This Week in Art! February 24-28

6th Grade Art:


Welcome to "E" Term art classes new 6th grade students! We've had kind of a weird first week, but that's kind of how the school year has been going. I had a doctor appointment on the first day of art, so students worked on drawings for the Doodle for Google 2014 contest. If students complete an entry and have it filled out by a parent, I'll mail it in! I'll need them by March 13th in order to make the March 20th arrival deadline, so don't forget if you'd like to enter!

On Tuesday we had our "First Day of Art" presentation, and sent home permission slips for our Artsonia gallery. Make sure that you return your signed parent permission slip so that your artwork gets published online! You can go here to view past student artwork.

On Wednesday, we practiced using the Chromebooks to do all sorts of tasks, including collaborating on a class portrait!

Today, we began our first drawing skill: block lettering. This will be used for our first sketchbook assignment, which is a 1-point perspective name design. Block letters are also the inspiration for our big upcoming sculpture unit!

7th Grade Art:


This was also the first week of art for 7th grade "E" term classes, and we also participated in Doodle for Google on Monday... see above for more details.

Wednesday was a big day for using Chromebooks in art. We completed lots of fun tasks, like:

• Using Padlet to discuss favorite art mediums.
• Taking a survey to introduce ourselves to the class.
• Adding an app (Pixlr-O-Matic) via the Chrome store.
• Taking a self-portrait and saving it to Google Drive.
• Collaborating and inserting photos to a shared Google doc as a class.
• Building with the Lego "Build with Chrome" app!

8th Grade Art:


This week, we spent most of our time trying to get all of our clay pieces glazed! We are hard at work, getting our large pieces ready for firing and our mini mugs ready for sale at Art in the Park 2014! I'll be looking for some student and parent volunteers soon to help work shifts at Art in the Park in May (May 3 & 4, to be exact!) and help sell mini mugs to the public. Once again, we'll be raising money for the UCCA food pantry.

Next week, we'll be in a bit of a panic mode, trying to finish up projects while ISAT week is also going on... but we'll manage, as we always do!

In other art news...
This 4-year old makes paper dresses with her mom, and they are totally cute and amazing. Such a fun story!

MARCH IS YOUTH ART MONTH!



Next week on Monday, the following announcement will air on Spartan TV in the morning. In honor of Youth Art Month 2014, I am hosting a "creativity challenge" for students: to DO SOMETHING CREATIVE, EVERY DAY - and tell me about it! At the end of the month, I will randomly choose a winner from each grade level to receive an art prize pack! There are two ways to enter: email me OR enter online (you must be a D205 student to enter).

Every week, I will also feature some of my favorite entries here on the blog!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This week in art: Feb 17-21

6th Grade Art:


Today we celebrated the last day of 6th grade art with the debut of our comic book! Our theme was "When I Grow Up..." and each student drew a page in the book. Each student will bring home a copy of the book today! This project gave us the opportunity to demonstrate our skills in using hatching, crosshatching, stippling, and doodle drawing techniques when using ink to draw pictures.

Also, be on the lookout soon for a .pdf version of the comic (it'll be on the 6th grade art webpage) which you can download to iBooks and read digitally!

7th Grade Art:


We spent an intense week in 7th grade, working hard on our observational drawings of pop cans. We wanted to accurately represent the shadows and highlights of a crushed can in 3-dimensions. It was hard, but I think that we were pretty darn successful! Finished drawings were turned in today, on the last day of 7th grade art. Be on the lookout for grades to be posted soon, and photographs of the final drawings to be published on Artsonia.

Students who finished with enough time remaining wrote artist statements about their pop can drawings, which will be posted alongside their artwork on Artsonia. I think it's really cool to get a glimpse into the artistic process and to get to read a little on how students reflect back upon their work!

8th Grade Art:


Eighth grade has been hard at work on their pixelated portrait project! It is very labor- and time-intensive! We probably have about a week's worth of work time left before we can call these drawings finished, but we'll be taking a break next week to glaze our ceramic pieces. Then we'll come back to finish these beautiful drawings - I'm so excited by the progress that I've seen so far!

This drawing is challenging for students at different levels for a variety of reasons. Detail-oriented students have a hard time "ignoring" the details and abstracting the face into squares and half-squares (aka the "pixels"). Even students who struggle with drawing can find it hard to look past the parts of the face - "does this LOOK like an eye? will this LOOK like a mouth?" - and just concentrate on the colors in each individual square.

"Trust the process," I keep telling the students. "It works!" And those who do, find some pretty amazing results!

