This Week in Art: 3.24 - 3.28

Remember: Ms. Heuel is currently our student teacher in the art room until May 9th. Mrs. Leban will still be blogging about what's happening in the art room in the meantime, but the day-to-day happenings and lessons are all being run by Ms. Heuel! 

6th Grade Art:


This week, 6th grade students finished up their block letter sculptures. On Thursday, students used the iPads to photograph and upload their own artwork to Artsonia! How cool! Students are currently working on artist's statements, which will be uploaded along side their artwork on Artsonia very soon. On Thursday, students also turned in their second sketchbook assignment, a 1-point perspective room design drawing. After spring break, we have a fun activity to complete with these drawings, so be on the lookout! We'll also begin our comic book unit right after break, too.

7th Grade Art:


This week, 7th grade students finished up their monochromatic self-portrait paintings and matted their work on colored paper. They also worked on their second sketchbook assignment, which was due today, Friday. This sketchbook assignment was our Op-Art inspired black and white design drawing.

8th Grade Art:


This week, 8th grade students made the big push to complete all of their clay construction before spring break. This way, all of the clay can air-dry over break and be ready for kiln firing when we return. It's important for clay to be completely bone dry before going into the kiln so that it doesn't explode! Yep, that's a real thing.

On Thursday, students turned in their first sketchbook assignment: a program cover design for the promotion ceremony at the end of the school year. Usually, this assignment is completed at the end of the quarter, but it had to be flip-flopped this time around due to it being 4th quarter and needing to start getting decisions made and finalists chosen! And that's kind of exciting!

When we return from break, we'll be beginning a new unit on drawing, starting a new sketchbook assignment, and thinking about firing and glazing clay. We sure will be busy!

In other art news...
CREATIVITY CHALLENGE UPDATE!
This was the last week of the creativity challenge, and our winners were chosen this morning LIVE on Spartan TV! Congratulations to our winners, listed below!

• 6th Grade: Sophia R.
• 7th Grade: Kaitlyn T.
• 8th Grade: Alexis D.
• Teacher Winner: Mrs. Provost

I did also receive some awesome entries this week for our Youth Art Month/Creativity Challenge contest, so I thought I'd feature some of our final favorites here below:



The artwork above was all made by 6th grade students! The top three pencil sketches were made by Sophia R, and the digital cat portrait in the middle row was made by Isabella D.

The last two images in the middle row (above) are shaving cream "sculptures" made by a group of 6th grade girls (Corinn, Mikaela, and Gabrielle) at a very artistic and creative sleepover party! In the morning, they even made the cool rainbow waffles for breakfast (pictured in the bottom row above)! Great work!



Above: More cool artwork! The top three pieces are all done by 7th grader Scarlett. The middle row images are the bottlecap magnets (first mentioned in week 1) by 8th grader Georgina, and the last row is artwork by Erin in 7th grade, Ellie in 8th grade, and Billy in 7th grade.



Esther P in 8th grade sent me this photo of a mixed media artwork she created using newspaper collage and string to make a flower!




Gracie in 8th grade sent me this AMAZING speed paint video of a cat that she drew! I'm totally blown away! I'm trying to teach myself digital drawing on the iPad, so I'm familiar with how difficult it can be, and I am very impressed!

Thanks for another great week! And have a GREAT SPRING BREAK!
- Mrs. L.

Creativity Challenge Week 3 Update - Final Week!

Here's the final video in our Creativity Challenge series for our Youth Art Month celebration! Iggy and I will be at school this Friday morning on Spartan TV to announce the winners LIVE at school!

Special thanks to the Wheaton Blick Art Store for donating some of the prizes for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade YAM prize pack winners! We had a lot of fun making these videos and sharing all of the creative things that students are doing in their free time! Keep up the great work!

See you on Friday!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: March 17-21

Remember: Ms. Heuel is currently our student teacher in the art room until May 9th. Mrs. Leban will still be blogging about what's happening in the art room in the meantime, but the day-to-day happenings and lessons are all being run by Ms. Heuel!

6th Grade Art:


This week in art, 6th grade students applied paper mache to their block letter sculptures! Aren't they looking great? Today, we applied our puffy paint textures to the front sides of our letters! Also this week, we began our second sketchbook drawing: a one-point perspective room design. This drawing will be due on Thursday of next week!

Have you seen our first sketchbook drawings on Artsonia? You can check them out here!

