How does your art feel?

Glue and Pastel - Van Gogh's Olive Trees

This week was a case of plan B...C, and D.  As I worked each lesson plan I made adjustments over and over to the point at which we had tons of different projects going on!  It was interesting to try to adapt each lesson that went...well, not exactly according to plan as a brand new teacher.  But I think after checking out the students texture studies you will agree that all in all it was a great week!  

Let's see, the theme of the week was physical texture - actual texture that you can feel in art.  We talked about Vincent VanGogh and how although he was a painter his paintings were wonderful examples of extreme texture!  We had fun learning our VanGogh facts while exploring physical texture in all different ways!  

LEA East Mesa - K-2nd Grade:  Spring Birds Nests
LEA East Mesa - 3rd-6th Grade:  Animal Letters
LEA Maricopa - Kinder:  Mosaic Eggs & Feathered Friends (Owls)
LEA Maricopa - 1st &2nd:  Clay Texture Spring Eggs
LEA Maricopa - 3rd-5th:  Van Gogh's Olive Trees
LEA Maricopa - 6th Grade:  Op Art (coming soon!)
LEA Maricopa - Adv. Art:  Mascott Redesign (coming soon!)

  

 

 

...and to my student followers, the painting that VanGogh sold in his lifetime was "The Red Vineyard".  It was sold for approximately $1000.00 dollars to a fellow artist friend.

LINES! Crazy Lines!

Harold and the Purple Crayon

This week at LEA we were loopy over lines!  At East Mesa and Maricopa my K-2nd Grades read Harold and the Purple crayon and talked about contour lines (continuous).  Harold went on an entire adventure with just one crayon and a line.  Students followed suit and set off on their own adventures!  They were shocked at just how fun a piece of brown paper and a purple crayon became with just a little imagination!  

My older students at East Mesa got in on the "line action" too!  What a perfect week for Dr. Seuss to have his 109th birthday!  I could not wait to teach the students about my favorite illustrator!  If it weren't for Dr. Seuss I would have never learned to draw as well as I did as a child!  I spent my weekends immersed in a Dr. Seuss book with a pad of paper and a pencil for years!  The students tied their Dr. Seuss and Line Lesson together with awesome birthday cakes perfect for the amazing illustrator!  I didn't get the greatest picture, but the 2nd grade was so excited to have their cakes on display in our room I had to get a shot!  So neat to see students giving up their art for a week just to have it hung up! 

Later in the week the younger students got to try their hand at a little 3-D line work!  They too learned about Dr. Seuss and celebrated by making their own "Who-ville"!  This by far was a favorite project!  The students worked so hard but caught on very quickly as they figured out how to make shapes from their "lines" and how to make them 3 dimensional on the page.  This project was so much fun I shared it with the students in K-2nd at Maricopa as well!  Here are some of the "Who-villes" we created!

 At LEA Maricopa we also explored lines!  The students learned all about different lines and how they differ from shape and form.  They also learned that a line repeated creates visual rhythm   We practiced making visual music with our Crazy Hair projects!  They students were really challenged to find 10 different line types and create a rhythm with them.  Check out what they came up with!

AND SOME K-2nd...

My Advanced Art class at LEA Maricopa also explored line.  They created "Imagine" Portraits.  This project was really neat for me as a teacher.  The project started out going in one direction and with each class really evolved with the students opinion in mind.  I am really enjoying getting to know this group better each class.  There is so much talent and such a broad range of interests I am hoping that as we finish out the year they will all not only learn some valuable drawing techniques that they will use through out the years, but get to create some really neat things that they love!  We were really lucky to get sketch books for each student in the class and I am hoping they have gotten a few minutes over spring break to do a little art!  Here is a peek at the portrait/line work that these students did!

Next week the students are going to learn texture by taking a look at Van Gogh!  They will get to experience the difference between implied texture and actual texture all while getting ready for spring!  6th Grade in Maricopa is going to try their hand at Op Art and my Advanced students will work on some mascott revamping!  I can't wait!

Artist links for this week:
Keith Haring
http://www.haring.com/!/about-haring#.UT_aCNZOOtM

Paul Klee
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/klee/hd_klee.htm

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm

Oh wait!  How could I forget!!!  The students also learned about Ralph Stedman (a little of a carry over from last week)! http://www.ralphsteadman.com/
 They used ink blots that they had little control over to create a pen and ink piece that conveyed a feeling, direction, or style.  The kids were a bit hesitant at first and I will admit many looked at me like I was a "crazy artist", but they gave it a shot and I caught them asking if we could do the same project again the next day!  One we will revisit for sure!  Check it out!

Links..including a great Dr. Seuss Interactive Site!

Lately, I have been encouraging your children to keep checking up on this site because I will be adding art work each time that could be theirs.  I have also offered character bucks to any student that can "prove" their visit to me by coming in with a little info off the site.  The more that I have thought about this site I want to gear it a little more towards the students than I have been.  I hope you will as well.  Please, if you see art work you love, compliment the students in the comments!  Remember there is very little space on either campus for me to display student work for students, parents and teachers to see so I know they would love seeing that you are viewing it here!  As my part of the bargain   I will be including more links to artwork and information on each artist for the students to be able to check out!  

That said, here are links to Jim Dine, Salvador Dali, and Ralph Steadman!

Salvador Dali Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUH_HVei7L0&feature=youtu.be
http://www.salvadordali.com/

Jim Dine (Gallery Installation)...and YES he is still alive ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_hrwrlmSNc
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/scobie/jim-dine6-28-10.asp

Ralph Steadman (Alice In Wonderland)
http://wonderland.paperstreetsupplies.com/2009/09/gonzo-in-wonderland/

Dr. Seuss (Super fun interactive site!)
http://www.seussville.com/#/author

Art is Sur-really neat!

