Figure Drawing like Keith Haring

 

These are drawings by 4th/5th graders.  Who was Keith Haring?  What is gesture drawing?  The 4/5s learned about the artwork of Keith Haring and practiced figural drawing.  In pairs, the students posed for each other and practiced gesture drawing and longer posed drawings.  Then they drew stylized people, kind of in a cartoon-like way.  We read pages from this book about Keith Haring and analyzed the meanings of his artwork.  The kids were encouraged to add their own symbols to create meaning within their drawings.

Shadow room at the children's museum

Cat journal page

Working on a journal page...  page, magazine scraps, drawing, paint pens,

What's Your Hang-Up?

This is hanging in my living.  Inspiration was a dream I had about an octopus strangling me and then I was looking through some children's books and saw some odd pictures of octopuses (octopi?) and I did a series of octopus artworks.. the others have since seen their demise.  This was oil on masonite board.  (pretty sure it was oil.. I made this about 10 years ago.)

I've been reading a little bit of Michelle Ward's street team crusade challenges and this one seemed easy enough to participate in, no need to make anything new.  Basically, just show a tour of art that you have hanging in your house that YOU have created.  Go ahead, show it off!    Here are some of mine:

oil on canvas. Inspiration was a textured wall in the art building at college.  another old painting of mine.

recent photograph at the Madison Farmer's Market.. waiting to be hung on the wall. just haven't gotten around to it.

A still life painting that fits nicely into the kitchen.

Photograph that I took about 5 years ago with a manual camera with actual "REAL film!"  I used a foggilizer filter that I was really excited about at the time. It gave it a foggy, hazy look.

This is a street in Normal, IL, painted from the art building, looking out the window.  Another old painting...

another Farmer's Market photo

one of my first mixed media collages... hanging in our bedroom

Another college art building painting.. Everything in this painting was actually there, every mark on the wall, drip and scratch.. just the colors were changed.  They were more like water marks, obviously.. that would be very disturbing otherwise, no? The sheet and bucket were hanging there to collect water that was dripping from the ceiling.

more photographs, collage... not so happy with this wall and will redo at some point.  We need to hang a mirror in there.

more recent collages on a shelf in the basement

things I'm doing.

work in progress

going a little sew-crazy

bah! humbug!

a christmas doodlebug

Clay Hearts

Easy Clay Hearts for Kindergarten

This project teaches how to roll coils and basic glazing techniques.

(I found this idea in an art teacher magazine.. it was either Arts and Activities or School Arts from about 10 years ago or more.  Forgive me for not knowing the exact issue.  Sometimes I see ideas and then they are put in my "vault" of ideas in the back of my mind.)

1.  Step one, Demonstrate rolling coils.
2.  Form the coils on a pre-drawn heart handout.  Press firmly to adhere together.  A little bit of water may be added as needed.
3.  Teacher pokes hole through top.
4.  After firing, glaze with clay glazes.  Limit the color choices for the little ones.
5.  Tie yarn and raffia through the hole.  Voila!  A nice little ornament or wall hanging for mom or Grandma.

Friday Shout outs!

I saw this on someone else's blog.  I will give a few shout outs.  First, to the blog that has given me the most traffic this week:

Mary Making!

Next, a shout out to a blog I really really love to read:

Little Imperfections

And finally, a fun photograph.  Here is my baby Daria and my dog Linus.  A photo captured at the perfect moment.

New Glue bottles= art teacher excitement!

Any art teacher out there will be able to relate to the excitement of receiving a box of supplies you've ordered!  It's like Christmas time!!  I am so excited about this new idea I read about on the Getty Art teacher listserve.  Clogged glue bottles were the bane of my existence.  The little glue bottles with the orange tops constantly got clogged and stuck and you just could not get the glue out without a long and yucky soaking process. The soaking, degunking, refilling and constantly trying to find glue bottles that worked for the little kids was driving me to madness.  Someone on the getty listserve posted this brilliant idea to put the glue in these flip top bottles.  Minimal clogging!  So they all just arrived yesterday and I spent about an hour (while the kids were working) filling them up and recycling all the gunked up glue from the old bottles (we had about 30 that I had been procrastinating on).  HOPEFULLy this will work better!  The glue comes out faster (obviously) so you have to show the kids how much to use. 

Alaskan Masks

 

In November the students are learning about the characteristics and functions of Alaskan masks as well as the cultural traditions of Native Alaskans.  They are making a 3-D mask using typical characteristics--- animal or human features, fur, feathers, appendages, hoops around the mask. 

Another watercolor attempt

Finished Pocket Pots

Here are a few of the final glazed pocket pots.  Kids were in grades K-6.  It was an afterschool class. For full directions, see earlier post about this project.  Yay!  I love them!

Ghosts in a Bedroom

This was another good lesson I found on someone's blog.  Claim it if it was yours.. sorry can't remember who.  It was an old Halloween lesson.

in my classroom

Kids painting in my classroom

Turkeys!

Turkeys!
I found this lesson on Mrs. Art Teacher's blog:  http://applesloveorangespdx.blogspot.com/search/label/turkey  Thanks for the fun idea!!

I don't normally do crafty-type projects with my art classes, but these were so cute.  At the beginning of the year, the kindergartners need a lot of practice cutting, so this project helped with that skill.

1.  I had predrawn various sized circles and then photocopied them onto construction paper.
2.  The children chose 5 circles and cut them out.  I passed them out one at a time so they wouldn't get any duplicate circles.  They could choose from a variety of colors for each circle.
3.  Glue circles on top of each other.
4.  Cut out pre-drawn turkey heads.  These were photocopied onto brown construction paper.
5. Kids could then draw eyes, add beak, and other details.  Glue on feathers.

My art is imperfect.

I am not a sewer, let's just put that right out there.  I think it is so fun though to use the sewing machine as a tool for collages.  I just started doing it and wow, is it so much more fun to use a sewing machine that actually works as opposed to a junky one that does not work half the time.  My art is imperfect.  There is no way around it.  I can't sew a straight line, I can't paint like Monet, but you know what, that's ok.