Alternative Art Journals Book Giveaway

The editors at F + W media were kind enough to send me a review copy of Alternative Art Journals: Explore Innovative Approaches to Collecting Your Creativity, by Margaret Peot.  I anxiously awaited the arrival of the book and it came today.  I love art journals (as you may know) and this book could be a great addition to your resource library.  If you click on the link above you can "search inside the book" at amazon.  There are several "out of the book" type art journals with step-by-step directions, including a box art journal, postcard journal, and scroll.   I like her ideas about using old black and white photographs and her inkblot images are intriguing.  When looking at her website I discovered she is also the author of Inkblot: Drip, Splat and Squish Your Way to Creativity, which I have seen used by other art teachers out in blogland. 

 

The publishers said I could give away a copy of the book to one lucky reader!

 If you would like a chance to win a copy of the book, leave a comment on this post and answer this question:  Do you teach about art journals/artist books in your classes?

Books I'm Loving Now

I love to read.  Of course I do, I'm a teacher.
Here are some of the books I'm loving now!

I can't say enough good things about Lynda Barry's collages and drawings.  They are just so fun and chock- full of inspiration.  She came to Madison recently to do some artist-in-residency programming and I am kicking myself now that I did not get tickets to her lecture.  Apparently, she brought Matt Groening with her to speak!!!  He is the creator of the Simpsons.




When Wanderers Cease to Roam is a delightful book full of lovely, airy watercolor sketches and drawings.


Street Sketchbook Journeys is fantastic if you are into edgy, urban, graffiti art.  I could see photocopying some of the pages for use with older kids at school.  I wouldn't leave the book out for full perusal, but bits and pieces would be inspiring.




Next up, is The Pulse by Seth Apter.  Seth is a really great guy who has participated in many mixed media collaborative projects and has a very active blog.  Seth is also a psychiatrist, which is a fascinating combination of careers.  I think art and psychology go hand-in-hand.  One of his projects is going to be in the Featuring Magazine which I am working on.

Seth had a call for artists and had a list of questions to answer and prompts to create artwork for.  There is a wide array of answers to the questions in the book.  One of my quotes is in the book and my blog is listed in the back, which is pretty cool.  I'm not going to lie, I'm bummed my artwork wasn't selected, but I suppose there was only so much room in the book...  keep trying, right?  Anyways, the book turned out lovely and it was fun to see everyone's responses to the questions. 


And finally, another book I am loving now is Jesus for President.  There are photographs and art scattered throughout the book which makes for a meaningful and interesting read.  If you are a Christian (or want to learn more about who Jesus was) and interested in how politics fits in with his teachings, this is a very interesting book.  How do we live in the modern times when war is ever-present?  What about social justice issues?  The first half of the book is about the history of Jesus and the church and the second half of the book leads into the present day.  I'm not through with it yet, but I'm reading it slowly, savoring and trying to understand each chapter.

Beautiful Oops

If you haven't seen Beautiful Oops yet, you must find a copy and look at it.. It's my favorite book ever!





The first graders looked at this book in class and then they were presented with a creative challenge.  Each child chose a piece of colored paper with a hole in it.  Holes of various sizes were pre-cut into papers of various colors.  They had to figure out how to turn this "oops" piece of paper into a work of art.  The process was the exciting part as the kids folded paper to make pop-outs, placed cellophane behind the hole and colored around the hole.  Flaps, shapes and even black dot stickers were added to make a creative picture.  I would love to see how other teachers would teach a similar project.  Let me know if you decide to use this book for a project.

Start with paper with holes cut out.

Two New Books!

Our school librarian, who has a contagious love of books, showed me these two books by Brian Selznick.  I fell in love with them!  I ordered them last week and they came in the mail today, so I have not read them yet.





The books are over 500 pages and are about half illustrations and half text.  The illustrations are gorgeous and I am going to incorporate them somehow into an art lesson when I teach shading, crosshatching, and contrast.  The middle school art teacher does a lesson involving shaded hands.  There are a few great illustrations of hands in the books.  Here are some of the images:

Look at how thick they are!

