Ceramic Leaves

These beautiful ceramic leaves have been hanging in our foyer for the past several weeks.  I finally decided I should photograph them and share them with you.  First of all, I have done this project for the past several years, but never have they turned out this beautifully...and I have to admit it was by pure accident.  My sixth graders made these leaves one day in art by pressing a real leaf into their clay to create the texture.  They cut out the shape of the leaf while it was pressed into the clay.  After they dried, I bisque-fired them and had them ready for the surface treatment.  In the past, I have used black glaze to fill in the veins and the texture with a colored glaze on top.  But, with budget cuts, I am in short supply of glazes this year.  So, I had the students use black acrylic paint to fill in the veins and wipe off the surface with a damp sponge so the paint only goes into the texture.  Next, I had the students use watercolor paint to add color.  This is where the "happy accident" comes in.  When the watercolor was first applied, it looked nice...a suggestion of color...not too vibrant.  But, when it dried, it looked like mud!  Chalky-mud!  So, I was going to have the students repaint them until I tried putting a gold glaze on top of the watercolors.  And, voila!  It made the color come to life while adding a shimmer of gold.  Perfect!!!

Comic Book Art...cont.

Students in grades 5 & 6 have been diligently working on their Onomatopoeia art for the past two weeks.  First, they had to fill up the entire 9x12 paper with black text from magazine pages.  Then, they were to create a sketch of their word and some action symbols that represent the chosen word.  Next, they drew their design on top of the magazine paper with a sharpie marker and added shadowing around their letters.  Last, I had them use a limited color palette of blue, red, and yellow to reflect Lichtenstein's artwork.  As you can see from the student work below, some students chose to follow those guidelines while others did not.  I didn't take off points for the coloring part of the project because while I suggested the three color scheme, I didn't enforce it as a grade.  It's very difficult to limit creativity to three colors, isn't it? (he he he)

Here are some finished works of art:

Onomatopeoia Art

This is a fun lesson to do with those 6th graders who are just too "cool for school", lol.  I showed the students this You Tube video where Batman & Robin are fighting the bad guys and on the screen are onomatopeoias (the kids LOVED it):

Next, I had my slideshow playing on my new, fancy projector.  I had the definition of onomatopeoia, sample artwork, various words they could choose from, and comic book fonts.  I also had this handout printed out for kids to refer to:

Here are the samples of artwork that I showed the class before we began our artwork:

And, of course, I HAD to share the art of Roy Lichtenstein with this project:

As you can see, these samples are layered with text and color, so for our assignment, students cut out black and white text from magazines and glued them all over their 9x12" paper.  Then, they sketched out which word they wanted to put on their art.  We used scrap paper to sketch out our ideas so they didn't mess-up their 9x12 collage work.  When they were ready with their final idea, they used a sharpie marker to draw their words and details that describe their word on their paper.  We didn't even get to the color part of this project yet today, but they are so excited about this one!  Give it a try!  If you want the slideshow, leave me a comment and I can e-mail it to you :)

The Longest Line Drawings

Students in grades 4-6 have been working on these fun, colorful drawings for the past two weeks.  This project went right after our Moving Line Drawings, both using colored pencils, and I think my students need a break from the "sit and color" routine we've been in for 4 weeks.  So, next week I am thinking we need to do something fun and fast, maybe with paint :)

For this project, we discussed the definitions of line and shape.  It was quite comical to hear their responses for the definition of "line".  They said things such as, "a straight line...uggh, nevermind", to "something that is either straight or curved", to finally "a segment connecting two points"!!!  Yay!  It was difficult to define something so simple.  We reviewed the different types of lines and went to work filling up our papers with only ONE line.  They could curve the line, squiggle the line, zigzag the line, and so on, but it could not stop until they filled up the entire paper.  Next, we traced the shapes over our drawings and colored in each shape with a monochromatic color scheme.  Here are some results:

Tree Silhouettes

My amazing 6th graders created these beautiful paper tree silhouettes.  I showed them how to use the Portfolio water soluble oil pastels by drawing on their paper using lines that express rhythm and movement and spreading the color around their paper with a wet paintbrush.  We talked about the color wheel and which colors will mix well together and which ones will look like 'mud' when mixed.  The students chose what time of day they wanted to depict and which colors would best represent that particular time of day.  While their paper was drying, we started to draw the trees.  This is a difficult task to draw branches using lines that overlap, show thickness/thinness, and are connected together.  Here are some of the finished projects:

Jean Dubuffet Sculputres

This is an exciting project that I am doing with my 6th graders.  First, we watched this You Tube video showcasing some of Dubuffet's original drawings, paintings, and sculptures.  I thought it was interesting to teach the kids that this particular artist based a lot of his own work on children's drawings.  Next, I showed them a PowerPoint slideshow showing some abstract sculptures made of poster board and some of Dubuffet's resin sculptures.