Such a surreal time this past week!  Your children learned all about Salvador Dali and his life time as one of the very rare "living famous" artists!  We learned that the definition of Surreal is real with a little twist.  We also talked about how dreams were a great source of inspiration for Surrealist artists like Salvador Dali because of their real/not real aspects!  Such a fun lesson!  The students all worked on portraits of Salvador Dali who was well known for his many fabulous mustache styles!  They learned that a portrait is a picture of someone while a self portrait would be of themselves!  For this project they even got to work in watercolor paint!  On these portraits we worked first in Sharpie to create the outline and then finished them up with  watercolor!  The kids thought that it looked really neat!  I completely agree!!!  My younger students even got to do mustache portraits but they worked in marker and it was just a one day project.  They loved seeing pictures of Salvador and that mustache!  I could not get enough of their reactions!  Just ask them about him...really!  They also did another one day project similar to Dali's long leg animals!  We talked about how the animal was mostly extremely realistic while their legs seemed to be a mile long!  The kids got to create their own realistic animals while I added pipe cleaner legs that they could manipulate!  So much fun!  

Next week we are moving on to a line study.  Most of the kids mentioned that they worked on line earlier in the year, but I know that is just going to help make them experts.  We will run right through the lesson quickly and get into using lines to illustrate (Harold and the Purple Crayon for the younger students, and Ralph Steadman for the older students), and even work on some 3 dimensional lines while we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss!  Which, by the way, is TODAY!  Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!  

Anyhow, on to the awesome art we made this week!!

Add a little POP to your Valentine!

Jim Dine - POP ART STUDY

1st Grade

Kinder

5th Grade

6th Grade

4th Grade

3rd Grade

2nd Grade

This weeks focus was POP art!  What better way to celebrate a season of love than a movement that celebrates every day awesomeness!               Pop art  is all about art from every day objects. The students learned about famous Pop Artist, Jim Dine and his series of hearts.  My East Mesa students worked with paint this week also!  I bet you heard about that!  They had so much fun!  My K-2 kids masked off their own hearts with painters tape to discover negative and positive space.  They painted them with red, white and black paint while exploring texture and using several different tools to get all sorts of neat designs!  The 3-6th grades created backgrounds for their Pop art using crumpled paper.  What a great texture!  They then used oil crayons to create Pop Hearts Jim Dine would have been proud of!  I was so excited about these that I cleared the walls of the art room and I have them displayed around the perimeter of the room!  If you are on campus this week, please stop in and check them out!  

Grade 2

 Grade 3

Grade 2

 Grade 4

Grade 5

At Maricopa LEA this week we also took a good look at Pop Art!  In the K-2 classes the students created their hearts out of primary color oil crayons.  They created texture and got to cut and glue!  That is always a hit!!!  My students 3-5 also took a close look at Jim Dine and his series of hearts.  They created 4 hearts using what they learned about color (primary, secondary, tints, shades, complementary) to make their own pop art series!  We mounted everything to black paper in the end to create a really neat clean look!  I handed these all back at the end of the week in hopes that maybe a few Mom's and Dad's would get Pop Art Valentines!  My 6th grade class this week focused on fonts and the history of typesetting.  They learned all about typesetting and how font design has changed literacy and art dramatically.  Each student is now using what they have learned and designing their own font that we will hopefully use through out the course of the rest of the year!

What's Next?!  Salvador Dali and Surrealism!  We are going to be making some Surreal Mustache Portraits and some pretty TALL circus animals!  Check back soon to get a look!  

My first week was...

"We love ART because..." Project

 Amazing!!!  Teaching your students was so much more rewarding than I ever anticipated!  They are bright, creative and enthusiastic!  At East Mesa this week we worked on "We love ART because..." where the students and I got acquainted with name cards.  Each student created a table tent style name card that included their name and was illustrated with the reason they love art!  It was really great to see what they love to do so that I can plan going forward.  I also got to see what level artists I was working with (awesome, by the way!).  These projects will come home soon, but I want to be sure that I have a few more names under my belt before I let them go!  Also at East Mesa we began a study on negative and positive space with my K-2 classes.  The students each drew a heart and masked it off with artists tape,  (which was quite a bit of ripping and sticking for my young students) and as I expected they did great!  This week we will paint the remaining paper using lots of texture and then remove the tape to see the positive and negative space we created!  My 3-6 grade students are learning about Jim Dine and his heart series (notice a Valentine's day trend?!).  We talked about Pop Art, Jim Dine and worked with primary colors and texture as we work towards a 2 heart series of our own!  I cant wait to post some of these for you to see!  

I finished up my week at the Maricopa campus, and boy did I make more than a few new friends there!  At LEA Maricopa, my students also started out our time together working on name cards for their desks!  They also answered the question "I love ART because..."  On Thursday we began a new project also on Jim Dine focused around the upcoming Valentine's Day.  Students K-2 worked with oil crayons in primary colors to create a heart/s to be mounted on black paper.  We discussed primary and secondary colors.  My students 3-5 worked on hearts as well.  I also introduced them to the work of Jim Dine, famous Pop Artist of the late 50's.  During this project we discussed color, what a series is as well as gave examples of Pop Art!  They will be finishing up their projects by mounting multiple hearts in oil crayon on paper to create their own series on Wednesday of next week.  I cant wait to see how they all come out!  Their hearts were just awesome!  
Check back to see pictures!