Positive Text Designs with Marker Prints

   

 
    Over the summer I saw a Facebook video that demonstrated the neatest marker printing technique using storage bags, non-permanent markers, and water.  This link is not the exact video I saw, but the beginning shows the printing process that I was excited to try with my students.  We did not follow the lettering process shown in the video.

     This was our first fifth grade project for the year, and so I decided to have the kids come up with some statements to encourage positive thinking.  We also looked at many different styles of lettering and the students tried to turn their text into art.  This was a fun, easy and quick project to get us started for the year!

Art Masterpiece Parodies

Mackenzie H.

  

    In fifth grade, I wanted to do some kind of a lesson about art history that would still seem fresh and exciting to the kids.  We started out by looking at seven famous masterpieces and discussing why they were successful and what has contributed to them becoming famous works of art.  We looked at Mona Lisa (da Vinci), American Gothic (Grant), Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (Kahlo), The Boating Party (Cassatt), A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Seurat), Starry Night (van Gogh), and The Scream (Munch).  We then looked some parodies of these artworks with cartoon characters, Star Wars characters, extra that I found doing a few Google searches.

     We also watched some music parodies of popular songs from YouTube.  This helped us to understand that listeners/viewers would not recognize the original work if it were not very famous or if too many alterations had been made.

     The kids chose a masterpiece to work with and created visual parodies based on them.  They had various forms of dry and wet mediums to choose from to complete their work.  I had both a dry and wet media station with different media options and varying levels of opaqueness (watercolors vs. tempera cakes).

Breakfast Delight by Sam L. 

Flowers In the Night by Boston S.

Olivia S.

The Nerda-Lisa by Emma K.

Tractor Invasion by Tyler R.

Starry Night Cat by Jacob K.

Mona Alien by Jacob M.

"Moona Lisa" by Matt K.

Blocky Night by Ryan P.

Text Design Ambition Artworks

     It has been a while since I've updated the blog and I'm so excited to share this neat lesson with you!!!  I have moved more to sharing our work on Instagram (Follow us @suffieldart), but still will post new lessons from time to time here!

     For this lesson, we first did some writing about the students' goals and ambitions for themselves.  I gave them prompts to choose from like, "When I grow up, I will...., I will never...., I always want to....", etc, to help them get started.  While they were writing, I photographed them.  We then looked at Alexandra Grant, Fiona Banner, and Pablo Lehmann; all artists who heavily use text in their work.  

     In their artwork, they were responding to the challenge, "Use your writing and photograph in an artwork using watercolor mediums.".  We used tray watercolors in addition to watercolor crayons and pencils.  We also had lots of mini-lessons and demonstrations along the way in addition to peer critiques.  

     I am so happy with the range of responses the students had in their work!

"What Does Your Hair Say About You?" Portraits

I love portraits!  I usually try to do at least one form of a portrait with each grade level each year.  Sometimes it doesn't completely work out for every grade level, but I try because I think they are wonderful snapshots of what the students were like in that moment.  These ones are really neat because they are so expressive.

We started with learning about the super neat artworks of Guiseppe Arcimboldo.  The kids were fascinated (I am too!!!!) by his portraits of people composed of many smaller objects.  In his work, the small objects always have a theme or are related to the concept of the piece in some way.  

These portraits started with classic facial proportioning guided drawing (I draw on the board, students draw on their papers).  When it was time to do the hair, the students answered the question: What does your hair say about you?  They drew all kinds of things and words in their hair and backgrounds.  I encouraged them to make artwork unlike any one else's.

They traced their pencil drawing with Sharpies, and then colored with a selection of watercolor crayons, watercolor pencils, and washable markers.  After they were done coloring with these mediums, they painted over their work with water.  This helped to get rid of white spaces and to maybe mix colors if the students wanted.  The only student that didn't paint with water made the portrait right below this paragraph.  He absolutely loves markers and didn't have any white spaces to fix in the end!

5th Grade Mixed Media Portraits with a Social Message

     I am so excited about these portraits!  I did a similar mixed media portrait lesson with third graders from Brimfield last year and really liked the concept of the lesson but thought it needed some changes to really be successful.  You can see that first attempt here.  For this time, I bumped the lesson up to fifth grade at Suffield and also added a social issue component, which is a strong theme in our new standards for fifth grade.

     We looked at the same mixed media artists mentioned in my other lesson and focused our discussions on not just how their artworks were made, but also why they were made and what statements we thought the artists were trying to make.  Before I took the students' photos for their portraits, they had some brainstorming time to choose a social issue to address in their work and to also think of what they could do to make a portrait seem to address this idea.  After I photographed them, I used the "Create a Poster" option on Picasa to print their photos.  We then had a series of mini-lessons about dry, collage, and wet mediums.  The students were then free to make media choices.  The goals were to completely cover their photograph with some kind of media and to also find a way to share their thoughts about their chosen social issue.  I am proud of their work and look forward to doing this lesson again!