In other art news...
Elmhurst Art Museum has a Family Workshop this Saturday (tomorrow) at 10:30 am with artist Monica Wulfers that is free with your admission! This workshop, inspired by the artist's own work, will keep your brain limber and your neurons firing as you explore the intersection of math and art. Learn about grids, lines, points and number values through drawing and games. Ages 5 and up with adult.

Here is a cool article about artist Judith Braun and how her artwork ended up on the snowboard of an Olympic medal winner in Sochi!



Lastly, Doodle 4 Google 2014 is now open! We'll be drawing designs in class on Monday with the new 6th and 7th grade classes, but the contest is open to ALL students! If you are interested in entering, please print off a form here. I'll gladly submit an entry for any student with a completed entry - the deadline is March 20th!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: February 10-14

6th Grade Art:


This week, we finished our letter sculptures! Students then used the art room iPads to photograph and upload images of their sculptures to our Artsonia gallery on their own - how cool! On Thursday, students brought their sculptures home.

On Wednesday, we began our next (and final) art project: a class comic book! Each student will get to draw one page in our book, and on the last day of art, each student will receive a copy of our comic to take with them. In preparation for this project, we spent time learning about different drawing techniques: hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, and doodle, which will be used in our comic drawings. The theme of our class comic book this term is "When I Grow Up..."

7th Grade Art:


This week, we closed out our monochromatic portrait painting project by mounting our paintings to black paper and writing artist statements about our work. This writing will appear alongside our work on Artsonia when it gets published online (probably sometime next week - be on the lookout!).

On Tuesday, we started our "Evolution of a Pop Can" observational still-life drawing unit. Students brought in a canned beverage to draw from observation - naturally, we had to drink the contents as we worked... !!! We will draw the cans in three stages: a full can, a partial "crush," and a full "crush." This drawing will take us all the way to the end of next week, which will be the last day of art for Term D art classes.

Today (Friday, 2/14) was also the due date for Sketchbook #2 - our Op-Art inspired black and white drawings.

8th Grade Art:


Our clay mugs are in the process of being bisque-fired! Round one went through the kiln this week, and next week a second batch will go through! The mini mugs have all been successfully fired, and are awaiting completion of all bisque firings. We'll have a massive glaze-a-palooza and get them all done in one big swoop!



During other times, we've been starting a new project! Our pixel portraits have just begun. Students are using a grid system over a digital "selfie" to create a pixelated colored pencil portrait. This is a pretty intense drawing that takes a lot of concentration and time, but the results are amazing! Check out the results from last quarter on Artsonia for past results.

In other (sort of) art news...

Happy Valentine's Day!

This weekend, I am very excited because I finally get to go see the Lego movie after hearing students talk about it all week. Also, I have tickets to go see Justin Timberlake on Sunday. And we have Monday off of school. This is big deal-level stuff for me.

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: Feb 3-7

6th Grade Art:


We have gotten super far on our letter sculptures this week!  We completed our paper mache layers, we added a puffy paint textural design to the front face of our letter, and now we've begun adding a base coat of acrylic paint to the entire piece!  Next week, we'll add the final touches and begin photographing our work for Artsonia - parents, make sure you've created your account so that your student's work is published online!

Today was also the due date for our second sketchbook assignment: our room design drawings using 1-point perspective skills learned from our first sketchbook drawing.  Students sure had some creative room ideas!

7th Grade Art:


Today was the last day to finish up our monochromatic self-portrait paintings.  They're really turning out amazing!  On Monday, we'll glue them to background paper and do some final assessments and artist statements about our work.

We've also been working on our second sketchbook assignment, which will be due next Friday, Feb 14th: a black and white design inspired by Op Art.  We traced our hand outline into paper, and we're filling in the spaces with zentangle-like designs and patterns.  You can check out some of the previous work done by seventh grade students here.  I've always thought that these drawings would make really cool iPhone cases, which is something you can actually have made on Artsonia with your students work!  Isn't that neat?

8th Grade Art:


Today we worked really hard to try and finish up construction on our clay mugs so that they can sit out and air-dry for firing next week.  Some of us were successful... and some of us will need a little bit of time next week during lunch and/or extended seminar in order to finish!

We also started work on our third sketchbook assignment.  It is a "master copy" of a famous artwork.  We used the Chromebooks to research and select a famous work of art that students will try to reproduce using colored pencil. Then students used a shared Google spreadsheet to "sign up" for artworks so that no two students chose the same work of art.  Current 8th grade art students can access the spreadsheet here.

Sketchbook #3 will be due on Wednesday, February 19th.

In other art news...
I really want to go see The Lego Movie this weekend.  That is all.

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.