Clay Monsters

Ceramics I. is one of my favorite classes to teach. After learning the basic hand building techniques, I set my students loose to see what they could do.

The students were very excited when they found out they were building monsters. They quickly rattled off the names of monsters from movies and television that they were anxious to recreate, however, that was not an option. I wanted them to use their imaginations to create their own monsters. They had to develop a piece of writing to explain their monster and it's traits. Would their monster wear clothes and have a job? Would they be a wild animal running loose through town? They came up with everything from a field report to a news cast about this new creature. Every decision they made about the visual appearance of their monster had to be supported by where and how it lived. If they had sharp teeth, what did they eat? Do they need claws for defense? Webbing to swim? Students wrote their papers, made a sketch, and started building.

My favorite part about this project is how different all of their monsters turned out. They were all so excited to create something totally their own, and we got an amazing result.

Getting Caught Up!

I haven't posted in a while (a long while) due to getting married and building our first home. During that time I have also started my first teaching job at a high school in a fabulous school district. It has only been one semester and already they have created such beautiful work!

To kick off the year, we started with my new favorite art find; Zentangles! If you are unfamiliar with Zentangles, you can visit http://www.zentangle.com/ to learn more. This new art form serves as a meditative drawing exercise that is accessible to everyone. We put on some Jack Johnson and let the tangles flow.

I loved starting off the day with this calming exercise. My students were focused and relaxed and created some beautiful work!

The Versatile Blogger Award

Thanks to Ren at Dali's Moustache for awarding me with the "Versatile Blogger Award!" She has beautiful work to share on her blog, so check it out :-) The rules of the award are to share 7 interesting facts about myself, and then pass the award on to 10 new or favorite blogs of mine.

1. I am getting married to my best friend in 37 days. (But who's counting?)
2. I can't wait to get a job teaching elementary art! I really believe that teaching art is a job that I will love to get up and do every morning for the next 30 years and I feel so lucky to have found my passion so early in life.
3. One of my favorite memories is being in the rainforest and having a red-eyed tree frog climb through my hair.
4. I've played the flute since I was 11.
5. I am currently writing my first children's book.
6. My favorite artist is Charley Harper, a Cincinnati artist. If you've never seen his work, look it up right now!
7. My cat's name is Charley and I plan to name my first born son Harper. Ha!

Ten of my favorite/new found blogs:

1. MN Art Gal
2. Blue Moon Palette
3. Draw, Paint and Cut
4. What Will We Make Now?
5. Art Teacher's Closet
6. An Art Teacher's Fairy Teal
7. HegARTy
8. One Crayola Short
9. Use your Colored Pencils
10. Art is Awesome!

Thanks for all of the wonderful lessons and inspiration! Pass it on :-)

Local Artists Unit- Triptychs

I wanted to share some final triptychs all put together! (some are still unfinished, but we'll just pretend they're supposed to be diptychs. :-) ) Enjoy!

Local Artists Unit- #3 John Ruthven

The final piece to our triptych was in the style of local artist, John Ruthven. He is a wildlife painter to works often in water color. To learn more about John Ruthven see my earlier post about his life and work.

After exploring our new artist and his work, students chose their favorite animal to draw. They looked at a photo of the animal and drew them in a realistic style. They water colored and outlined them in Sharpie.

Local Artists Unit- #2 Toni Rhodes

The second artist we talked about was Toni Rhodes. She is a local encaustic artist.

We talked about abstract art and how you can use colors to express your ideas. Ms. Rhodes came in and spoke to the students. They got to see (and even TOUCH!) some of her work. She talked about the process of creating her pieces and the students loved the idea of creating art with a blow torch. We were, however, going to take a less hazardous approach to encaustics; melted crayons.

I brought in an electric skillet to melt the crayons. We peeled the paper off, broke the crayons into several pieces, and put them in small tins that are typically used to make candles.

After talking to students about how to paint safely, I called them over 4 or 5 at a time. They were asked to think about how they could express their animal using only colors, shapes, lines, or textures. What colors are in your animal? What does their skin feel like? Where do they live? (Only having 11 students and another teacher to help, it was easy to safely monitor all students) They had to paint very quickly because as soon as the wax came out of the tin it was dry in seconds.

This was a great experience for my students. They couldn't get hung up on what it was going to look like in the end or how each brushstroke would look. They got to explore a new material, and they had a blast!