good vibrations

as always, click to enlarge

I'm not good a posting projects in order...oh well. This was a quick project after the 6-7th grade students completed their complex color wheels. I asked them to choose a music symbol anything from a music note to a music instrument to an Ipod. After students did a simple sketch of their music symbol I had them make radiating outlines of the symbols shape. I asked them to think like their symbol was creating waves of vibration just like a real music instrument. I then asked students to choose three colors to paint their work. I liked seeing the color choices they made when left to their own devices. Of all the music symbols that were chosen the music notes and notation were the strongest. This would also be a good lesson for exploring monochormatic tints and shades. I also think 4th-5th grade could handle this lesson.
P.S. I got the general idea for the lesson from Arts and Activities

Alphabesties lesson

Click photos to enlarge...till I can figure out how to make them big

About a month ago I posted about a "new to me," book I found in the typography section of the library. The book is called Alphabesties: and other amazing types. Each page of the book features a animal that is made up of the first letter of that animals name. Different types of fonts are used to create the animals. The animals in the book are great and each page shows several fonts that go with that animal and get students thinking about how text and type can create an image.

I know you could do some great lessons with photoshop or maybe even picnik and different types of fonts. I don't have access to our schools one computer lab so that is not an option for me...but I would love to see what someone else (with more comp knowledge than me) could come up with.

Instead I saw this book as a way to incorporate writing not only into our art class, but also into the artwork itself. For the second year in a row our 1 school improvement goal is to improve student writing. The other elective teachers and I keep getting dinged on our evaluations for not doing enough writing instruction in our classrooms. (Like I have a ton of time in 20 min classes...)

I did this lesson with 2nd - 7th grade students and they were equally interested with it. It got pretty quiet in my classroom as student had to think how to turn letters and words into images. I did break out my two sets of stencils for this project so that students could focus on the text aspect of the image and we could get done in a timely manor.

For this project each student choose an animal stencil (older students could use two)
Students could use pencil to outline their animal but then had to switch to marker. I asked students to fill in their animal using the first letter of the animals name (2nd grade) or the name of the animal, or a combo of both. Then students were asked to create the environment that their animal lived in using the name of the object. So the sun was drawn using the word sun, waves were drawn using the word wave and so on. Some classes created a boarder using their own name. It was easy to adapt this lesson to different grade levels and the younger students got great handwriting practice and were challenged to use their problem solving skills. I'm afraid I was too sick to get photos of the lower grade work before I let them take them home (and they wanted to keep them for once!) but I did get photos of some 5th-7th grade works.

***I also left this as a sub plan and got equally nice results, so I think this would make a great sub lesson since many grades can do it and it takes minimal materials. I have also found a fun set of Alphabesties flashcards that make a big puzzle. I think these would make a great addition to the classroom and would work just as well as the book.*********

reflections of you

I blogged about this lesson last month and now I present some of the results.
We looked at several works of art that featured eyes and reflection, primarily Escher and Magritte.
Then we talked about the physical parts of the eye and "built" an eye from skull eye socket to the eyelashes. After practicing drawing several eyes students were asked to draw a LARGE eye. In place of the pupil and iris students were asked to draw a noun (person, place or thing) that is important to them. We brainstormed a big list as a class to help us think of what we could draw. The results were incredibly varied both in skill and creativity and in what students choose to draw to "reflect" themselves. To include our writing requirement we wrote a sentence explaining what we choose to draw. Click to see enlarged.
earth, wind, fire and water

summer vacation at the Oregon coast

her two cats

This student was born in the Ukraine, the star marks where he was born, the X marks where his grandparents still live. The flag marks the city where they exited the country from.

paste style paint?! HELP

I just am not getting how to do this. I want thick paint for dragging textures through. I've seen a lot of people use this thick paint especially for Eric Carl style art. I'm at a loss of how to make this "paste" style of paint. I have tried mixing flour, cornstarch and glue (not at the same time) into paint to make it thicker and its still not right. Can anyone help me? I would really like to use this method for a background of a project...tomorrow!

disco rooms!

After our blocks in a box we took our understanding of perspective and took it a step further. We made these fun disco rooms with our own disco Stew's (Simpsons reference). Students started by creating the disco room using one point perspective. Students used markers to color their rooms.

After taking care of our 7th grade requirement of studying perspective we went back to our 6th grade requirement of studying proportions via figure and portraiture. We spent several days talking about proportion and using drawing mannequins and our classmates to check proportions and practice drawing a simplified figure. For our final drawing I asked the kids to draw someone in a dancing position to go into their room. A lot of kids went disco to go with their disco rooms. We got quite a few Michal Jackson moves also:) This was a challenging project but they did a great job and were enthusiastic about the "dance/disco" aspect.




"I thought disco was popular in the 80's?!" said this student to me. Oh vey!!!