Catching up

 Whew....school is over in less than 2 weeks. Each year seems to go by faster!

Our final middle school unit is a drawing project. Drawing can be intimidating to some kids so we tried to loosen them up with drawing "stations" before they began their drawings. The stations modeled many different ways to make marks, value, line quality, etc. They also included images of artist's work who use each method of mark making.

Middle School art journals.....with visual metaphors......2016-2017 first post of the year!

 

The first 9 weeks of school is almost over and we have so much to share! We start our middle school students off with a hand-bound sketchbook to compile their sketches, thoughts, brainstorming, reflections and feedback throughout their time in art class.

 

This year we once again chose a very difficult stitch, the Coptic Stitch. It's incredible to see how much progress these kids make once they get the hang of it. I don't know if they love making them but it sure is a learning journey! I tell them that they are going to be driving a car in a few short years so they need to get used to completing difficult tasks now ;).

 

We had a long discussion and viewing art session about visual metaphors. The kids were then challenged to choose a metaphor and illustrate it for their journal cover.

 

Many in process journal covers on the dry rack.

Ah! The gorgeous stitching!!! How I love to look at them on our shelves!!!

;) Love this kid!!!

Completed journals....folded, measured, hole punched, stitched, metaphors chosen and illustrated and then adhered onto the covers. Lengthy, glorious, process.

I swoon!

This student always impresses me with his ideas and work ethic. This is his illustrated metaphor cover.

Here is a sketch from inside of his journal for an upcoming project.

Blank pages, meticulously stitched to lay flat when the journal is open.

The back of his journal. Fantastic work!!!!

Middle School Ojo de Dios (God's Eyes)

An Ojo de dios is woven with yarn and wood sticks. They are gorgeous to look at and so therapeutic to make. I'll get into the history and origination of Ojos in another post......many of you may remember making them in grade school or in camp ;). 

We started the project with our middle school students. Their goal was to pick an emotion or feeling word (one word only) and then make connections to colors that reminded them of their word. The connections were supposed to be personal. 

For example- if my word was "confident", one of my color connections would be the color black because the San Antonio Spurs logo is black and I am confident in their ability to win. The kids made several color connections to their emotion word. When their brainstorming was done they began to plan out patterns for their Ojos de Dios. Eventually they would be gluing their individual Ojos together to make a larger piece. After that piece was complete, they would then make a stop  motion animation movie with it ;).

 

A middle school student's first group of Ojos de Dios.

Another middle school student's Ojos layout starting to form.

Beautiful! Beginning to glue them together.

Just a teeny tiny bit of insight into the massive amount of yarn Mrs. Slats and I have been untangling these past couple of months :).

How I spent my son's soccer practices from October to December.....untangling and rolling yarn into little, neat balls.

A picture of one student filming her stop motion animation- so fun!!!

6th grade color theory choice project

 

Here is just a small glimpse of the pompom pillows some of the 6th graders made for their final color project. For their final project before the quarter ended Mrs. Slats and I gave them three choices to choose from, one of the choices being making lots of pompoms out of a chosen color scheme and turning them into a pillow. Loved how cool they turned out!!

 

 

 

 

 

a light drawing comeback

During our recent half day I couldn't resist adding in a little light drawing for the day. I can never get enough of making these photos and seeing the kid's faces when they look at them!!! Check out the bottom picture where a 5th grader made a stick figure- awesome!!!!!!!!

 

 

Suminigashi!!

Marbling is one of those magical processes- the kids oooo and aaah the entire time and can't hold back their excitement. Now this is the first time I've marbled with 250 kids.......I've only done it with my 3 at home :), so it was quite a production to figure out how I was going to make sure that each student had ample time to work, that we rotated efficiently, that the papers were named correctly and we kept it safe since 10 kiddos at a time had big bins of water. I felt like all of the responsibility that the children took on to make this work was really great review for art room procedures and for me to make sure they had grown in those skills.

 

Suminigashi is the Japanese technique of marbling paper by floating ink on top of water. After you drop the ink you make can make designs by using combs and toothpicks. Next, you lay rice paper on top and viola! The ink absorbed into the paper and you usually have a gorgeous print.

 I have a hard time doing a project that only mimics a technique so I pushed it further by having the children invent tools. We studied many marbling patterns. We studied their names and how they were created, watched videos on the process and I modeled as well. Then I gave them gobs of stuff- forks, tape, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, paper clips and sticks. They invented a tool with the intention of it making a specific pattern. They had to make it, test it and talk to me about their observations.  

                               

 

an invented marbling tool

A tool after it was used and is covered with ink now

This is when the first inks are dropped on top of the water- so fun to watch!!!

Some of the complete papers- we use them in a later project.