This week's post is a little late because I promised the kids I wouldn't post until I was sure every mom was surprised...  We made Mother's Day cards this week.  I used a negative space art lesson to have the students create vases.  I photographed each student's profile and printed out the pictures.  We traced the outline, flipped the picture and traced it again creating our "vase faces".  The students filled them with anything they thought their mom would like.  This is one of those times when I just stand back and marvel at their creativity!!  Everyone got exactly the same instructions.  Check out the results.  Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

This week we created art cubes.   Each student traced around a template for a box and cut out on the traced lines.  Markers, colored pencils and watercolor were used to color all sides of the boxes.  When they were finished we glue sticks and tape to secure the edges.  Each box had a theme and everyone was unique.  We stacked them all up and tried several arrangements switching the sides that showed.  “You can’t do that when you just draw a flat picture”.

It was 70º today! I figured it would be child abuse to keep the kids inside… to say nothing of art teacher abuse!!  We went outside and did a Color Wheel Treasure Hunt.  I printed out a simple circle divided into six sections.  We started class by coloring in the wheel and talking about primary and secondary colors.  We talked about “neutrals” and where they belonged on the color wheel.  We added the neutral colors to the area below our color wheels.

We took tape, scissors and our color wheels into my garden and found leaves, flowers, sticks, rocks, and anything else that wasn't “man-made" and added it to the appropriate places on the color wheel.

When we got back to the studio we looked at what we had gathered and noticed most of our specimens were on red and green.  Orange was really hard to find and so was blue.  Old dead leaves were good for grey, so were rocks. 

Everyone got to take their pictures home.  

...and... we took some time out to play Simon Says and Freeze Tag...  Hint... the art teacher never has to be it.   (She can't catch anyone).

Negative Space

The lesson this week was so much fun!  Students made collages using a small colored square and a larger white background.  The concept was negative space and how important it is to a design.  The results were amazing.  I even did this lesson myself... a couple of times.

Op Art and internal contour lesson

This week we talked about the way lines can make flat things seem like they have shape.  This is sometimes called “internal contour”.  We started by drawing a square with a circle in the middle of it.  We made a checkerboard in the square being careful not to draw the lines though our circle.  We filled in the circle by making a cross.  Then we added curved lines going both ways.  This made the circle look like a ball.  We filled in our designs with markers.  When finished it seemed like the ball was “popping out of the picture”.   Loved the results!!  They all did a great job.

Katie's trip to Mexico

I'm so proud of her!

 

Chloe, age 12

 

Judith, age 12

Suzette, age 13

 

Olivia, age 5

 

Avery, age 8

 

 

Emma, age 12