Milk Jug / Pop-Up Masks

This is my milk jug mask.   I made it by cutting a milk carton and covering it with masking tape.  I then added color using vinyl and heat transfer scraps and texture using some beads I had laying around and some twigs from my flower bed.  I love the way it turned out!

 

We were asked to make a second mask using the technique of our choice and this is what I came up with:

 

This guy was made using a pattern that I found here.  I added some leftover edible Easter grass for the green hair and I used oil pastels to add the details of his eyes and curly-stache!  I think he turned out pretty cool!  I LOVE making something 2 dimensional come to life!

Zentangled Scratchboard

For this assignment we were asked to use oil pastels to color on a piece of watercolor paper and then paint over it using a mixture of 50% black tempera paint and 50% dish soap.  Then we were supposed to scratch out a zentangled design, showing the oil pastel coloring underneath.

I babysit a little girl who is 6 and I invited her to do this project with me.  She loved it so much that she asked to make another one!

I thought this was a fun project and it seemed super easy, even for someone as young as 6.  I really like the way it turned out!

Lesson Plans

Part of the journey toward becoming capable of teaching Art to elementary school students is learning what makes a good lesson plan.  We were asked to come up with three lesson plans and to teach one of them in a practicum setting in an elementary school.

My first lesson plan was for students to work together to create 3-D artwork and sell it at an art auction.  I got some of my inspiration for this lesson plan from this site that I found through Pinterest.

My second lesson plan was for students to make mosaic t-shirts that display an item or place of personal significance.   The idea for this lesson came because I have a vinyl lettering business and often make t-shirts.  The scraps leftover, especially the glittery ones, are really fun for children to create with.  I used this lesson for my practicum experience.  A quick presentation about my experience in the classroom can be found here.

My third lesson plan was for students to learn more about fractions by creating radial relief sculpture art and then showcasing it in a radial relief sculpture garden.  For this lesson we were challenged to come up with an integrated lesson plan and to label our objectives either Cognitive, Affective, or Psychomotor.  This lesson plan was inspired by this idea.

I feel like I still have a lot to learn about writing lesson plans, but I really enjoyed the opportunity to go spend time in a real classroom with real kids creating art together!

Feel free to use any of these lesson plans in your own classroom and adapt them to fit your needs!

Batik

For our next assignment, we were asked to first of all draw realistic drawings of something we would find in nature.

Then we were supposed to draw a "stylized" version of the same thing that we might find in nature.  Here's my stylized drawings of butterflies  (I really hate the top one!)

 

We were then supposed to use some of our stylized drawings in a repeating pattern on fabric using the ancient Indonesian art form called batik that you can learn more about here.

I liked the idea of glue, but I already knew of something that would work better.  I do vinyl lettering for a living and I knew from some 4-H projects that my sister did that vinyl would work well instead of glue.  I created a butterfly and flower design digitally.  I actually decided somewhere in the process of creating it that I would like to turn this into a pillow cover.  Here's the digital mockup:

 

  But somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted more color than this and here is the main panel of my future pillow:

 

I still intend to make it into a pillow.  I have the fabric for it and everything!  But I haven't had time to do it yet.

We were asked to work with a partner to create 100 different colors using watercolors and tempera paints.  This was pretty challenging!  My husband Dave helped me with this challenge.  It seemed that lots of the shades we came up with looked very similar to a shade we had already created.

Alien Names

For this assignment we were asked to create an alien using our name written in block letters along a fold and then cut out. 

I decided that if I was going to have a Valerie alien, I needed a Dave alien too! 

On my aliens' planet, extreme simplicity is found to be the most beautiful quality. Males change color to ALMOST match their environment and have beautiful long BOTTOM eye lashes as their most prominent feature. Females on my planet typically have beautiful TOP eye lashes only, and love to be wooed by being presented with Polkaloops, a tall and swirly flower that grows on my alien's planet. The planet is known for it's glorious arches and breathtaking moonscapes. In this scene, the Dave alien is presenting the Valerie alien with some Polkaloops that he picked for her as they walked along the shimmering molten metal stream.

