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.