year I taught my middle school art class about Henri Matisse and his collages. Matisse was a prolific painter whose work is well known. Later in his life he was confined to a wheelchair and was unable to stand and paint. He started to "draw with scissors", making beautiful collages with the help of assistants.

My students made their own collages combining their names with three or more objects that describe them using construction paper. When they were finished we mounted them on a colored background frame and then on black foam core. Thanks to incredibleart.org for the inspiring lesson plan - They turned out great!

Kandinsky One-offs...

So we had a little extra time in several of my elementary school classes. I wanted them to do something still related to Kandinsky, since that's who we had been studying, so I showed them his Color Study Squares: Concentric Circles:

Van Gogh's Starry Night

Our first elementary art project of the year was inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night painting:

This is one of my all time favorite works of art, even if it is "overplayed".

Winslow Homer Inspired Seascapes

After O'Keeffe I chose to look at Winslow Homer with the elementary school classes and we looked at many of his seascape paintings. I made sure they understood that a seascape always has at least two elements, the sea and the sky, and they always meet at the horizon line. I let them know its better to have your horizon line either above or below the center of the paper to make the composition more interesting. We looked at how the colors of the sky always reflected in the sea water and asked the students to pay particular attention to the time of day and/or weather they wanted to draw when they were selecting their colors. I offered either blue or white paper for them to work on. Many of them came out so beautifully!

Here are some of the Homer seascapes we saw first:

O'Keeffe Inspired Watercolors

I can't tell you how impressed I was with the way the elementary students put their hearts into painting their watercolors in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers. First I read to them from two children's books that are wonderful biographies of her life and work:

Middle School Crazy Portraits a Big Success

For the final project Fall Semester I wanted the kids to do something fun while also demonstrating their acquired drawing skills. I let them use Photo Booth on my MacBook and choose a filter that distorted their face. I printed these out in black and white and then they drew them on large drawing paper. Many of them came out really well, and I think it's because the faces were distorted already so it wasn't so important that their drawing looked exactly like them. Its interesting to see the different styles inherent in these students even after only one semester of drawing. Here are some of my favorites: