Ceramic projects

For Art 1 this year I gave them two options for their ceramic project, they could either make some sort of castle like tower with texture and details or a textured box that had a lid with a handle.  Everyone did something different and I am very happy with the results.  Of course they are not all done yet, but that is more my problem.  It takes a long time to glaze fire 60 projects, especially when they are as large as some of these pieces.

Erin Sk.

Tyler H.

KaSandra K.

Ashley G.  "Tree Tower"

Kamber L.

Jena F.

Sydney Hau.

Samantha Kj.

I am not good at...

As an art teacher I hear on a daily basis that I am just not good at that so my piece is not going to be that good.  I try really hard not to roll my eyes and let out a huge sigh as I say "TRY IT!"  They will never know what they are good at unless they at least attempt it.  Also they will never fall in love with a technique if they never try it.

  It is amazing what trying something can do for your life.  I had never tried flying but now I can't get enough of it and the places it can take me.  I am not sure what happened to our kids but they are scared to try.  As an art teacher it is my job to make them try something and even prove to them that it is okay to fail if it doesn't work.

But back to the point.  About two weeks ago one of my students rolled her eyes and said I am horrible at watercolor when I gave the assignment.  But I told her to pick her favorite subject to paint because I knew if she loved the subject she would take her time with the project.  So she started drawing a tiger and then she started painting the tiger.  Now I think she did it wrong by painting the black early on in the picture, but in the end it worked for her.  But I will let you be the judge...




Joslynne S.

I don't think she can say that she is horrible at watercolors EVER again.  Maybe that is just me.

Watercolor

Sammy K

Marcelle W.

Maggie H.

Brooke B.

Just cool

I love when I can give out an assignment and a student finds a similar version online and you say make it your own and then they do.  I have a young man who is a fantastic drawer and if I could find him a career that involves only drawing in this area he would be in heaven.  I have other students working on their black and white drawings but he is the first one done.  I think I have to apologize to some of his other teachers because I think he has been working on this for more than one hour a day.

Logan O.

close up of the face mask with Detroit skyline inside of it

 

Silent words

After learning about Leonardo DaVinci and his famous hands that appear in most of his paintings I had my Art 1 students make words in sign language.  The words give us a chance to say something, but also learn to look and draw their hands at the same time.  Now for those of you who don't know sign language (and I only know my alphbet from doing this project every year) the students are supposed to embed 3-5 clues about their word in colored pencil.  Some of the clues are helpful and sometimes I don't even think anybody would be able to put those two words together, but lets see how you do with the following examples.

Mariah B.

Kamber L.

Ashley G.

Melissa C.

Sydney Hau.

Danica H.

Sydney Hag.

Alright how did you do on your sign language with clues. 

Mariah = roses

Kamber = panda

Ashley = royal

Melissa = crown

Sydney Hau.= Santa

Danica = Simba

Sydney Hag = hippo

 

 

Candy Attack

After halloween everyone had candy so I asked my drawing class to bring in a wrapper and draw that wrapper and candy from observation.

Jozlynn

Kelsey

Brooklyn

Pretty sweet lesson if you ask me!

Observe a glass

About a month ago I went to a workshop that talked about students needing to look at objects and draw what they see in front of them.  So I had my drawing class look at glassware and glass objects and draw them in Charcoal with white charcoal highlights.

Rylee S.

Oops!!

Well I learned a great lesson this week.  I had some great new shelves put in this summer and so I took several hours carefully organizing them and moving my jars of glaze on to these pretty shelves. 

The problem I discovered with these shelves is that they get sunlight, which wouldn't be a big deal, but I learned to day that glaze does not like sunlight.  After about the 5th jar being opend and someone saying that it was dried up I had the Ahaha moment when I figured out that the glaze does not like sun.

So then I had to reorganize my shelves.  I guess that is what I get for beign efficient.

Glass Class

Last spring I took a glass fusing class from another teacher and I thought I could easily do that at my school.  So last saturday I offered a class to the community on glass fusing jewelery or christmas decorations.

We had a ton of fun and made some very creative projects.

For the Birds.

I know I have made several posts today, but I had to include the fact that I am currently bird sitting for a student this morning.  She is going to be using the bird for a project for another class, but with the short schedule she thought I would have the best location to store the bird for the morning. 

It is kind of fitting for the craziness of this room.

Clay Attack

So my stressful week is coming to a close.  I was so nervous last weekend as to how sixty clay projects would work this week and if we could get them all done.

  And then the boys football team decided to win their game and send us to the state tournament today which meant I was only going to get about 4 days to work on clay projects with some of my classes. 

And then of course some of the students needed to be gone for other workshops and classes and so needless to say I have been stressed this week!!!

But as of this morning majority are done, and a few of the football players have even come in this morning and finished their projects so I am hoping by the end of the morning (since we are getting out at noon for football) that they are all done.

They had two choices for this project.  They could either make a castle tower with details or a box with texture and a handle on the top.  I had about a 50/50 mix in projects which is what I love.

Destroyed Books

Sometimes it is fun to do something that you are told your whole life not to do, like be mean to your books.  How many of us wouldn't have fun just tearing up and destroying a book that you don't want to read.  Well that was our assignment for my sculpture class.  They ripped, cut and even burned parts of the books to get these final products.  I think they had fun.

Chad V.

Sammy K.

Eli H.

Emma J.

Joslynne S.

Some had more fun than others.  And some learned lessons about how hard a book is to cut up and destroy when you want to cut out an image.