Cut It Out

I know my title is a little cheesy, but if you are a kid from the 90s like me than you get the pun.

Art 1 was looking at Henri Matisse's paper cut outs and we also watched a video of the artist Jen Stark, who does these amazing works of art with construction paper.  She uses hundreds of sheets to create her works of art, I required 6 sheets for this project.

Basically I wanted students to learn how to see layers in art, by cutting them out of six sheets of construction paper and laying them on top of each other to create a work of art.  I start by having them draw a 1 inch border around each sheet of paper and then they need to make sure that each layer can function on its own.  So in other words, whatever they put in their picture must touch some part of that border.  So some of them have to get creative to hide parts of the paper so that it will appear in the middle of the page.

Abby K.

Remington L.

Austin L.

Heidi S.

Brayden F.

Laura L.

Travel with Matisse

Art 1 did a quick study of Henri Matisse's paper cut-outs.  We looked at how he used colored paper to cut out images from his favorite location, which happen to be the ocean, and then glued them to paper in almost an abstract way.

After discussing him, I had the students think about a favorite place where they have been or a place that they would like to visit since they are so young and really haven't been anywhere yet.  Then they started with a large piece of construction paper and were told to create a sort of travel poster of the area that they picked.  I of course had a few rules.

1.  No pencil lines.  You could use a pencil to draw before cutting, but then either erase or flip over so I don't see the lines.
2. Everything out of construction paper.
3.  Try not to do any words.  Let us figure out your location from the images.  (Of course, not everyone followed this direction very well, but they tried).
4.  There had to be 10 different concepts in the picture.  That didn't mean only 10 pieces of paper.  Making two palm trees doesn't count for two items.  They count as one concept.  And the sun does not count as a concept.  You can see that at home just like anywhere else.  Also some images might be needed to get a point across that doesn't mean they count.   I know I am a slave driver.

I am curious if you can guess the places they want to visit or encourage you to visit.  The answers will be at the bottom.

Sammy

Joslynne

Daniel

Raechel

Maggie

Sabrina L.

Landen

Brooke

Kelsey

Sabrina M.

Got any good idea of where you are traveling to????

Sammy - Florence
Joslynne - New York
Daniel - Hawaii
Raechel - Disney
Maggie - Mexico
Sabrina L. - Paris
Landen - Wyoming
Brooke - South Dakota
Kelsey - California
Sabrina M. - Antartica

How did you do??  I know, some were easier than others.

More Owls

My Friday class just finished their owls the other day, so I am showing them off today.  They came out cute.

DOTS!!

A few years ago I had a student who wanted to do a project entirely out of paper punched dots.  At first I thought she was crazy, but I said go for it.  Needles to say she started with a huge piece of paper and never finished the project, but she did give me the idea for this art 1 project.  So in someways I have to tell her thank you.  Now if I could only remember her name...

Anyways,  for art Art 1 we study the pointillism work of Georges Seurat and I was always amazed that the man painted huge paintings with dots the size of a pencil eraser.  But I needed a project to get that point across to my students.  So I took the idea of that former student and I shrunk it down.  Instead of a 12 x 18 piece of paper (yes that is what size she thought she could cover with dots and not lose her sanity) I made the project into a 4x6 piece of paper.  So about the size of a postcard.  Then I talk about how to do color blending with your eyes and how to mix the colors of construction paper to create a picture that looks like it has been layered. 

The overall project takes about a good week to week and a half.  Not because it is necessarily a difficult project, but it is a time consuming project to punch and glue all of those dots.  I have learned over the years to either bring earplugs or just tune out the constant whinning that prevails over the classroom.  Also a few reminders that I could have been this worse by asking for a bigger project helps with the attitude issues.  In the end when they come out really nice both of us forget the complaining.

Joslynne

Chantel

Logan Z

Rachael

Emma

So this year they found my modge podge,  I haven't decided yet if I like that or not.

One day Dragons

Every now and then I hit a huge dilema.  I want to do a project that goes with a specific holiday, but the last project took too long and I am left with one day to fit in a project.  For some projects that is just fine, but then there are projects like todays project where it should have been done in two periods, but I became the drill sargent and forced it into one. 

Of course it becomes the most stressful 40 minutes in my life, (and I am sure that is not good on me) but sometimes I think it is good to push the kids out of their comfort zones. 

Anyways, I decided that the 3rd graders needed to do something for the Chinese New Year, (which is monday).  I love Chinese New Year and I love dragons, which is what the symbol for next  year is, so I couldn't let this opportunity pass me by.

So to accomplish this goal of a one day dragon I went completely away from my normal routine and pre-cut all of the paper and I even made stencils for the head.  I hate using stencils but I wanted them to not get so frustrated with trying to draw the head.  After they cut out the stenciled head, we then took squares of paper and folded all the sides and cut a slit so that they would fold into boxes.  Then we cut out eyes and teeth and then I did let them do anything else they wanted to do to their dragons.  I even brought out tissue paper ribbons and glitter. 

But in the end they pulled it out and they actually came out pretty good.

Some of them look kind of vicious in the pictures, but they didn't look that fierce in person.