Light Painting Photography

For this assignment, we were asked to experiment with light using photographic techniques and light trails to tell a story.

For me, painting with light was not the problem.  Telling a story was the problem.  We went snowboarding that day and my original plan was that my kiddos would carve down the mountain with an led light and then stop and pose for the pic.  Well, my phone thought it was MUCH TOO COLD at Brighton that night and would not cooperate.  So we came home and went to plan B.  We played around with several different apps for the iPhone and then settled on the one we started with, "Slow Shutter."

For anyone who wants to do this,  the best advice I can give you is to either use a tripod or stand very very still, aimed at the same thing.  If you click the shutter icon on the bottom left, put it on light trail, put light sensitivity a little less than half and put shutter speed all the way to the right (bulb).  Then click the camera, have your subject move the light around however you like.  Remember they can GO SLOWLY if you like, there is no problem with that (when we figured this out my daughter was relieved!).  I had her move from darkness INTO the light of the porch light and then freeze.  I let it go a second or two longer, then clicked on the square to stop.  Then if you hit edit and then freeze you can slide the bar closer to the right until you like that last image you see.  Click save when you like it but you can still play around a little after that and save different versions of the same photo.

For us, all efforts before using the porch light (we actually used a spot light on her face, too!) were great pictures of the light trails, but without being able to see the person that the story was about in the photo, there was no story.  These are two of my amazing cute kids, Boston and Holden.  They both prefer to shred, but ripping was fun too.

Cardboard Construction

This was by far my FAVORITE assignment.

Our instructions on this assignment were to create a 3-dimensional artwork using cardboard.  I didn't have many ideas to begin with, so I found myself looking online.  I found this cool thing that was very exciting to me, in fact I still want to make one!

 But I decided that I wanted to do something ORIGINAL and that led me to the garage. Why the garage, you ask?  Well because I had a LOT of cardboard in there!  We got a new mattress and had asked the people who delivered it to leave the boxes.

So I dragged one into the house.  I cut it into long strips (like 4 inches by10 feet!).  Cutting off the first 3 made me think of braiding.  But how to braid cardboard?  GET IT WET!

Next thing I knew, I was standing in the shower with the strips of cardboard.  Good thing I have a very large master bathroom!

I braided them together and LOVED it.  What next?  MORE!

3 more pieces and standing in the shower.  Wait, maybe these are TOO wet cuz the layers of cardboard are separating.  Oh but THAT looks kinda cool!

Next thing I know I have a humongous heart consisting of braided cardboard on one half, swirled out layers of cardboard for the other half.  But it was all just on the floor!  I slid a huge piece of cardboard underneath it, arranged it again how I liked it and grabbed some gold spray paint that I had bought for a different project.  Good thing I have a large master bathroom.  bad thing I don't have more windows in there! 

The trickiest part of the project for me:  taking photos that didn't include the toilet!

 Then I decided I like it so much that I hot glued everything down well, cut out around it, and hung it on the wall.  Much easier to photograph that way!  It's still there!

Watercolored Emotions

For this assignment, we were instructed to tape off six areas of our watercolor paper and experiment with the watercolors, salt, wax, plastic wrap, and household items to create texture and to paint representations of different emotions.  This was super fun for me!  I had NO IDEA how any of this was going to turn out, but I very much enjoyed the process of playing, experimenting, and watching what happened!

I think the bottom center is my favorite.  I love the bright colors, the swirls, the splashmarks, and the texture.  I think this assignment is a great way to get kids excited about the different things you can do with watercolors and help them to not be afraid to experiment and try new things on their paintings!

Georgia O'Keefe Painting

Georgia O'Keefe was a famous artist that often painted flowers, up close and personal, often with part of the flower going off the paper.  Her use of vibrant colors and color blending is really fun to me!

I don't consider myself an artist, but I did have a LOT of fun with this piece!

