Art to See Hightlight

Most days kids 7-17 are free at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Don't feel that you have to visit the whole museum. 

Maybe just pick a floor and come back another day. 

They also have excellent workshops during school vacation.

http://www.mfa.org/visit

Art Club (day 2)

The creatures are starting to come together. 

The "skulls" were covered with flesh and muscles. 

Now they are drying so they can be painted next week.

skull-plastic water bottle

muscles-tissue paper, tape

flesh-paper mache

Art Club

First day of Art Club!!

Mythical creatures have been drawn out and the skulls and in progress.

I will keep posting the next steps. Next week we will start the muscles and tissue.

Library Design Expo

Tufts library asked the kids of Weymouth to submit design ideas for a new library. The town wants to know what the kids really want in a library. I thought this is a great idea and wanted to give the challenge to 3rd grade class. We talked about floor plans and how an architect would draw plans for a  room. The rest was really up to their imagination. They greatly surpassed any expectations I had for the creativity of ideas. After two weeks of drawing the final drawings are now on display at Tufts Library until the end of the week. The "real" architects working on drawing plans for a new library have looked over the students drawing for insight and inspiration. 

Anthony also did a 3D Lego design at the exhibit. 

Pen and Ink Drawing

These old style fountain pens and ink is one of the best items purchased for the art room. Every year the students get excited about trying them out. They really see just how difficult it was before the invention of the ball point pen. This week the 5th grade just gave it a try and did different types shading technics. 

Louise Bourgeois Spiders

Spider sculptures by the 8th grade class.

Spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois

Big Pencils

Still in progress large scale pencils by the 3rd grade.

Color Mixing with Tissue Paper

K2 worked on mixing colors and transparency with colored tissue paper. 

Once it was dry they added black trees using construction paper.

K2 Birthday Birds

Lots of Birthdays in K2 class this week!!

Drawing Reflection

We had some time left in class this week so I did a quick lesson on drawing a sailboat with it's reflection in water. The first grade students used oil pastel to draw the first boat on the fold line. After that they folded the paper and rubbed it so the pastel would transfer to the other side. This was the guide for them to draw the mirror image of the boat. Last they added the water on top.

Silhouetted Hunted House

Halloween is a great time to bring in a lesson on silhouettes. It's not as easy as you may think to make a drawing in all silhouettes. You have to always be thinking in reverse. The 2nd grade and I brainstormed things that we know are in silhouette and looked at examples. One great one we looked at was an animated movie by Lotte Reiniger. She was making children's animations before Disney and all with cut paper and a stop motion camera. It really is beautiful.

This is a link to the movie we watched "Hansel and Gretel".

Christmas in October

The Catholic School Foundation holds a Christmas card art contest every year. The entries are due in October, so the 5th grade class got to work on Christmas projects now. I played some seasonal music to get us in the mood. 

In addition I integrated a lesson on Cubism. We talked about Picasso and other artist who started the Cubism movement and how it was significant to the start of Abstract art. 

The requirements for this project was the following: Incorporated the theme "Jesus Brings Peace" for a Christmas card in a Cubism style using warm and cool colors to separated the objects from the background. As I thought they handled it quite well. The only down side is that we do not get to keep the original art. I made sure to photograph everything before it got mailed off. 

Good luck everyone!

Painting a Night Sky

Sometimes a student will randomly say that they are in the mood to paint. We don't do it a lot in class because it's more work (clean up, dry time ect.). I get it though. Sometimes you just need to paint. It is a satisfying feeling to put paint to paper. It can also be scary to some. They feel the pressure to get it just right and you don't get to erase it. I try to make it stress free in the classroom and make the projects more about experimenting and learning how to use the tools.

The past two weeks the 6th grade worked on these outdoor night scenes. They used their brushes to produce a textural night sky and silhouettes of trees.

Fall Trees and Pumpkins

The second grade worked with paints for the past few weeks. First they tried their hand at making different values of orange to make the pumpkins. Then the next project was showing movement with paint for a windy fall sky and a bare silhouette tree.

Line Variety

The 1st grade started the class with a piece of brown paper and different color oil pastels. Then they followed my lead on what variety of line to draw. Once the paper was filled the students added a door and made it into a teepee. Next we will work on 3D tepees with patterns.

Spiders in Progress

Next week I should have pictures of finished spider sculptures from 8th grade.

Finished Contour Shoes and Printmaking (Gr. 7)

Printmaking

Here is a sneak peek at the project the 7th grade is woking on. They need a background for something else they did. For that they made prints using recycled foam trays and paint. I will be posting more pictures of the finished product, but I thought you would enjoy seeing them in progress. I'm really happy with the way they came out. 

Paper Relief Art

The 1st grade got scissors this time and followed my direction on how to make different paper relief techniques. With these five ways of manipulating paper they can make any kind of cool relief masterpiece.

K2 Snakes

Package Design

For the past few weeks the 6th grades has been developing a name, logo and package design for a made up company of their choosing. Here are some of the cupcake boxes for the bakeries. The focus was for the student to pick an appropriate color pallet and typography that would help to convey what kind of bakery they are selling. We also did design for soft drinks. I'll get more pictures posted next week of those.