Fly

As a "welcome back" project (I always like to star the year with something easy, personal and engaging--this year I also made it collaborative!)  I had every student in the school decorate a feather- this is just something I drew up and made photocopies of.  I had two versions of the feather--one that curved left and one that curved right

As you can see on my feather sheets, I had the kids include personal symbolism and goals for themselves for the year.  They could also add any other decorative drawings and designs they wanted to fill and finish off their feather

Once the feathers were complete, I assembled our wings and wrote "Fly" above the wings; inspired by Erin Hanson's gloriously famous poem that is frequently quoted around the world, "What if I fall?  Oh but my darling, what if you fly?"

I photographed each of my students in front of the wings and shared it with their families via Seesaw (this is an amazing app...are you familiar?  Ask me about it!  It's an amazing way to privately share images with parents and I often have the kids add to their seesaw account themselves, so it doesn't even take time out of my day to keep it updated).

Wings, ready to be hung

Me, taking them for a test fly--they were hanging outside of our office so that anyone could admire, be inspired by, and/or photograph themselves with them!

Day of the Dead Alter

Dia de los Muertos

Every year we set up a Day of the Dead alter as a school and make our ofrenda ("offering") for someone we have lost or a Mexican artist.  This year, we made our ofrenda for our school secretary, Jill, who lost her battle with cancer recently.  The kids made her paper symbols of the things that she loved (i.e. Nebraska Cornhuskers) and/or things they thought of when they thought of Jill and wrote her a note on the back of that symbol.  It was a great way for the kids to find closure in their sadness and to celebrate her life and the things that Jill loved.

This is a K-8 school and we (myself and Sara--the K-3 art teacher) try to get all of the grade levels involved.  This year the Kindergarten made papel picado and paper calavera masks, First Grade made candles from toilet paper rolls and tissue paper, Second Grade painted rocks as calavera, 4th-8th Grades made symbols for Jill as well as papel picado from patterns and Eighth Grade also made 3D calavera-paper sculls from a template found here on skulladay.blogspot.com.  The milk jug skeletons were actually created last year with my seventh graders but they were too great not to reuse!  Pictures of last year's display are on my blog here

Close Up of 8th Grade Calavera from Skulladay's Template:

Art Club Made and Decorated Sugar Skulls!

Origami Butterflies

I started this lesson talking about the meaning behind it more so than the steps we would go through to get there.  I introduced my students to the Native American symbolism of a butterfly.  According to Native American legend, if you capture a butterfly and whisper a wish to it.  Upon its release, it will fly your wish up to the heavens.  As a teacher at a Catholic school, I then steered this in the direction of prayer instead of wishes.  Though, this lesson could easily be adapted for a public school setting and use hopes, dreams and aspirations instead of prayers.  I explained how we would start by creating watercolor paintings to be used as our origami paper.  We would then write down our prayers, special intentions or anything weighing on our hearts and minds onto the dry painting before transforming them into origami butterflies as a class for an "all school" art display (I say "all school" because I only teach 4th-8th grade students, and  the origami steps might be too tricky for the younger kids).

With my 4th and 5th graders, we started our paintings by learning a little bit about Wassily Kandinsky and non-representational art.  They each made non-representational watercolor paintings on typing paper that I had precut into squares for the origami.  They started by tracing random objects (mostly rolls of tape, cups and various small storage containers) with a pencil and then painted this with watercolors.  I encouraged them to get down large areas of color inside the drawn shapes first and then to add smaller lines and details on top of this.  My older kids were just asked to make a non-representational painting using layering of shapes and lines with the watercolors.  We made the paintings soley for a pop of color and interest to the butterflies, but you could also teach a lesson about using painting as a form of therapy and tie it into the prayers and/or wishes and hopes.

My example painting

During our next class together, I started off by reminding them of our intentions with the paintings and gave them all markers-they could choose any color they wanted to write with.  We wrote directly on our paintings and those who were absent, wrote on a colored sheet of paper that I had also cut to the proper size.  I asked them to write on their painting either a prayer, special intentions, people or things that they wanted to pray for or anything weighing on their hearts and minds.

