Friday, June 10, 2011

The Art of Going Home

     I can't believe it's the last day of school!  Taking down all of the artwork at the end of the year is one of my least favorite things to do because it leaves our school looking so bare and empty.  Sending the artwork home, on the other hand, is joyful!  My students make phenominal artwork and I know they are proud to take it home. 

     This year I tried to come up with a way to try to safely get some larger kindergarten artwork home.  Giant Eagle in Fairlawn was generous enough to donate paper grocery bags to us to transform into "art bags".  These bags easily hold the 18" x 24" works without folding them.  Here are some photos of some proud kindergarten artists with their art bags!











Chihuly Inspired Plastic Sculptures


     I just love the glasswork of Dale Chihuly and have wanted to do some kind of a lesson on him for a few years now.  I ordered a heat gun this year and made the goal to finally figure out the studio work for the kids to do. We just barely fit it in before the end of school, but I figured it out and we did it!  The 5th graders loved Chihuly (like I knew they would) and they were so excited to make these cool sculptures.

     To make them, each student got an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of transparent shrink film and two clear plastic to-go-type dishes that I picked up at a local salvage store.  They cut-out shapes (and punched holes in them) and then colored them with Sharpies.  Then boy did the new heat gun get a work out!  We shot the individual pieces unevenly so that they warped into unique 3-dimensional shapes.  The students strung them onto Twisteez wire and some used sections of straws to give the plastic pieces some space between them.



















Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp Paintings


     It is often difficult to figure out what to do when there are only two or three art classes left in the school year.  With third grade I decided to do a lesson I found at the Deep Space Sparkle blog based on the book Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp by Carol Diggory Shields and illustrated by Scott Nash.  The dinosaurs have a party in the book and dance and have a great time, and the illustrations are great.  The students drew dancing dinosaurs on 18" x 24" watercolor paper and then outlined the drawings with black crayon.  We used liquid watercolors (most of which I made from old markers like I learned from Mrs. Picasso) and the students experimented with adding salt and rubbing alcohol to the wet paint.  The lesson was simple and quick, and the students felt very successful with their artworks.













Friday, June 3, 2011

2nd Grade George Rodrigue Inspired Cat and Dog Paintings


     Are you a cat person or a dog person??  Our second graders just answered this question in these paintings inspired by George Rodrigue and his Blue Dog paintings.  Can you believe that there are NO pencil lines in these artworks??  I challenged the second graders to create "readable" paintings without the use of pencils or erasers.  They were skeptical at first, but as they continued working and trying, it was so fun to see the kids be surprised and impressed with themselves!

    The trick to the success of these paintings is to have the students paint their cats or dogs on 12" x 18" paper, cut them out, and then glue them onto 17" x 23" paper.  This helps the students to place their cat or dog where they want it, as opposed to where they kind of just end up.

   To finish the artworks, the students chose 18" x 24" construction paper to go with their paintings, and then created patterns with construction paper in the margins.