Radial Balance, Different Ways!

One of my favorite projects this year had my students creating 18x18 radial designs. They were BEAUTIFUL! 

I gave the challenge and then they could select from oil pastel, tempera paint or colored pencils to complete their image. They could also choose warm colors, cool colors, color wheel order or monochromatic color scheme. The variety and beauty was amazing. 

color wheel order with oil pastels

monochromatic "batik" with oil pastel

 

cool colors with tempera paint

complimentary colors with oil pastel

You can check out more at our Artsonia site.

A while later we had one of those 20 minute class periods that EVERY art teacher loves. 

We used it as an opportunity to review radial balance. Students used the app Amaziograph to create radially balance "coloring pages." We uploaded them to artsonia and students can print them off to color them. 

I also took this as an opportunity to try out a website I had heard about. Spoonflower is a fabric site but I heard they did a really neat job of printing fabric you design. I downloaded a few of my students designs and gave it a shot. I was really impressed. 

Ashytn's design on artsonia, 

printed out and colored and 

printed by Spoonflower on fabric!

Here is a colored version...

The color is pretty intense and I am going to see how it washes up but I am very impressed. 

Thank you Spoonflower for helping my students take their art work to another level. 

City Silhouette's

In the interest of switching things up a bit, I took my 12x18 paper and chopped it in half... long long way.

That created 6x18 papers for my students to work on. We set up some fun painting stations and they worked to create a sky of their choosing.

I had printed out skylines from famous cities and some students loved the challenge of trying to recreate them. Other students just wanted to make their own skylines. Either way, they turned out really nice. 

Colorful Notans

In cleaning up more and more folders, I have found a lot of things I photographed but seem to have failed to share. This is one such project.

Students created Notan designs and each class was given a different color of background paper.

 when they were done, we put them all together to make a color gradation. It was one of my favorite displays that year.

Our Attempt at a Peace Pole

I was cleaning up some files and found this group of photos to share.

In our aftershock program we decided we were going to transform our schools support poles into peace poles. (You can read more about them here) The students wrote out "may peace prevail on earth" in lots of different languages. They decorated them and made them look really, really nice.

We put them all up...

with the help of some goofy 6th grade girls.

They looked really, really nice when we left....

But the next morning was a different story...

I think it took me so long to blog about these just for the sheer disappointment we had in the project. They didn't just fall down; they fell down and taped themselves together. These goofy girls are now freshmen in High School! Wow!

Ugly Dolls on Display

I feel like these last few posts have only been about one thing but I promise this is the last one.

When we finished our ugly doll project we put them on display. We were challenged to think of a "back from break display" that would have students thinking about different books. I selected "Snowman at Night" and did an "Ugly Dolls at Night" Display case.

It was pretty easy and the dolls sure looked like they were having fun in the "snow" 

(aka left over batting).