7th Grade Art:


This week, seventh graders worked on two different assignments: first, they made progress on their self-portrait paintings using a monochromatic color scheme. Second, they began working on an Op-Art inspired design in black and white for their sketchbook #2 assignment, which will be due next Friday, March 28th.
You can view the results of our first sketchbook assignment on Artsonia here.

8th Grade Art:


This week was the first week of Quarter 4 art! Students were introduced to our student teacher, Ms. Heuel, and were sent home with an art letter/Artsonia permission slip to bring back signed.

Today, Ms. Heuel showed 8th grade students how to construct a mini mug out of clay. This procedure will be repeated on a larger scale to create functional ceramic mugs, which will be glazed and used for drinking out of by the last day of art! Most of the week this week was spent planning for our large mug designs, so it was exciting to get our hands dirty today and get to begin creating out of clay. Next week, we'll begin creating those larger mug designs.

The theme of our mug project is something that you learned in school - a class concept, a subject, an inspiring teacher... it's exciting to see how these projects will turn out!

In other art news...
CREATIVITY CHALLENGE UPDATE!

Only one week left to submit your creative things to be entered to win prizes in the Youth Art Month creativity challenge contest! Here are some cool things that happened this week:

• Lauren in 8th grade made these super creative shoes! I'm kinda jealous of them. So cute!

• Autumn in 6th grade not only drew this amazing comic, but she scanned it, uploaded it to Dropbox, created a shortened URL, and posted it to my Google form contest entry. I think that she should automatically win MOST TECH SAVVY student! You rock, Autumn!

• Drawings submitted (L-R, top to bottom): Ian in 8th grade, Gracie in 8th grade, John in 8th grade, Amanda in 6th grade, Julia in 6th grade, Christian in 8th grade, Amanda in 6th grade, submission with unidentifiable name, and Scarlett in 7th grade. (Yay! A 7th grade submission!)
• Camille in 7th grade shared with me that she auditioned for a sketch comedy troupe this week and was accepted! It's called Unintentionally Hilarious, and performs through Elmhurst Children's Theatre. Congratulations Camille!

• Mrs. Evers sent me these photos of some awesome engineering projects that were done in science class in 7th grade. (Do you think that any of these machines will grade papers for me?)

• More teacher submissions! (Clockwise, from upper left) Mrs. Morser made a gummi worm Pi symbol, Mrs. Bensfield crocheted an Easter egg for Iggy (thanks Mrs. Bensfield!), and Ms. Pauly shared some wedding invite inspiration with me, as she is designing her own! Go Ms. Pauly!
• I can't give a creativity challenge update without mentioning Mrs. Beg from Churchville. I think that she has single-handedly submitted more entries than all of the other entries combined! Check out this cool Tellagami video she made. She's also an amazing poet, and I'm constantly inspired by her energy! Thanks Mrs. Beg!

I'll have a video version of the weekly update sometime this weekend/early next week, so be on the lookout. You can view the past videos in playlist form on my YouTube channel here. And, Friday of next week is the big CREATIVITY CHALLENGE CONTEST WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT!!! So stay tuned! Woo hoo!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

Creativity Challenge Week 2 Update!

Hey! If you happen to be checking out the blog before Tuesday morning, I have a special treat for you: here's the weekly update video that will air Tuesday morning as part of the school announcements! You get to watch it early!

Special thanks to the Wheaton Blick Art Store for donating some of the prizes for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade YAM prize pack winners, which will be randomly drawn at the end of the month!

By the way, did you see our little shout out on the Illinois Youth Art Month blog? Oh yeah!!!

See you on Friday!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: March 10-14

Miss Heuel is our new student teacher in the art room at Sandburg! She'll be joining us from now on until May 9th. Miss Heuel is a student at the University of Illinois, and she is a former Sandburg Middle School student! I'm feeling pretty old right now... I can't believe that I taught her when she was in middle school!

6th Grade Art:


We accomplished so much this week! (Maybe it just feels like a lot compared to last week's ISAT schedule...) We turned in our first sketchbook assignment on Monday, and wrote artist statements about our work. Those will be posted alongside our artwork on Artsonia very very soon, so be on the lookout!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we began our block letter sculpture project! We cut out our cardboard pieces from cereal box cardboard (we like to be earth-friendly and recycle), and began taping pieces together to create the letterforms.

By Thursday, we were ready to start sketchbook assignment #2 - an interior design room drawing that utilizes our 1-point perspective drawing skills! This will be worked on concurrently with the sculpture project, and will be due on Thursday, March 27th.

