Grimm Houses

No our houses are not sad and depressing, or at least most of them are not.  However, Art 1 read Grimm Fairy tales and designed clay houses for the characters.

I started this assignment with giving all of my students a list of Grimm fairy tales that they could find on the internet.  I even included the websites so that I knew we would all be on the same page.  I then gave them one day to read and pick 5 stories that they could think of something to create for.  Then we drew names out of a hat and each student had a chance to come up and sign up for the story that they were going to use as inspiration.  I did this because I didn't want 32 cinderella castles.  I wanted some variety from different stories and different characters.

Some of the students researched other stories that were not on my list and as long as I was okay with the story we added them to our list.

They then had to sketch a plan of what type of house they wanted to create and for which character.  They were told to think what types of homes they would find some of these characters living in.  I also let them be creative with the interpretation of the stories.  For instance, I told them that if they had Little Red Riding Hood they could use the basket she carries to Grandma's house and make that into a house.

Once I approved their plans then they could use clay to build their houses.  The only condition I had is that is had to be bigger then 6 inches and smaller than 12 inches.  I think next year I will go even smaller then that.  Some of these kids used a ton of clay.

After they created them and then added details, I fired them in the kiln and then were allowed to either glaze them or paint them with acrylic paints.

Carter H. - The Turnip

Mikayla R. - The owl

Karima H. - Cinderella

Malary M. and Adan M. - the Frog King

Close Up of Malary M.

Will S. and Eli H. - The Elves

Bree H.  - Rumpelstitskin

Riley H. and Alasia J. - Hansel adn Gretel

Yeva S. - Snow White

Sam S. and Aleah B. - Rapunzel

Bella J. - The Fisherman and his wife

I also need to thank Mrs. Hobart and her aids in the library for finding books that go with some of our stories.

Finding the Light

As an art teacher it is my job to teach shading, and sometimes that is a very difficult job, until you try to teach them to find the highlights.  It is very hard for students to change their mindset and look for the light areas of a picture instead of looking for the shadows.  But I gave the assignment to my art 2 class and here are some of the better ones.

Courtney M. 

Sydney Hag.

Hanna S.

Sydney Hau.

Kelsey C.

Read my hands

Every year Art 1 studies the master of line, Leonardo DaVinci and then we spend some time working with drawing people and especially hands.  Since DaVinci is famous for his pointing fingers, I take that pointing finger and turn it into a sign language lesson.

Each student must spell out a 5 letter or bigger word in sign language.  They must also shade the hands and add at least 3-5 little clues about what their word is.  The clues are supposed to be done in colored pencil so that they stand out from the hands.  Since the words need to have clues they can't do their names or logos.  They also can't use numbers in their word.

The pictures of these projects are hard to take since the project is done on 6x18 paper.

Madisyn V. - Christmas

Mykah W.  - Avengers

Ali R.  - Stars

Brooke K.  - Ocean

Malary M.  - Horse

American Pride

For challenge #2, my advanced classes had to create a work of art that resembled America Pride to them.  The requirements for this challenge, were that they had to use three different mediums to create their one project.

That proved to be a very difficult challenge for most of my students.  They had a hard time figuring out how to make multiple mediums work together in harmony.  But after two days of voting I am proud to announce that the winning design was from Karly N.  Her "We the People" background with its lightly washed flag over and burnt edges was a crowd favorite.

Karly N. - 1st

Chad V. - 2nd

Jon C. - 3rd

Kelsey C. - 4th

Marcelle -5th

 Other favorites that either didn't get finished in time, or just didn't have enough votes.  But they are still done really well.

Alex L.

Danica H.

Derek E.

Sydney Hau.

Kamber L.

KaSandra K.

Mariah B.

Sabrina L.

I am very proud of all of my students and I hope that they found some pride in not only themselves but their country.

Art can be awesomely gross

With Halloween this week we decided to put a pause on some of our projects and turn people into zombies.  We learned how to make special effect makeup from simple supplies like elmers glue and tissue paper.  So we had a little fun this week with making ourselves look injured.

Opening the wounds after gluing to the skin.

Early painting stages.

Final gashes.

Trying to make it look like you can see her teeth through the gash.

Prayers always help.

Drama queens.

One teacher and her daughter got in on the fun.