Watercolor Illustrations January 31, 2011

The 7th and 8th graders finished their watercolor illustrations of “mad lib” surrealist sentences.  Each student wrote mixed-up, crazy sentences by pulling nouns, adjectives, and verbs out of a hat.  Their challenge included illustrating that sentence as well as painting.  The students learned a few different watercolor tricks and techniques, including watercolor wash, paper towel lifting off, wet on wet; but the big hits were the salt trick and the rubbing alcohol trick.  While the paint is wet, salt is sprinkled on or rubbing alcohol is dripped on.  Both react to the pigment in fun and unusual ways!

Monoprinting January 19, 2011

The 8th graders have spent 2 classes practising the printing skills with monoprints.  Understanding that a monoprint only allows one unique print, they listed other words that start with ‘mono’.  For their monoprints, the students started with a paper stencil; one that should have equal amounts of positive and negative space.  The stencil was placed on an inked sheet of plexi-glass, and then printed by hand.  I think their practice will result in great prints for their upcoming long-term project!

 

More photos coming soon!

Gingerbread house

The junior kindergarteners have been following the trail of a runaway gingerbread man!  Every day, it is hidden somewhere in the school for them to spot.  They have been coming the art studio in small groups to make a gingerbread house to “catch” the gingerbread man.  We used white paint as the frosting, and paper shapes for the candy.

Intro to silk screen printing January 18, 2011

The 3rd graders finished a screen printing project, which is a warm-up to real silk screen printing.  Aligned with their science studies, the students drew invertebrates on a blue screen.  The lines on the screen were pushed out, allowing the paint to be rolled through.  Students made between 4 and 12 prints each with their screens.  The best prints were included in an accordion book, along with a scratch paper version and a collaged print made from less successful prints.

Snowy Courtyard

We’ve had a lot of snow between last week and today, and the courtyard outside the art studio is looking especially pretty these days!

2D and 3D Greek Amphoras January 5, 2011

The 2nd graders are very busy with a Greek art unit.  They are studying the amphora, a two-handled vase, used to store water and grains for the ancient Greeks.  Traditional Greek amphoras are clay, but the 2nd graders are trying out two different methods.  First they used scratch paper to practice the the technique of sgraffito, which means scratching off the top layer to show a different color underneath.  In the clay pots, sgraffito was used to show the red and black images.  Second, the students are currently making 3D amphoras by paper-maching over plastic bottles.  Soon, we will had the important 2 handles and paint!

Sun Sandpaintings

The kindergarteners have just finished a unit on Native American art.  After comparing cartoon suns to photographs of the real sun, the students looked at how the Navajos drew the sun, and ultimately drew their own representation of the sun; some with faces, some looking like fire, others with wavy rays. They then learned how the Navajos created large sandpaintings on the ground, and tried sandpainting for themselves.

 

Happy New Year!

It’s been awhile since I last updated, time for a lot of photos!

First, the 5th graders have been creating illuminated letters.  First they had a lesson in typography, deciding how to add style to their bubble letter.  They also had to decide whether to make a serif font or a san serif font…very technical.  After seeing some images of medieval illuminations, the students added “gold leaf” to their letters.  This medieval lesson also gave me the opportunity to share some photos from my summertime trip to Germany: torture devices from the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum, in Rothenburg.  Finally, the rest of the illumination had to be a bit of a self portrait, with hobbies or interests filling in the rest of the composition.