Frankenstein's Monster!

See yesterday's post below or by clicking here

Frankenstein Monster hanging in the art room window.

Rory Mahon speed drying his final layer of paint. He used three stencils for this monster

Guest Presenter: Rory Mahon and Frankenstein

Aren't we lucky??! 3rd graders in my 3W class are in for a treat tomorrow. Artist, Rory Mahon will be teaching students how to create stencils and use them in a piece of work. Mr. Mahon, who is a parent at BT has been so kind to create tomorrow's workshop and to work with students. I am excited to see the following stencil of Frankenstein and accompanying paintings that he created and is bringing in to share with us. 

Rory Mahon holding up his Frankenstein created using stencils

I have been impressed with Mr. Mahon's professional work knowing the difficulty of the materials that he works with, iron, metals and stone. 

5th Grade Yearbook Cover Entries!

Table full of entries for our annual yearbook cover contest. 

One cover wins, usually all covers are tiled on the back (which I love). 

All entries are displayed in our display cases outside my room by Mrs. Finnegan (one of the YB co-chairs) and voted on by the entire student body!  Fun times !

Grade 5 Art Enrichment: Self-Portraits Carving

I couldn't wait to share the preliminary images of my 5th grade Art Enrichment printmaking project. We haven't started to print yet but my kids are doing a great job!
Here is Grace G. working on her transfer of a photograph she took of herself (using iPhoto and MS Word) and the start of the carving she did this morning using a v-gouge.

Image is in reverse on block so it will print correct

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Grade 4: Aztec Suns

My 4th graders did a great job on this lesson I found on pinterest. Have not found the originating site so my apologies for not linking to it.

We explored warm and cool colors along with oil pastel blending. My students really enjoyed this project. We began by talking about the Aztec sun and it's place in inspiring the depiction of The Sun for many artists. I was pretty flexible in how they chose to place the warm and cool colors as long as they used an opposite color scheme for each half component. (ex. half the face warm, half cool. Half the rays cool, half warm, etc.) We alson explored creating straight and curvy/wavy lines.

Franki G.

David K. 

Grade 5: Name Designs

Grade 5 finished their names designs last week. We practiced using bold use of color with colored pencils. As beautiful as these designs are, trust me when I say that each student felt as if their arm was going to fall off at times from pressing so hard!
I only repeat about 35% of my lessons from year to year but this project has been a staple for several years now. The kids love to see how their name transfers and rotates to create some really awesome, and hopefully unreadable names.
Students utilized and colored the positive (letters) and negative (individual background) spaces to help fool the viewers' eye. Here are a few:

Alina D.

Justin L.

Kelly C.

Art Bucks

I finally had a chance to use these art bucks today. It was unexpected but happened nevertheless. 

I had two super helper students in Mr. Belford's class that offered to clean a material we had used. The material (plastic cards) were a supply I didn't want to ask students to wash on their own after we painted with them because disaster could strike....
Two students, Sara and Kate, offered to wash them and did such a great job that I wanted to give them something. Candy as a reward is a no no and I didn't have anything else to give. I'm rambling. I gave them these art bucks to redeem for a free period of art. They asked to come in for recess today. They are happy, I am happy and appreciative and they get some extra time in the art room.

I found these art bucks on a site called Modern Met. They have tons of artists and other famous folks. Enjoy using them in your art room!!

Oldies but Goodies: Grades 6,7,8 Projects

I was looking for a photo and stumbled across these projects from a few years ago when I taught middle school at Timberlane.

These projects bring back SO many great memories from my time teaching there. Enjoy!

8th Grade Value Drawings of Animals

The drawing techniques were great to see implemented. Some of these kids had such natural talent

8th Grade 3D Art "Mini Rooms"

This project was really fun to do because the students constructed a dream room with no budget. They created mini furniture and added some really awesome personal touches!

6th Grade: Henna Sculptures

This project reminds me of the multiple burns I got when using the hot glue gun. Wire supports the back and was hot glued into the styrofoam base. Came out great. 

7th Grade: Honors Art 7 class

This has to be in my top 10 favorite middle school projects. 

Students camouflaged their hands into a painting they did. They spent quite a while creating the painting and then spent one class period camouflaging their hands. Key here is to save enough of the paint used in the painting so that the colors match. Also, prints help to camouflage better.

Grade 6: 

This is a display of art objects still lifes' using complementary colors.

Grade 7 or 8: Macro "zoom" Paintings

Again, I love, love, loved teaching painting which is actually a surprise because I am not a painter normally.

Grade 7: Old Cars

We altered old photos of cars in photoshop and then used a grid to draw the car on newspaper. Acrylic paint on top and affixed to a wood board. 

Tots on Tour: October 2012

This month for my Tots on Tour class at Grounds for Sculpture, we created portraits of 'Splat the Cat'. I couldn't resist giving this project a try that I have seen all over the internet but I believe originated on a blog found here.
After our tour, we enjoyed reading "Scaredy-Cat Splat!" and then got started creating these adorable paintings.