Look at the beautiful soft hatching and crosshatching!

Gorgeous!

One of the hands pictures!

Hmm.. interesting!  I will have to read to see what this is all about!

About half of the pages are text. 

One last example.  Aren't you intrigued for more?

I really love to incorporate and show books to my students.  Maybe they will see art as something they can pursue later in life.  Maybe they will become interested in reading more books.  And hopefully they will see real-life connections!

I sent out those forms for my Halloween crafts class and 27 kids signed up already!  So, I decided to split the class into 2 groups in order to not turn anyone away.  I am going to teach the class on the next two Tuesdays.  Of course I will take pictures and show them to you!  If you ever decide to do something like this, make sure you shop ahead for the wreath bases.  I found reasonably priced 12" grapevine wreaths at Walmart and each Walmart I went to had about 7 or so in stock.  So, I went to all 3 Walmarts in town and cleaned them out of their wreaths.  Then I went to Hobby Lobby and while I cringed at the price (about $5 per wreath) I went to the register and they were on sale for 40% off because they were fall items.  So, all in all, not too bad.  This was definitely a pricey project after I bought all of the fabric and stuff, but the kids had to pay a fee to cover supplies and these are going to be so AWESOME! 

First Week Books

During the first week of school I like to read books to my younger classes to introduce art. I think it is good to tie literature to all subjects and allow them to see connections through storytelling. These are ones that I am going to read this first week:

Kindergarten:



















1st Grade:















2nd Grade:















3rd Grade:

Inspirational Book I'm "reading"

I am going through this book called The Element, by Ken Robinson.  I'm actually listening to it in my car on cd!  I find that listening to books on cd is a good way to pass the time in the car.  I've only listened to about a half an hour, but I already recommend it.  It is all about creativity, nurturing different types of intelligences, finding and developing talent and pursuing a career that utilizes all of your creative talent.  So far it is fascinating.  I heard of this book from Jessica Balsey's website, the Art of Education.  I would love to take one of her classes and I will probably do so someday. However this year I already have all of my professional development workshops and conventions lined up, but maybe next summer.  Have you read anything good lately?

Don't forget to sign up for a chance to win an art teacher book!!  There are only 3 people signed up so far, so your odds are pretty good :)

Book Review!

Here is a really cool book I found. It's called "Willy Whyner, Cloud Designer."  I'm not really sure how I would use this in the classroom, but the pictures are awesome.  It's about a boy who's a dreamer and thinks about clouds.  Then he goes into the business of designing clouds.

Look!  His parents look like the people from American Gothic!

Clouds in the sky!

A moon cloud!  A whale cloud!

Even advertising clouds!

Don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win a cool art book:  Teaching Art with Books that Kids Love.  Click here.

If you want to see this book, go to amazon:

Book Review 3

Today I am going to share with you some pages inside the book Parade, by Donald Crews.  This book would be excellent to illustrate the idea of showing depth through overlapping.  The colors and pictures are so much fun!

Book Review 2

Linda Barry combines funny comics, drawings, and text in a book for adults about how to get your drawing juices flowing.  There's how tos are more for an adult who just wants to get started drawing.  Her own comics and art are what is really inspiring for me!  I also enjoy her commentary and questioning about the drawing process and creativity.  In one comic the dialogue says, "If you use coloring books past the age of ten, you will wreck your imagination forever.  Who says?  All the scientists.  Just warnin' ya."


"When you are little you will draw pictures for no reason.

What does a line do?  It's not something that you are good at or bad at.  It's something else.

You move your hand and you scribble all you want and it feels very good.  I can remember that feeling.

What makes us start drawing?

What makes us stop?"

I think this book is probably more for adults, as some of the pages have some adult-like things on them-- such as a monkey smoking cigarettes.  However, most of the pages you could show your children who are aspiring comic artists.

Here are some of the pages from her book Picture This.