Finished Clay Faces...

Some of these were just too cute not to share.  The students really did a neat job on them.  I wish our school budget allotted for glaze but maybe someday it will...

Merry Christmas!  I pray everyone enjoys their break and comes back refreshed and ready for second semester.

Inspiration...

I try really hard to convey to my students that inspiration for your artwork is all around you.  This project was inspired by one of my student's shoes.  Devin had the COOLEST shoes on at the beginning of the school year and I told him I just HAD to have a picture of them.  Of course he thought I was weird.

This last quarter I finally put them to use when we created our contour line drawings.  The students did shoes.  The tricks was that they had to add watercolor animal prints to the drawing... in honor of Devin's shoes.

They were pretty fun... some I would even consider buying!

Mrs. Sunderman

My son is currently a kindergartner and I was bummed to find out that they wouldn't have art class with a certified art teacher.  Rather their classroom teacher would handle all art projects. (No offense to Kindergarten teachers but)  My fear was that he would only learn how to glue cotton balls onto Santa's beard....

A while back he asked if I knew that red and yellow make orange, that blue and red make purple and that yellow and blue make green.  They had been learning about mixing colors in school... YEAH!

Yesterday while he was hanging out in my room he drew this...

Jarrett's Flowers

Picasso's Flowers

When I asked him about it, he shared that it was a famous painting by a guy named Picasso.

Oh how I love his kindergarten teacher even more now.  Thank you Mrs. Sunderman for knowing that your students aren't too young to learn about art!  We are blessed to have you as a teacher for Jarrett.

Celebrate Creativity Night #1

So a while back I wrote about going to Omaha for Celebrate Creativity at the Joslyn Art Museum.  Today was our first meeting for "Celebrating Creativity Art."  Since challenge art was cut from our district, I thought this might be a good fill in.  We started by looking at Keith Jacobshagen's work as he had a painting at the Joslyn. 

Next we looked at Karen Krull Robart's work as she is currently showing at our local art center.

Next we looked at the work of Catherine Meier (my personal fav... and not just because she is my cousin).

 We discussed how all three of them used the wide open spaces of Nebraska for their inspiration.  We also discussed where/how they placed their horizon lines.  The students then created some large (18x24) wet-in-wet watercolor paintings of the open spaces.  We played with salt and saran wrap to get neat textures in our skies. 

While we were working on these paintings and waiting for them to dry, we looked at the artwork of Darryl Norem.  We worked on creating some collage pieces that also reflected the open spaces we live in by again altered the size of the project.  The kids really enjoyed playing with paint to create these images.

Fun Sub Plan...

Early Friday morning I was blessed with the working mom's favorite... sick kiddos.  So while the hubby was home manning the fort, I flew up to school and pulled out my emergency sub plan. (It is so nice to have this ready to go).  My school kids were to finish any missing projects first (found in their art folders).  Then they could work on our pop art hip hop George Washington.

I bought this book earlier this year ...

And it included Gilbert Stuart's George Washington.

I had some copies ready to go of the coloring page.  The trick was that the students had to look at Andy Warhol's Beethoven and then make George Washington into a pop art version of himself, thinking about how he might have looked in today's hip hop world.  They were definitely creative. 

... hope our first president forgives me.

Clay Days...

I love and hate clay.  I love how excited my students get when I mention clay.  I love how many of my struggling students blossom in this medium.  I love how most of the kids ask if their projects will be ready for use as Christmas gifts (maybe... Mrs. Carlisle didn't plan the best).  I love the creativity my students show.  I love getting dirty...    

I hate dusty, slippery floors.  I hate rolling out all that clay for slab projects (I dream of having a slab roller).  I hate that my budget doesn't allow for glaze.  oh well....

This year we are making face pots.  We are rolling out a rectangle of clay, building a face and then adding a slab base.  Some kids are getting really creative with their faces while others are nervous about the time limit (we only have one day to build them) and they just draw their faces on.