more dot art

for the birds...James John Audubon

It has been two years since I last did this lesson and we are doing it again right now which has made me pull up the older photos. This lesson is inspired by James John Audubon...who if you are unaware had a kind of crazy childhood/young adult hood...but I digress. Being the last assignment of the school years 7th and 8th graders are allowed to choose any media I have available to create their artwork inspired by a REAL bird. Here are a few from the past. Enjoy

The darn rotated photos! now I am remembering some of the reasons I stopped blogging and that was a big one. No time to try to fix it sorry folks

one year later

Wow it really has been a year since I posted. Funny how pintrest changed the world of art teacher blogging.  Our district ended up not striking when a deal was made just days before we were scheduled to walk.  One year later it all feels like a bad dream and I am happy it is in the past. Since I haven't been blogging I have gotten bad about taking photos but here are a few from a student choice unit inspired by the art Gwenn Seemel.

Chuck Close inspired

Chuck Close inspired grid drawings or paintings done by last years 7th and 8th graders. This years group is starting them this week and I came across these photos from last year and realized I never shared. Sadly most of the kids took their artwork home before I could photograph it. Voted favorite project of the year by the 8th graders.

complex color wheels and guitars

These were done by 7th and 8th grade everyday students. They worked very hard on them for several weeks.  They are quite large. The guitars are life size and the color wheels are 14" diameter. I saw the color wheel guitar idea here at the dieviantArt and tweaked it for our assignment needs.

Students had to either design a color wheel wedge slice with four sections and then trace twelve times or they had to draw their guitar body neck and head and divided into twelve sections then divided into four sections.

In each section students had to mix the parent color, a tint, a shade and show the complementary color of the parent color.

I allowed the kids to use: Red, Yellow, Blue, White, Black and Magenta tempera paint.

To top it off each student had to paint a gray scale for either the neck of the guitar or that corresponded with the content of their color wheel design.

more to come in the next few days

First lessons 2013

Whew...after a crazy start we mostly got our scheduling issues worked out. The only strange part is now I have one random class of 15 students and the rest are 30-35 students.

Anyway part of my job is keeping 12 large bulletin boards full. Usually that is not a problem... however, we have back to school night a whopping two weeks after the very first full day of school and I am supposed to have all the bulletin boards full of student artwork by that night! We only managed to fill 8 this year.

We did three of my lessons that result in good results fast....if you have followed my blog for a while you have seen all four but this is what this years results looked like. Sorry some of the photos are a little funny, my TA got creative with her photo taking.


Pattern initials:
Theses turned out really nice this year....I showed the kids how I wanted the stamping done and got much better results than the last time I let them carve stamps three years ago. Argg blogger keeps rotating the photos!

Radial names: We do them each year...I always like them. I let the kids use the Prang metallic markers that the sales rep brought me last spring. They loved them...I felt ehe about them and still like the ones that used standard markers best.  Tutorial is here.

Hidden names:  also turned out well and always a good exercise in brush control. We were out of crayola black and had to use some off brand that we had and man let me tell you the crayola or Prang black is worth the extra money. Whatever we had was more blue than black and did not have good coverage. I had to go to the store and buy better black by the second day of the lesson.

I love FREE supplies : supply company presenters

Hello new FREE art supplies!

Several posts back I mentioned how I had been contacted by a rep from an art supply company who wanted to come to my classroom to do a lesson with my kids and bring some free supplies along. I asked around and no one had ever done this before but my principal said it was ok.  Today the ladies came to my 6/7th grade class. If I understood right one was a rep from Dixon and the other from Prang. The lady from Prang was the local Oregon rep (a very very good person to know I decided). I thought you all may want to know what my experience was like if you ever get contacted for something similar. They did not ask me to write a review...they have no clue I have this blog.

Both were super nice and my kids liked them and they brought me a TON of cool stuff we got to keep! Some basic supplies like some markers and paintbrushes (which I always need and appreciate) and some  new/novel/funky things that I can't afford to order like neon colored pencils, metallic markers and metallic watercolors and a bunch of air cellulose clay.

Our lesson was artist trading cards with 3-D aspects but most of my kids either made something out of their clay or made a drawing on the card. Only a few were able to figure out how to incorporated the 3-D into the card. As far as the lesson went, it was too open ended for one class period. My kids like to plan, make rough drafts, have a topic to work within...that may reflect my teaching style or this batch of kids, or the age... or a bit of each. The presenters are going to another middle school art room tomorrow (a friend of mine) so I helped them brainstorm how to alter the lesson for tomorrow. I suggested they have the kids make music themed cards with 3-D music notes and instruments and headphones and such. Thanks to one of my 6th grade students for the suggestion.

the flute is only four inches long! The detail she was able to make is amazing!

Remember this young man from a previous post?

What my kids did LOVE was the supplies. Give 6th graders metallic and neon things and they are in heaven. Some really liked the air dry clay and others found it hard to work with because it doesn't stick to itself as readily as wet clay. They really liked the metallic watercolors which I also like but have never have been able to justify buying. What we really loved were the Prang metallic markers which were awesome on black paper. I think they left me 6 sets of them! If they hold up they are something I may just have to get for special lessons.

If I am doing my math right they left me about $300 worth of supplies and all I had to do was let them test a lesson with one class. Um...hello best deal ever! Will I do it again if I get asked? yep.  Does it make me more likely to order Prang stuff...well I already like there stuff so I guess it just reinforces my like of their products.

What would you do with all these new metallic supplies?