I remember learning a LITTLE bit about water colors in junior high school art class.  I remember that water could be my friend or my enemy.  What I mean by that is that watercolor paint will travel wherever the paper is wet and will stop wherever the paper is dry.

I used that principal a LOT in creating this (very first in a very long time) watercolor painting in the style of Georgia O'Keefe:

I have areas on the paper where I WANTED a "fence" of dry paper.  I have other areas where I WANTED the color to travel to the edge and form a darker line.  I have other areas where I wished wet parts had dried sooner or that the paint would obey my every command, but I definitely felt more in charge of the paint on this paper than I EVER did in junior high art class painting on regular old boring type paper!

This looks MUCH MORE like an abstract painting than it does like the photo of flowers I was looking at.  Oh well.  Abstract is kinda cool and I LOVE the colors!

Oh, and I discovered that some things never change:  I am STILL the girl that wants the paint set to look brand new and clean and pretty when art time is done.  I bought an extra paint set just to not use and be pretty so that it was okay for me to use this one!

Foil

The next assignment we were given was to create foil relief art.  Here is a link that describes one way to do this, but there are many other ways this can be done, too.

Since it was near Valentine's Day I found myself deciding on another love theme- the swirly heart.  I chose to use hot glue to create my relief (raised areas)  I LOVED how it all looked before the foil, but I was disappointed with trying to press the foil into the lower areas- the foil kept wanting to tear.  I also had a difficult time adding color and not having the raised and lower parts look the same.  =(

I finally got it to work well without tearing and found myself frustrated that my photos of it didn't really show the details very well.  The solution?  GLITTER!  Adding glitter helped me to show the details!  Here's the end result:

 

I think part of my problem to begin with was that I made my raised areas a little TOO RAISED, thinking that they needed to be that way in order to show the texture.  But since foil doesn't STRETCH it wanted to TEAR.  I think Elmer's Glue, like shown in the link above would have actually been better because it would not have been raised so much and it would have been easier to just jub the details in without the foil tearing.

Also, regular Elmer's Glue would be more accessible and MUCH SAFER for elementary aged students to use!  

Other lessons learned?  ALWAYS ADD GLITTER!  =)

Notan

Our next assignment was to create a Notan.

You can learn about creating your own Notan by clicking here!

Since Valentine's Day was coming up, I chose to do my Notan using symmetrical symbols of love:

Hearts are often used to represent love, but I chose to also use lips and the letters XOX.  I decided that with all the symmetrical symbols I wanted to include, planning was important.  I created my Notan digitally before I ever picked up a piece of paper.  This helped me to prevent potential problems and frustration and plan things out better.  I love the result!

I think that this assignment would be fairly easy to do with about second graders on up.  I think it is super exciting to let the kids experiment and play around and see what they come up with.  I think it is fun to have times when they go into a project with very little planning and other times when they plan a lot before they get started.  These opportunities to experiment with the creative process are part of what helps the students form their own style and learn how they LIKE to work.  I think they can learn a lot about how to tackle other projects as well through what worked or didn't work during the creative process with their art.

Personal Mandala

For this assignment, we were asked to learn what we could on our own about Mandalas and to create our own personal Mandala using symbols or drawings that represent us.

Since this was supposed to represent me, I drew pictures in each of the sections that represent things that are unique to me, things I like to do, or places I love to visit.  I chose colored pencils to add color to this project because I could color detailed areas easily.    I colored lightly in most places because I don't like the look of dark coloring with colored pencils, but I think that in some ways the lighter look makes it look too hurried. 

I think this assignment could be used as a great way for teachers to get to know their students through their art!  It was, however, for beginning artists at least, not something that can be done in this amount of detail in a short amount of time.  Since many elementary schools only get about 30 minutes of art instruction per week, I would recommend maybe doing the line drawing part of this one day and working on the coloring in free time throughout the week.

This was really fun to do!  Looking back I wish I had added more of the small detail that is in the center throughout the sections in between the drawings of snorkeling, snowboarding, uni-cycling, and Japan.  I think that might make this piece "flow" better or feel more unified.