We Are the Champions!

Some of the team with myself and the Championship trophy

I need to give a big Congratulations to my students on their State A Visual Arts Championship win this past saturday.  This was the first EVER state art competition and to walk away with the title has been a pretty amazing experience.  I have some amazing students and I am so proud of them and all of their hard work.

Drea Boer - 3rd place Colored Drawing

Drea B. - right

 

Kamber L. - watercolor

Kamber L. - Acrylic Painting

Kelsey C. - 1st in Photography

Malary M. - Crafts

Sammy K. - 1st in Multimedia/Graphic Design

Sammy's 1st place Thriller video

Sydney H. - 1st place in 3D 

Octomug - 1st place in 3D and "Best of Show"

Sydney and myself with her Best of Show Award

Sydney H. - 2nd in Drawing

Sydney H. - 2nd in Drawing

Yeva S. -1st in Printmaking

Yeva S. - 1st in Printmaking

Yeva S. - Mixed Media

They did an amazing job and I am so proud of them.  Thanks to all that have sent congratulations.

Photography in the new year

I know it is March, but here are some of the best from our photography assignments for the 3rd quarter.

Jack G. - shadow photo

Sammy K. - bird's eye view

Eli H. - Close up

Hannah S. - Leading lines

Riley H. - Shadow

Alli H. - Winter

Sammy K. - Winter

Time flies when art is happening...

So I see it has been forever since I have talked about what my advanced classes are doing.  So I am sorry if this is a really long post, but I thought I would just give a little bit of everything.  If you want to see more examples I will have them on my website https://dewittart.shutterfly.com/ in the Art 2 and Art 3 classes.

Alasia J. - The minions meet Munch's "Scream"

 So here are a few examples from Art 2.  They have been working on drawing pos/neg images and mixing famous works of art with modern movies/book characters.

Alex - Lego movie moves in on Davinci's "Last Supper"

Emily H. - An m&m man eats humans.

Mikayla R. - Monkey mama with her negative baby image

Yeva S. - The "Notebook" meets Monet's waterlilies.

Art 3 has also been working with famous works of art, but they had to take a famous work of art from one artist and recreate it with the style of another artist.  They have also been working on pop-up pop art and large realistic drawings that focused on a reflection or foreshortening.

Brooke K. - Art in another style

Erin S. - pop up cat

Sydney Hag. - reflection drawing

Jozlynn P. - Foreshortening drawing

Kamber L. - Pop up pop art

Malary M. - Miss Piggy pop up

Marcelle W. - reflection drawing

Sammy K. - Monet meets Lichtenstein

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.

Painting with chalk

As we move through the history of art in Art 1 we have to stop and take note of the styles of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch.  We note how they were post-impressionism artists with some expressionism in their work.  We look at how color can affect the mood of a painting.  So we started by making a simple tree, dividing it in half and then chalk painting one side with bright colors and the other side with depressing dark colors.

This is also  great way for students to get the hang of chalk painting.  I don't know where I came up with this a few years ago, but we do is take colored chalk and we mix it with colorful paint.  The rules are simple.
1. You have to have the paint and chalk combine, so you can't just cover the paper with chalk.  This means you have to do the short choppy brush-like strokes of van Gogh and Munch because the paint doesn't spread very far off of the chalk.
2. You also can't use the same color paint as chalk.  So you can't use a blue chalk with a blue paint, their is no color change when you do that.  The more you mix it up the more beautiful and interesting that the painting will get.
3.  And lastly, make sure that you wipe off the chalk when you are done painting with it.  The paint will ruin the chalk and you can't wash chalk.  You can let the paint dry and then clean it with an xacto knife though.

Here are some of my favorites this year.  I tried to get them to create a mood with their final project.  

Paige S.

Kayley R.

Drea B.

Jacob K.

A possible shipwreck

So before Christmas I was asked by a gal in town if I could fix her painting's frame.  I asked her to bring it in and I would take a look at it.  She brought me a Ferdinand Worms lithograph on tin print.  I had never even heard about this type of artwork, let alone seen or touch one before.

She could tell me that the painting was of the ship that her father had come over to this country on and had been purchased a long time ago.  Basically she said her dad had it hanging on his wall as long as she could remember and then it went to a family member, then her sister and now she was the owner of it.  But she didn't know anything about the artist.  So I had to do some research.

The reason she was bringing it to me is that she had tried to clean it with oven cleaner.  And that had caused the paint to strip around the edge of the frame.  But I was scared to death to touch it.

I started with my research.  I learned that is was painted by Ferdinand Worms in about 1913 and then put onto these tin lithographs with this faux wood grain frame.  It was all on one painting and from what I learned could be worth up to $1500 if it was in mint condition.  Hers was anything but mint condition but could still be worth about $300.  But she was determined to just have the frame redone and that it would be a family piece from here on out.

This is the painting in mint condition.

This was what hers looked like.  If you look in the upper left corner you can see the destruction the oven cleaner had on the tin frame.  Also this image gives you a pretty good look at the faux wood grain.

This is my final restoration.  I picked a flat metal spray paint to match the ship and I hand painted in all of the letters and the bronze trim by the letters and the edging.

She finally had to call me to give me the push to finish it, but once I got started I learned that it was not that difficult to do and was actually kind of fun.  It took about 3 -4 coats of paint to cover up the oven cleaner damage.  In the end it didn't take me very long either, so it just goes to show you shouldn't be scared of a project.

Let's get to the point!

So i love the impressionism artists, and I love teaching their styles, but my students are never really fond of Georges Seurat and his dots.  I guess I can't blame them, its not that he has a hard or difficult technique, but it is time consuming.  I love this project because it makes them slow down and take their time with a project.  It also forces them to pay attention and to step back from their work from time to time and see if they are getting the shading right.

This year I let them have the choice of doing it all black and white or in colored markers with no black.  I see that most of my favorites were the ones done in black and white.  Maybe I will need to just do the project in that next year, but when you see the colored one at the bottom you will know why I am hesitant to take away that possibility. 

Abby K.

Jaikob D.

Nikole K.

Hannah S.

Drea B.