Happy Turkey Day!

Wishing everyone and their family a happy and healthy holiday!

15 minute Sketch -- President as Action Hero

15 Minute Sketchbook Drawing -- Haunted House

In order to help the students show growth in their drawing skills for the second quarter -- which starts today -- I am introducing the 15 minute sketchbook drawing assignment. Every day in class there will be a drawing assignment that the students will need to complete. Sometimes it will be a one day assignment and other days the drawing may take a few days to complete. But hopefully this will give the students time to really improve upon their drawing skills which is something they all say they want to do.

Below are some pictures from todays drawing assignment.

Opening Centers: Collage

First I want to apologize for the quality of the pictures in this weeks post. I have taken much better photos before with my iPad so I don't understand why these pictures look the way they do. Maybe cause I tried to zoom in on a few things... guess I will have to use my digital camera for that next time. 

About a week ago I opened the second center in the art studio: COLLAGE. A collage is an artwork made up of cut or torn paper, yarn, fabric and 3d objects pasted to a surface (for those of you who did not know). Usually the kids really like this type of creating because they can really come up with some new and freeing artwork. We will see if the same goes for this school year. 

I do not have as many posters on this centers board but I do plan to add to it over the course of the school year. 

An above is one of the photos that just isn't the best quality. This is a chart I created that explains the types of adhesives one can use in the collage center and what they are good for, how long it takes them to dry and the strength of the adhesive. So far it has proved handy for some and some tend to ignore it. 

I took the picture below during one of my classes, so please ignore the mess since the kids were being very creative that day. 

Till next time!

Opening Centers: Drawing

Between Monday and today I have opened our first art center of the year. The first center to be opened is the drawing center. In this center the students get to use various drawing materials from pencils to colored pastels to ink and calligraphy pens. 

I spent the first day of the drawing center opening explaining to the students what materials were there, what they can be used for and the rules for clean up. Since we are a 1:1 iPad 2 school, once the kids receive theirs there will be qr codes also on the board that will lead the students to various google docs and youtube videos that will help them or inspire them with their artwork.

Below are some of the posters that I have on display for the students in this particular center.

This poster I created to show the students what the materials look like on paper and I even blended some of them to show the students what the materials can do.

One thing my students love the create are 3D letters. Linear Perspective is something that my students have trouble with but they love the outcomes once they are finished with their artwork. 

This particular poster was created by the art teacher that was here before me but I really like it so I had to keep it. The students always want to draw people but tend to always draw stick figures and that is one of my NO NO Rules. 

This is my NO NO Board. These are all the drawing and painting techniques that the students tend to do however they are very elementary and since we are middle school art students, these are not allowed in my room. We spend about 10 minutes going over this so that the students really understand what I am expecting of them. This year I had to add the No Tracing rule to my board since students tend to do this more then anything. 

I hope you enjoyed our little journey through this years Drawing Center.

Pre-Test Creativity

This year we started the year with out Pre-Test. I did this lesson last year as a way to get to know my students skills and creativity levels. I got the most amazing pieces of art from them that I just had to do this project again.  So far I am getting the most amazing work and creativity from the kids this year. 

I am hoping to have some final pictures up for you by the end of the week.

New Year -- New Colors

Today is the last day of the first week of school. It has been quite a week. New students getting lost, going to the wrong classes and returning students going into their old habits really fast. But hopefully things will get better.

The best part so far has to be the way my room looks this year. I spent a lot of time over the summer on pintrest looking at how other teachers have decorated their rooms in the past and I fell in love with the idea of Tourquoise and Chocolate. So all of my centers, table number, and other stuff are all in those colors. I did have to add in some white here and there because I couldnt find and brown craft paper to use to cover my boards.

The room feels very calming and relaxing. It is great! I will have more pictures up soon.

End of the Year 2011/2012

The worst part about the end of the school year has to be the clean up. Every year they use my art room for summer school since it is one of the bigger rooms in the building and I have to clean up completely -- no posters, no boarders, no nothing.

That is actually ok with me this year. Next school year 2012-2013, I will be teaching a TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior) curriculum. TAB is also known as Choice-Based Art. This is where the students get to experience a real artists studio envirnment and get to choose their materials and subject matter for their art.

Because of this there will be centers set up around the room for materials and information. Having the room completely blank and clean will help me set up each center in the fall.

And all the time I spent cleaning also helped me clean out stuff that I dont need -- magazine overflow as well as really old art left from students 5-10 years ago when I wasnt a teacher yet.

You can do anything!

End of the Year... well, almost.

today is my last day of finals. I hate giving them but they are needed. After today there is only two weeks left of school and both weeks will be spent cleaning and breaking down my room.

however inventory comes first. I have had a few students stay after school a couple of days a week to help my count all of my art supplies. Now I have been at my school -- this will be my second year now and i have never done an inventory of what i have. I know what I have in terms of supplies but i dont know how much of each item. I realized that this must change in order for me to make my art supply order for next year. Hopefully it is will be helpful.

No new pictures today but i will have some soon.

Free Draw Chaos

I normally would never give my students a blank piece of drawing paper with the assignment to just draw. Doing so is completely out of character for me -- the art teacher who hates chaos. Free draw time or assignments are always a time for students to do what they want and be creative. I just dont like the unstructured time of it all. 

Not having a lesson plan or even a planned idea of what the artwork should look like drives me nuts. Letting the students do their own creative thing is the scariest thing I know of. But having time to be creative is a good thing and can lead of amazing results. 

During Art Club one of my 7th grade students completed an amazing drawing of a flower and asked if we could have free draw time in class this week. Knowing how I felt about this I automatically said no. Then I thought about it. Maybe it wouldnt be so bad. And it wasnt. Giving the students time to just sit and be creative was a great experience for them and myself. So much so that I have decided to let Free Draw be apart of next years project schedule. 

Below are some of the free draw artworks completed by both my 7th and 8th grade students over the past week. 

Stencils and Chalk

Today was a very creative and messy day in the art room. We studied a brief history of stenciling as both a decorative and folk art. Once that was done, the students used regular chalk pastels to create a decorative design using a pre-made stencil (found in the back of my art closet from one of the previous art teachers) in preparation for creating our own stencils next class.

I am really happy with the way they came out. The kids had fun and were really messy at the end -- something they were not happy about. :) 

Finished pictures will be posted later in the week!