first few weeks of art - Line Lessons

the first few weeks of art, i try to take things really slow (i teach in 2 schools and you never know the background in art the students have had thus far).  no matter what grade it is, i start off with some line lessons and slowly add more elements/principles of art as the year continues as well as some more DBAE aspects to it.  

this year in my district we have new learning goals for every subject matter.  these goals need to tie into every lesson which might be a little hard to do (anything new is challenging) but once we highlight them for every lesson, it'll become second nature.  these goals can also help inspire new lessons and create more meaning for the artwork.  we, as teachers, might find the meaning very evident but these goals will help us communicate the significance of the lessons to the students on an even deeper level. 

anyway, more about lines...

1st grade - bug's eye view

 above is a 1st grade lesson: bug's eye view.  students look at pictures of up-close plants to help drive home the concept of them being small bugs and having the world around them be an adventure.  we then draw a few lines together: some giant blades of grass then i teach them how to overlap the grass.  we fill our page with more plants/grass, trace with sharpie, then color in completely.  good way to see where each student is starting from.

3rd grade expressive lines

above is 3rd grade expressive lines.  the students first brainstorm as a class as many lines they can think of - even if they want to invent a line and give it a name, that is fine.  i then demonstrate how to "cut" their paper into sections (with either straight or slightly wavy lines) almost like they are dividing a pizza.  they trace those lines in sharpie.  they then have to fill each space up with a different type of line in sharpie.  i don't have them start with pencil for this part because that would add a whole other class period to the lesson.  they know if they make a mistake to work with it.  i told them to throw perfect out the window our first day in art... :)   marker was added for color.

radial symmetry: 4th graders

 i love this lesson!  it's so simple but gets a stunning result.  4th grade: radial balance.  i used to teach this with watercolors later in the year to 4th graders but this seems so  logical to start with.  once they get into the rhythm of "drawing a little bit, then rotating, drawing a little bit, then rotating"... they can't stop.  it's almost like an organized, meditative doodle.

how we start: with a square sheet of paper (we used 9x9) but you could easily go smaller or bigger...i have students stand up to find the center of their paper (it's easier to see than when they are sitting)  they mark the center the best they can with a tiny dot in pencil.  i have them practice 3 lines in pencil first until they find the rhythm.  once they get that down, if they feel comfortable they can trace over those lines in marker and then continue adding a variety of lines in marker without having to draw them first.  i actually had a lot of student draw the whole thing with pencil first, and that is ok.  very important!!: have them always keep their less-dominant hand on the paper so they can turn as they draw. that way it keeps every line tightly aligned with the last.

5th grade line trees

 5th grade is always tough for me to start the year.  i feel like i have so many unique, challenging lessons to do and i want to dive right in but i forget that no matter what age, students need a baseline and a refresher for the year.  so here we talked about line, brainstormed together quickly as a review some types of line and did this guided drawing.  i don't do guided drawings a lot but i started a new school this year as my travel school so i wanted to assess their abilities.  here we did a nature/tree drawing using multiple types of line.  some students chose to do funky lines and colors and some chose more simple, realistic compositions.   i told them either was fine as long as they were using their tools by the rules and trying their hardest.  

preparing the art classroom!

ok, so this post doesn't go into extreme detail about how i store my supplies...that is a WHOLE other beast in itself.  i originally wrote this post a few days ago on my galaxy but it refuses to completely save it so, i guess i will start all over!!

students don't go back to school until august 5th but i knew i had WAY too much stuff to get done before meet the teacher, etc. next week so after i received the keys to my classroom, i started hanging stuff.

when i entered my classroom this year, everything had been moved from the floor cleaners coming in and rearranging EVERYTHING.  at first i was upset...MORE work to do!!! but then i realized it was a great opportunity for change.  so i went with it.  it might not be a huge change to outsiders but for my little artists and i, it will hopefully make us even more successful in the art room this year :)

the above picture is right by my desk, this year i am going to use it as my inspiration wall.  (last year a giant bookshelf was in the way, that i hardly used).  i love getting inspiration from anywhere...movies, pinterest, books, magazines, television, other students' ideas, so i like to make a visual wall of things that keep me motivated and/or inspired.  

the ARTIST poster is an idea i stole off of pinterest and added my own expectations to.  great visual right above my desk for students to see as a reminder.  love how that turned out.

because of all this new-found wall space, i decided to only put up the necessities for my students. above is a poster breaking down mediums we use in the art room.  i forget to use the word media/medium a LOT so this is my way of reminding myself as well as reinforcing it to my artists.

  

above are some more examples of small clusters of vocabulary words we use for individual art processes.  i do collage a lot throughout the year so it's great to highlight some words and have a visual reminder of what the kids are doing.  sorry some of the pics aren't the best...

here is one of my favorite posters i have made.  (i have geometric shapes posted to the left of this on my wall).  great visual reminder in bright, eye-catching colors.  the font is taken from dafont.com - which i use ALL the time.  my amazing co-worker told me about it.  wonderful fonts for art teachers to jazz up signs, labels, etc.  

bittersweet endings!!

pictured above: construction paper crayons - great for dark papers but are really expensive
gallons of primary colors donated along with the light blue tempera artista ii that i LOVE - it mixes better greens than the dark "blue" - ALL DONATED :) i'm in heaven...feelin' really spoiled!!

things have been stressful lately!!  summer school went by way too fast and now i am finding myself trying to organize my classroom supplies to start the upcoming school.  as much as i don't want summer to end, i am really excited to roll up my sleeves and get things rolling in my classroom organization.  

