B is for Butterfly

It might seem odd to focus on butterflies in the fall, but I still see them flitting about here in coastal Georgia. Kindergarten spent several weeks drawing, cutting and pasting, and painting after reading the picture book The Very Hungry Butterfly by Eric Carle. (Note to art teachers: A band saw is a life saver when cutting apart cardboard based egg cartons for 150 kindergarten students to turn into caterpillars!)  Now our kindergarten  hallway is full of beautiful butterflies.  As I don't always carry a camera around with me, but want to post pictures for you, these are a few whose owners have moved away. I will try to add more of those in the hallway soon.

Magical Tree Collages

Second grade began the year making vines, leaves, and flowers. These activities flowed naturally into a unit on line types and directions with trees. We began with traditional drawings. I then gave them paper straws, glue, and a 6"x 9" rectangle of blue construction paper and demonstrated ways to bend or curl the straws. I asked them to create a tree using the same guidelines that we used for their tree drwaings. During our third week on this project we added marker and collage materials to make magical tree collages. Our results are below. I think that they are truly magical!



We loved adding buttons. Many of thewhite ones were colored with Sharpie markers before being glued on.

This this group tried tissue paper as well.  

9 For Design

As I type I am sitting outside of the convention center in Savannah, Georgia, which looks across to historic River Street. It's a quiet moment in what has been a very packed day. I'm in the midst of attending the 2013 Georgia Art Educators Association Conference.   I love the opportunity to talk face-to-face with other art educators. Teaching art can make you feel a bit isolated from other educators, especially when you spent almost a decade as a kindergarten teacher with a grade level team to collaborate with before becoming the only art teacher in a school.

 

At this moment I'm just taking in the view of my port city. I wish I could share this moment in time with all of my students!

  

  

Creating a Jungle

These are action shots of second grade students creating vines out of twisted paper and tape. Check back for more images to come.

 

We are wild about learning in the BGE Art Zone this year!

Back to School!

July has come to an end, and August brings us to a new school year. This year our school theme is "The Wild." My personal library of children's books from my Kindergarten days are going to prove very useful.  We will begin by  focus our artistic energy on

• the jungle and other wild places, http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/education/kids/kids-jungle.html
• native cultures such as Australia's Aborigines,
  
• and grow familiar with the art of Eric Carle http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html
• and Post Impressionists Henri Rousseau and Paul Gauguin. http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.46688.html

We will also resume our goal to keep journals in the Art Zone, with 3rd-5th grade getting a new journal. (Thank you, donors from www.DonorsChoose.org!)

I'm excited, and hope that my students are as well!

Look, Mom! No Eraser!

While I can draw, I have never been the master that I could become with time and practice.

Honestly, I lack the discipline for it, and envy those who have it. It is a skill that must be honed regularly, or your eyes and hands will get rusty. My style of drawing is more gesture, shadow, and light. I know how to complete a contour drawing, but am better at gesture drawing.

I find that the more I try to figure out how to explain what I know to elementary students about how to draw, the better artist I become. (This is one of my favorite things about being an art teacher.)

My latest assignment for 4th and 5th grade has them drawing animals following a short Power Point tutorial on shading and value. We have touched upon techniques like hatching, cross hatching, contour hatching, blending, and stippling.
I have discovered that I have requested that my students do the most difficult thing first. I've asked them to draw an animal from their imagination, and to imagine where light and shadow might be. Some love this. Frankly, upper elementary level students want their drawings to be accurate from the start. My erasers are getting as much use as my pencils!






This week I have given them a collection of books and magazines with photos of animals in them. (Some want to continue drawing imaginary animals, and I am asking these children to use the pictures as references for how to draw a wing or beak.)  I photocopied about 75 pictures in black and white.  I've used my planning today to do exactly what I want them to do, only I have not allowed myself the luxury of using an eraser. Here are a few of my drawings and notes.

These are incomplete on purpose. I want my students to see the process as I work.

 

 

Student work 03-26-13

Perfect Square

I was a Kindergarten teacher for almost 10 years. One of the reasons I wanted to return to the art room was because I saw the need for students to produce art for art's sake- for their own sake- and to development skills needed as they get older. I'm better at making the art with the kids than documenting this process. Here is a project that we did last quarter, using the book Perfect Square by Michael Hall as a starting point.

Perfect Square Michael-Hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still Life

During the 2012-2013 school year, my students have all been exposed to portraiture. Most have drawn a portrait or two. Many have also created a landscape. Now I am turning second and third grades attention to still life drawing and painting.

I've often thought of a still life as a just a drawing of stuff, but as I've tried to make that connection between these types of art, I have realized a few things that might have occurred to  me during my college days, but have been taken for granted for way too long.  

A new and conscious link has clicked in my brain!

                                                                                                  So what are these realizations?

• A still life displays items like evidence in a mystery. That collection of things belong to someone and often give clues to their life.
• A still life is like a portrait without people in it.
• Most still life art is indoors, unless the arrangement is on a porch, veranda, or picnic blanket.
• Still life pictures aren't just fruit dishes, floral arrangements, and other stuff on a table or shelf. A meal from your favorite fast food joint can become the subject of a still life if arranged and drawn in a meaningful way.

                                                                                             





I have also found a great website for those who want to learn and experiment with the genre of still life. My students are loving it!

http://www.nga.gov/kids/zone/stilllife.htm

Doodle 4 Google

http://www.google.com/doodle4google/

I have wanted to participate in Google's contest allowing K-12th grade students to design a Google Doodle for a few years now. This year I was able to fit the contest with our 3-5th grade art standards and our art journaling endeavor. This included an artist's statement (maximum of 50 words) to be written on the permission slip.

With our administrations blessing I advertised and introduced the contest to students. I sent home one permission slip with our schools address and phone number already on them. I gave the students 2-3 class periods to work on their entry. (Those who got 3 weeks did so because of an unexpected absence on my part.) I explained that everyone would get a grade on the work they had submitted in class, but I would only mail in entries for actual contest submission if I had a completed permission slip and completed work by Friday, March 15, 2013. Anyone else could get mom and dad to submit their work if they still wanted to enter the contest. About 10% of our 3-5th grade students submissions were mailed in yesterday.

I have not shared the artist statements, but I do want to share the student's titled drawings. I look forward to voting on the submissions that Google choose for the next stage of this contest.

Might a winning entry come from BGE?