This prayer is special to our students and parish, as it was written by Fr. Bob, our priest who passed away this year

In order for us to make origami together, I opted for using a YouTube video tutorial, pausing between each step, demonstrating that step myself and then going around to offer assistance to any student who needed it.  Luckily, each class had a few origami gurus who would also help out their struggling classmates.

Finished Example

With the help from a few 8th graders, I had the butterflies strung up and ready for display.  I absolutely love walking down this hallway!  I wish I could have hung them lower so that you could literally walk through them, but as a teacher in a K-8 building, I know that wouldn't work so well--it's better in theory.  The hundreds of butterflies on the walls and those flying above our heads are still enough for me!

I strung/taped these ones to rulers and wedged them in the corners of our drop ceiling for easy display purposes

Portrait Drawing and Collaborative Art

I'm going to start this blog entry by sharing our portraiture lesson and then explain how this become a collaborative piece. So if you start reading and are wondering how this involves any sort of collaboration, stick with me...I promise, I'll get there!

My 8th graders have been taught how to draw faces before, but it never hurts to revisit a lesson (especially on drawing realistically).  Similarly to how I taught my fifth graders portraiture and proportion, I started by handing my classroom over to Oli on YouTube and letting her show off her skills as a 9 year old, while also teaching my 8th graders the basics.

We sketched out our faces and left them alone for awhile to talk about shading.  Shading faces can be tricky and I didn't want them to just add a little grey and smear it across their faces so that they still looked flat but now they were grey.  So we talked about how shadows and highlights add depth and show us the shape of the object and tell us about its form.

8th Grade Sphere and Shadow Study

We started out by drawing spheres.  I set out a ball and we noted where shadows were and reflections. Then I put it away and we had to think about it a little bit more.  Where is our light source (pick one)? Where is going to be the lightest spot on our sphere?  How about the darkest?  Etc.  I showed them how to use their pencil in the direction of the curves to accentuate the item's shape and then taught them blending with their finger or a tissue.

Once our spheres were complete, we discussed how that same concept can be applied to anything three-dimensional.  We talked about the high points on our face (cheekbone, forehead, nose and chin) and how/why highlights would fall there.  We talked about the areas with the most shadows and why as well as where middle grey/medium shadows would be.  We also discussed hair and how it is actually individual strands growing from the scalp and not perfectly smooth and colored in solidly.  I reminded them of using their pencil in the direction of the curve on that part of the face and encouraged them to use the sides of their pencils for ease of blending.  We don't have a class set of blending stumps nor shading pencils, so each student was working with their standard #2 and armed with a Kleenex and/or their fingertips.

My demonstration example of how shading a face can look before and after blending

 

Once we had covered portraiture...we got into the collaboration!  I work at a K-8 building, and our 8th graders are each assigned a Kindergarten buddy.  The idea is for the 8th graders to show the kindergarten kiddos the ropes and make the little guys feel comfortable in the building and they end up forming these adorable bonds!  This collaboration project was inspired by one of those popular articles that floats around Facebook.  In this blog entry by the artist/blog Busy Mockinbird, an artist and mother discusses and shares images that are created out of collaboration with her four year old.  To cut to the chase, the results are absolutely amazing!  And I wanted my 8th graders to do something similar with their buddies.  

So after we learned about portraiture, I shared my idea and the article with my 8th grade and had each student draw a medium sized head on a blank page in their sketchbook.  The next time that Kindergarten came to art, they were taught about collaborative art and how they were going to be working with their 8th grade buddy (I don't teach the kindergartners Art, but I stopped in and found them cheering at the idea of working in their 8th grade buddy's sketchbook).  And thus, our collaboration portion of the lesson...

But wait, there's more!  After the kindergartners added bodies to our 8th grade faces, they drew a face on another blank page in their buddy's sketchbook.  On which, of course, I had my 8th graders add bodies and backgrounds!