saying good-bye to my summer school students is always hard.  we grow really close in such a short amount of time.  but on the flip-side, my amazing co-worker donated TONS of supplies for the KTA art studio!!! i have SO MUCH paint that i honestly don't know where i'm going to store it...but i guess that is better than not having enough.  i do not think i will need to even purchase paint this year, which leaves my budget open to more expensive luxuries that i don't normally get to purchase due to funding.  

i will try to relax as much as i can before school starts but it is really hard when i practically have an art store warehouse in my small apartment!!! :)

FALL inspired seasonal projects

seasonal projects - fall

as much as i love to hang on to the nostalgia of summer, i love introducing fall projects to the kids.  unfortunately here in phoenix we don't get much exposure to the "seasons" so i like to inspire my kids with images and art from other parts of the country who do experience one of the most wonderful seasons of all: fall!  as long as you are tying in a learning goal and the standards into your seasonal lessons to avoid that "art just for art's sake" feel - your imagination is limitless.  make these projects meaningful...tie them into previously introduced concepts or segue into a different element of art or essential question...

one source of my autumn inspiration: flagstaff!! i miss the weather changing and the fall trees.  can't beat the beautiful scenery!

here is a kindergarten warm/cool fall tree.  we started with a "Y" shape for the tree, then slowly added branches.  i like to tie technique into this lesson.  we slide our paintbrushes across the cool colored paper (of their choice) and then we learn how to "stamp" the warm, autumn-colored leaves around the branches.  

5th grade aspen trees!  all about technique!  we scrape the black paint across our 9x12, 80lb. paper (you could probably get away with 50lb. paper if that's all you have).  use small pieces of cardboard dipped in black paint to do the scraping.  the next class time, we painted the blue sky, green grass and then stamped on the warm colored leaves.  a very helpful tip from a colleague: every time you get a cardboard box, deconstruct it and cut it up!! very "green" way to use cardboard for a paintbrush :)

kindergarten pumpkin farms. these either turned out GREAT or terrible.  it was a little too difficult for my kinders to grasp the concept of perspective that early in the year.  but so is teaching! experiment, reflect and adjust accordingly.  maybe i can try it with an older grade next year...

life's little surprises!!

life's little surprises
i love when i'm wrong about something. haha, ok not really, but i love when i gather a negative impression of something and then get totally blown away by a positive surprise.  this happens a lot: we judge someone or something and then end up LOVING them or enjoying a new adventure.  

i used to despise liquid watercolors.  they stained my fingers when prepping them, were hard to store, they were hard to pour, i would end up wasting them if i poured too much...they basically looked like glorified food coloring. 

but then something magical happened.  i was inspired by other blogs when i noticed some of their students' painted having really vivid, bright pigments.  i was teaching a paul klee lesson and needed something with an extra pop.  i decided to give liquid watercolors a 2nd try since it had been years since i had tried them the first time.  this time i poured them into muffin tins and discovered, although not ideal, i could just add a little bit of water to them to reuse when dried.  loved them!! although they are still a little bit of a pain to prep/store (they use up my muffin tins that i have set aside for tempera paint sets) they create that extra wow-factor in my students paintings.  and if you are excited about something, chances are your students will be, too.  needless to say, they LOVED using them.  a little something new never hurt anybody!!! :)

here, i store them in muffin tins and although there is a filter used to edit this photo, they are still very vivid and give that "watery," effortless look.  compliments children's painting styles well!

here is the work-in-progress paul klee castles.  lots of shapes, lines, designs, patterns and colors.  a little goes a long way with these liquid watercolors!

 shape robots - 2nd grade
to continue the concept of building upon the elements of art slowly, i was inspired by these shape robots. in a cartooning class i was teaching, i wanted my students to create a robot to help solve a problem.  "why would it be built out of the things you chose? how can this help solve problems for you and your family?"  naturally, they began brainstorming with electronics: mostly using ipods and ipads to help build their robots body and i noticed how many geometric shapes they were using to create them.  i decided to carry this over into the school year to help teach rigid, everyday geometric shapes so that later it could help me introduce a contrast matisse collage using geometric/organic shapes, but that is another lesson entirely!!

anyway, the students were challenged to identify as many geometric shapes they could list.  they also needed to start thinking about "real-world" shapes that they could imagine building a robot out of.  

they loved doing this project and i loved seeing the results.  so many different results with this one project.  each one had it's own little personality.  i would probably use 9x12 paper next year seeing as these were HUGE and it would help reduce time as well as help saving paper, but otherwise, it was a successful lesson and helped me continue on to lessons about organic shapes :)

here is a worksheet i used to help my students brainstorm in a visual way without feeling threatened that everything had to be "perfect" - they are so hard on themselves!!!

loved tracing everything in black crayon first so we don't lose any of those fine details my 2nd graders added!

i had templates of large rectangles and squares for my students to start off tracing.  they added smaller details themselves.  

lines!

3rd grade construction paper crayon drawing on black paper, inspired by gustav klimt's tree of life

 LINES!
working in elementary art (well, at least in some schools i have worked in) you just never know how familiar students will be with materials or art processes.  although i was taught to teacher DBAE (discipline-based arts education) i try to start simply and rely on the elements of art to lay a foundation for my classroom.  we almost always start the year off with a line lesson in each grade.  it could be as simple as brainstorming/demonstrating lines to kinders to having 5th graders create a contour line drawing of an animal.  either way, we start with the basics.  

line sun, 1st grade (warm/cool colors)

line sun, 1st grade (warm/cool colors)

creating the warm/cool contrast resist

   here are a few line lessons i started off with this year.  some, i have tried before and some were completely new!  after your students get familiar with using pencils, crayons, markers you can slowly introduce other mediums for them to experiment with.