Zentangle Umbrella Project

Art 2 students created a zentangle inspired patio umbrella project. It was a project created and oversaw by my student teacher while she was here. It was a nice idea, but it had issues. The main issue was that it took way, way longer than the time we had allotted so the student teacher didn't get to see the project finished. That was a bummer.

 

Overall, I'd say that this won't be a repeat project. The students enjoyed working on it, but it wasn't worth the expense or the mess.  I think if we had been able to purchase denim or duckcloth and use bleach pens like we had originally wanted, the project would have been super cool. But we had to purchase the more inexpensive polyester umbrellas (that's all Walmart had..) and then use slick fabric paint. The fabric paint bled throught the fabric and stained my floor in lots and lots of places even though we put down poster board between the fabric and the floor.  We also used a ton of paint.. and we still ran out.

 

A few close ups..

 

 

And a few pictures of the finished umbrellas.

 



 

Congrats to two amazing artists!

It's the end of fabulous art year.

 

To top it off, we got the official results from the Congressional Art Contest today.

 

We compete in District 11, Congressman Mike Conaway's district which includes schools from both small rural areas and large school districts.

 

The way it works is that every high school from each congressional district is invited to submit 3 pieces to their congressman to be judged. The winning piece is placed in the US Capitol for a year.

 

This year, 2 of our 3 student's placed.

 

Shelby received one of only 5 Honorable Mention's awarded.

Shelby with her graphite portrait.

 

 

And,  Santiago placed 4th!

Santiago with his photograph.

I couldn't be prouder of these students! And to top it off.. they are only sophomore's! WooHoo! Can't wait to see what they will create next year! 

Spatula Painting

I've been having fun with my advanced students teaching them how to paint with a palette knife. Then this past weekend at the State VASE contest, I had an opportunity to teach 80 of the best art students in the state how to paint with a kitchen spatula!! It was a blast.

Here are a couple of the samples I made.

Here is my tutorial!

How to make an acrylic painting with a spatula by emilymclemore

Art 2 Self Portraits

As we get to spring break, I'm trying to clean up my room, my files and get students to finish up artwork!

Part of this clean up is updating my website, my artsonia site and just general publicity stuff for the kids.

Animoto gives me a chance to make 30 second videos for free, so here are some of the self portraits that students have completed recently.

[Click on Art 2 Self Portraits to see the video..]

I can only include like 12 pictures in the video, so these videos are just representative works. It hard, I'd like to include everyone's work, but I don't want to pay for the animoto membership!! :)

If you want to see more of the work, make sure to check out my artsonia site!

Art 1 Still Life Painting Projects

Art 1 students have been drawing and painting a still life for what seems like weeks! The process has been rather involved, but well worth the efforts. 

Here are a couple of pictures of the still life set ups. I placed 9 arrangements of different objects around the classroom. Thankfully I have a large room!

 

Students were required to draw each of the 9 arrangements 3 times on a quarter size piece of paper. Yes, that was 27 drawings!!! As you can imagine, they appreciated this assignment.

Once the 27 were done, the students then chose one they enjoyed drawing the most and drew it on a larger paper. This was a separate grade.

Then I gave out 12x12 chipboard and the students had to draw their still life on the board, completely filling the board.

Here is my sample that I drew.

 Then, because we were using chipboard and it would warp, I had the students paint the backside a solid color.

And finally the fun part! Students had to paint their "canvas" in grey scale. This base makes students focus on composition errors and highlights and shadows. 

 

When the "dead" painting was the complete, the students was ready to add color. Students were given red, yellow, blue, black and white and were required to mix their own colors. The dark greys from the dead painting gave a great depth to the mixed colors.

This project has taken a lot longer than I originally planned, but was worth it. I can't wait to show off the finished artwork!

Advanced Art Students tackle Oil Paints!

Today my AP girls started Oil painting with palette knives!

 

We are taking it slowly and just learning how to hold the knife and how to spread the paint.

Tomorrow we are going to learn different brush strokes!

In case you want to join in our fun, check out http://www.paletteknife.net/