Found Texture Collage (Exploring Visual Design Part 5)

I find this image absolutely stunning.
Perhaps it is my penchant for purple and my recent adventures on Nantucket.
Either way, this student has a great eye for color and was able to find interesting textures to create this beautiful collage.

Students independently read excerpts from Exploring Visual Design, about actual and implied texture. The exercise was to then find implied textures in magazines and newspapers and build a landscape. Students were encouraged not to cut out entire images, but to try to reassign textures in the construction.

This took a little longer than I anticipated, I think a week and a half, but students really got into it. And I was amazed at some of the results.

Look a little more closely at this one:

This student used an aerial view of a city and a close up of a crowd to build her volcano.  Amazing!

To reiterate texture and pattern, we have started small scratch board landscapes. When we wrap up, I will post more about the lesson.

Scarecrows

When fall really starts to settle in, I realize how much I miss teaching elementary school. I don't think I ever even imagined myself teaching the little ones, let alone enjoying it! But there is something about experiencing their pure joy and uncensored imagination in the art room that is so rewarding. I hope to inspire my middle school kids to continue to enjoy art and use their imaginations. It can be a really turbulent time as a teenager, but art can be a great outlet.

Anyhow this fall lesson, again unearthed from my file transfer, is inspired by Not so scarey Scarecrows from Deep Space Sparkle. I did this my third year teaching, but had found Patty's website about a year before.

---side-note---
I am so thankful for the art teacher community created in the blogosphere! I did my student teaching at the high school level and there were five teachers in the building! It was also in a school that had been built within the last five years, had an amazing department head and equally awesome budget. Going from that to the only art teacher at a parochial school with not budget (that I knew of) two years later, was an adjustment to say the least! Finding people like Patty, Phyl and Mr. E. made me feel like I wasn't alone and encouraged me to provide the best art education I could. (And with the encouragement of Ms. Wilkinson (my college roommate), now at The Tale of a Traveling Teacher, I started my own blog during my third year)
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This Scarecrow lesson was the first time I felt like I had taken an idea that I found online and really made it my own. And even more rewarding was how much fun these fourth graders had, class after class completing their assignment.

But now, two years later, I can't remember. What did we start with!?
I think we did a guided drawing the first week.
Yup, that's what we did.
We drew the face of the scarecrow, the arms/ shirt and legs however they would fit on the page. I drew different ideas on the board and had handouts at each table. I kept it simple, building on the letter 'U' and using horizontal and vertical lines. Students used black crayon.
Next we started with a plate of primary colors. We painted yellow things, then red then whatever was orange by mixing yellow and red. We followed the same idea with blue, green and brown. See More.

The next class, we used a bunch of the construction paper that had been sitting in the coat closet for years! It was faded and yellowed in spots but perfect for designing our "crops."

We again started with the primary colors and reviewed different types of line... zig- zag, curvy, diagonal etc etc. Students painted 3 (?) sheets. The next class, we tore the paper and "donated" half to the scrape bin, keeping the other half for the background.

Finally, we cut out our original scarecrows, glued them to the crop background and added some rafia for texture. I'm sure this lesson isn't original, even with the collage aspect I added. But it sure felt awesome for all of us to make something so fun! 

I think I took these photos pre rafia. Super cute none the less!

Multi-Media Fall Tree Landscapes

I originally saw this activity on Art Projects for Kids where it was geared towards upper elementary. I felt like it would be a good fit for seventh grade because I have such a wide range of abilities in each class. I definitely think I will do this lesson again, but I would like to find a way for more students to bring it to a higher level and perhaps take more pride in their work.

Students first started with an introduction to "multi-media." From there, we painted a simple landscape and were encouraged to blend and mix colors, taking advantage of watercolor crayons and paper towel as tools. We reviewed "abstract" and "warm colors" to create a second painting of nonobjective colors.

I am not a huge fan of the black outline in this, but this student was absent during the last step, so this is what was left to take a photo of.

The next class we reviewed "multi-media" and created a list of what we had used thus far, adding what else we would/ could use that day. Students were encouraged to use any idea he or she had that utilized the particular materials at their table.

First, trees

then, leaves

and maybe some stuff from the scrap box

success for students with special needs.

these two are twins in two different classes... very interesting

Picasso Paper Portraits

my coffee cup on the supply table like it is every morning.
Anyone guess whose portrait is on the other side?

It appears that last I left the blog-o-sphere, a few of my classes were beginning to learn about Picasso. Since many of my students have never had "a real art teacher" before, I try to introduce them to famous artists from time to time. I have really enjoyed using Laurence Anholt books as an introduction, so for this activity, we read Picasso and The Girl with The Ponytail.

We then talked about how cubism uses simple shapes and how Picasso would look at the front and the side of a face at the same time, and put it in his painting. We followed Phyl's steps at There's a Dragon in my Art Room. Thanks Phyl!

 
I managed to forgot to take pictures of the final products. We have had many events at school lately, and a few had to be rescheduled. At times I wasn't sure who was going to show up at my door expecting an art lesson. And as we all know, it takes a lot of preparation. So needless to say, juggling the schedule and preparing took priority over pictures at times. The 3rd graders loved this activity though! And its amazing how one class will take it to the next level, and the other wants to fly though it...

Up next, grades 4 and 2 and their adventures learning about Picasso

Happy Earth Day and April Vacation

this is my latest work of art... I actually made my own art this week! love vacation. I started this piece in August, and I am not sure I am totally sold on it yet, but it may feel more complete once I put it in a black, LP frame I have kicking around.
I went to an MA NAEA conference at UMASS Dartmouth a year ago November and one of the workshops I went to used this collage process that I have fallen in love with. I have always worked by adding and then subtracting, whether textiles or drawing, so this process really works for me. My AP exam concentration was using collage too, so this combines all my favorite art making techniques... anyway, I glue magazine and catalog pages to whatever I have laying around, in this case some leftover mat board I have or may not have taken from the scrap bin when I worked at Michaels... I used matte medium as the adhesive. before a piece of paper totally dries, I pull it off the mat board, and see what it leaves behind. sometimes I will do that with a piece of text too. From there, I keep working, adding and subtracting as I see fit. In this case, I used some almost transparent gold acrylic too.

This is one of the first, if not the first, piece I did using this process. I left a lot more of the original collage, and added red and blue paint. You can see in the top right corner some of the text too. I also incorporated some paste paper I've been carrying around since high school! seriously, I have a tupperware of papers I've collected over the years... should have known I'd be an art teacher!