We began our sculptures using white tagboard, cutting out free-form shapes, and adding pattern and color with black, red, and blue markers.  I demonstrated how to attach the pieces together by making cuts in each piece and sliding one piece on another piece.  Here are a few sculptures in progress (the first one is my teacher sample):

Jasmin's Sculpture

Evan's Sculpture

 Gabe's Sculpture

Curtis's Sculpture

Here is the video from You Tube that I showed the students:

Abstract Name Designs - Finished!

My 6th graders finished their Name Designs today and they turned out fabulous!  We used watercolor paint to fill the spaces in with color.  Here are the finished results:

Andrew T.

Jasmin C.

Alex B.

Dyami P.

Evan H.

Harvest Landscape Drawings with Chalk

I decided to break out this great lesson that I taught a couple of years ago called 'Modern Landscapes'.  I have to give credit where credit is due, so thank you Patti from Deep Space Sparkle for this lesson (http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2008/05/coolwarm-modern-landscapes/).

I loved the results from Patti's blog, but decided to change it up a little bit by making it season specific.  For example, instead of just talking about and looking at landscapes, my students and I looked at photos showing farms and fields during harvest time.  We talked about the repeated lines, warm colors, rolling hills, and more.  I had a slideshow playing showing examples of student work from Patti's blog and contrasted those to some farmland photographs.  Using black oil pastels on black paper is genius because the chalk won't mess-up the line drawings...it just wipes away...like magic :)  And, of course, we talked about warm and cool colors and what types of colors to use when depicting daytime, nighttime, etc.  So, there was thought about color placement and color relationships here in this lesson.

Here are some samples of finished student work:

 

Artwork by Annie

 

 Artwork by Alonna

 Artwork by Keenan

  Artwork by Dannara

  Artwork by Sanai

 Artwork by Quanna

Yarn Painting

To top of our Mexican week (or two weeks, as it turned out) I had my 4th-6th graders work on yarn paintings.  Funny story, actually.  In our video on Mexican American Heritage, they did a demonstration on yarn paintings and how it is traditional to the Huichol Indians, etc.  The students were so excited about yarn paintings that I changed my plan immediately.  I was initially going to have them work on Papel Picado like the rest of the students, but decided to forego the plan and feed off their enthuasiasm.  It payed off because many of my students tried very hard on this project and the results are beautiful.  Mind you, the paper is only about 6x8", so they were finished before they had the chance to get bored with it.

 

Melted Record Bowls

Now, these are just the beginning of some great works of art, but I was just too anxious to post these :)  I had melted these before school yesterday morning so my Art Club students could work on painting them and getting them ready for the Fine Arts Fair in two weeks.

First of all, to melt a record, you need to preheat your oven to 200 degrees, put the record on top of an oven proof glass bowl so when it heats up, it will slump over the bowl.  As soon as you see the record melting, take it out of the oven and let it cool.  At this point, you can carefully mold it into whatever shape you want to.  You have to work quickly b/c as soon as it cools, it's permanently in that shape - unless you re-melt it, of course.  It only takes about 5 minutes to melt and 2 minutes to cool, so it's a quick process.  I put two bowls in my oven at a time, so within 30 minutes I had 18 bowls ready to be painted.

From experience, I can tell you that these will turn out beautifully if you spray paint them with a coat of white primer before using acrylics on them.  Most of the acrylic paint won't show up well at all on a black surface, so to ensure vibrancy, I would recommend priming them first.

Modern Art...

To continue our lesson on Frank Stella, I decided that if I gave the students the whole hour to work on their paintings they would chatter incessantly.  So, what better way to focus their attention then have them watch a video on Modern Art while they are making Modern Art????  I'm a genius, I know :)  This is a great video showing artists, such as Chuck Close in his element, expressing his talent and demonstrating his painting skills:

Here is my teacher sample of my own version of a Frank Stella painting from his protractor series:

Now keep in mind, that while I love to study the "Masters" in art, I rarely encourage copying artists' work.  I introduce the students to famous works of art & art movements and share some of the artist's ideas about the art they created but I encourage them to take some of the same ideas & create their own masterpieces.

Here are some of the paintings that are in mid-progress (these are 16x20 paintings)...

These is one 4th grade painting.  They finished these because they were on 12x12 paper - much smaller than the 5th and 6th grade paintings.  And, we used white crayon with watercolor and I thought I'd like these better, but I'm not so sure anymore...the watercolors don't seem to fit with this particular artist.  It's all trial and error, isn't it?