Thursday, September 24, 2015

Box Tops!

Our first turn-in is fast approaching, so please collect and send in Box Tops for Education. There are collection boxes in every room. Proceeds will go towards purchasing art supplies and PE equipment for our kids!

Mosaics, Mosaics, Mosaics

We must have gone through at least 30 glue sticks today as the students continued to work on their mosaics.




Most of the younger students were able to complete theirs today, while the older kids are still gluing, gluing, gluing.


The first/second grade class and the third/fourth graders also learned a wee bit about Pythagoras and geometry. The students who finished their mosaics used stencils and pattern blocks to make shape pictures.



Next week will be our last class before the one week break. We'll be wrapping up projects from these first few weeks, but continuing with ancient Greece after the break. Greek theater masks are coming up, and I am in need of copious amounts of newspaper for paper mache masks. If you get the paper, please send old newspapers to class with your child. I'm still collecting paper towel and toilet paper rolls for a future unit on Paul Klee, so keep sending those in, too! Thanks so much!



Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Art Journal Challenge #2

This week, I want you to look at the world in a different way- literally. Find an old cereal box or another piece of recycled cardboard and cut a small rectangle. Now cut a smaller square or rectangle from the center. Hey, you could even punch a circle, triangle, or any other shape that appeals to you. Here are three that I made:


There are a couple of ways to use your viewfinders. You can hold them up to something in the distance to "frame" a portion of it:


Or you can set it on top or against something to create a "close-up":


Now draw what you see! 

Optional journaling: How did this make you see things differently? Did you notice details you missed before? Did colors look different? Textures? Did it make you draw differently? Don't forget to share your work with me in class! If you bring your work in, I will post it on the blog! You can always email me a picture of it, too.





Thursday, September 17, 2015

Art Journal Challenge #1

Are you looking for art "homework" or at least a little sketchbook inspiration? Each week I will be posting an art journal challenge that you can complete at home. It's purely optional, but a lot of fun! You can bring your work to class to share, or have your parents post it on the Vista Oaks Parent's Facebook page. Of course, you can just keep it to yourself; the choice is yours!

This week your challenge is to find something in nature that has changed since the last time you viewed it, OR has a color that appealed to you immediately. Use an old gift card or index card and trace around it in your sketchbook to create a frame. Inside the frame, draw your object with pen. Make a contour drawing, where your eye and pen move at about the same speed. Go slowly, and look more at the object than your paper. Draw what you actually SEE, not the shapes you expect see or associate with that object. You can color your drawing with watercolors (make sure you used waterproof ink first!), colored pencils, crayons - whatever you have available. Here is what I drew in my journal this week:


Last week, these scrub oak acorns were all green. Now the tree was alive with acorns turning yellow. You can see more entries from my art journal on my personal blog.

What did you find to sketch this week?

Mosaics

In class today the students learned about Minoan Crete, and the influence their art had on later Greek art. The students found the sport of bull leaping to be an especially interesting aspect of Minoan culture. You can read more about it here.

We looked at mosaics and the students planned their own versions out of paper.


While this is a two class project, some of my younger students made quite a bit of progress today.



Check back next week to see the finished products!

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Finished Greek Pottery

Today was the reveal day! After first sketching their designs on paper, the students used wooden stylists to scratch their designs on their pots.




It's trickier than it looks!

Despite a few frustrations, in the end we had incredibly bright, beautiful "pottery!"






Just a few examples from these amazingly talented kids!  Next week we will tackle Greek mosaics. After our mosaic project, we will be making Greek theatre masks. I am still accepting donations of newspapers for paper mache, so if you have some, please send them in!


Saturday, September 5, 2015

Ancient Greek Pottery

For this session, we will be focusing on ancient Greece. We began our look at Greek art this week by studying vases. The students learned about the major periods of Greek pottery and how pots were made. We saw a brief video about the process from the Getty museum:

Then we began our two class process of making sgrafitto, or scratch vases. First the students drew their vase shape and filled it in with oil pastels:

Then they covered them in black paint:


Stay tuned next week to see how we transform these black vases!