Today, we finished up our letterforms and hopefully will be ready for paper mache on Monday - so messy, but oh so fun!

7th Grade Art:


This week, seventh grade students turned in their first sketchbook assignment: surreal 2-point perspective landscapes. Be on the lookout for these drawings on Artsonia very soon! Students also wrote artist statements to be posted alongside their drawings.

We also started our painting unit this week - students used portrait photos taken via Chromebooks and Pixlr-O-Matic (at the end of last week - we saved them to our Google drive) and altered them on the laptops using Adobe Photoshop software to convert the photos to four levels of value. We'll use these printouts as "maps" to paint our final artworks next week.

To prepare for painting, we practiced making value scales in a variety of colors and mixing tints and shades. This way, we'll be experts when it's time to begin our final versions!

8th Grade Art:


This week was the last week of art for Quarter 3! Are we really already 75% of the way through the school year? Whoa! We spent this week working on our final sketchbook assignment, which was a design for the promotion ceremony program cover. Finalists from the entire school year will be voted on by 8th grade teachers, and the winning design will be featured on the cover of the 8th grade promotion program. How cool!

This week, our ceramic mugs were finally fired and ready to go for the last day of class! On Wednesday, students photographed their ceramic pieces and uploaded them to Artsonia using the iPads via classroom mode. Check them out here. On Friday, we got to enjoy the "functional" part of our art by having hot chocolate in our mugs to celebrate the last day of class! Yay!

In other art news...
CREATIVITY CHALLENGE UPDATE!!!

• Mrs. Provost reported that 7^th grade sewing students are hand sewing and making customized “felt friends." Look for them next week in the display case by the cafeteria. 6^th grade foods students just competed in a Kitchen Safety Poster Contest. Look at all the great entries on the walls around the gym and FCS rooms. And 8^th grade students will be making Snickerdoodle cookies. They have also been cooking MyPlate meals at home for their families!
• Mrs. Beg is still going strong, sending me tweets every day about her creative things going on over at Churchville! One of the latest coolest things she's done is this video she posted.
• Ian S. and John Y. in 8th grade both brought in drawings that they made in extended seminar on Tuesday.
• Hanna H. in 6th grade emailed me to say that she "played Ludwig van Mozart's 9th symphony (part of it not whole thing) by ear on the piano." How fun!
• Alexis D. in 8th grade sent me four different awesome digital photo collages! (I can't post them here because they have photos of herself in them, but I promise you that they're super cool!)
• Yearbook club students sent me a photo of this creative pose: Go ART!

• Mia L. in 6th grade sent in these super cute Pony drawings!

• Mrs. Morser sent me two different #creativitychallenge e-mails: one of her St. Patrick's Day-themed seminar door, and another showing off her mad photography skills after our crazy snowstorm this week:

• Mrs. LaPenna sent me an e-mail with only two words: "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED."

• Mr. Mascheri has some crazy creativity talent when it comes to creating sets and props for the school plays at both Sandburg and Churchville! Check out some of his work below:

• Jason B. in 6th grade sure does love Pi Day today. And it's creative. Double win!

• Mrs. Gates is totally crafty! She made an Olaf for her daughter's Frozen-themed birthday party:

• Arianna K. in 6th grade created all kinds of beach-themed decorations for a quinceanera party in Spanish class - how cool!

• Amanda K. in 6th grade sent me some of her drawings (both digital and pencil/paper) for the creativity challenge:

• Anthony D. in 6th grade sent me a photo of a cool drawing that he made:

• And Mrs. Bensfield sent me pictures of her hand-crocheted creations - made without a pattern! You've probably seen Mrs. Bensfield's creations before, like the cupcake hat she made for me a few weeks ago!

Phew! That's a LOT of stuff to share! You guys are AMAZING! Keep up the great work!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

Creativity Challenge Week 1 Update!

Here's our Creativity Challenge update from week one of Youth Art Month! Follow me on YouTube for all of our updates!

 

(You can watch the original video here.)

See you Friday!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: 3.3 - 3.7.14

6th Grade Art:


This week was ISAT week here at Sandburg. This kind of stinks from an art perspective, because we lose a LOT of class time due to these standardized tests. So, each day, we had about 27 minutes of art class. To maximize time, we skipped out on traditional attendance procedures and such and go straight to the art-making! We worked all week on our first sketchbook assignment, which is a block letter name design with a 3-D effect using 1-point perspective technique. Students are encouraged to then decorate their name designs using colorful patterns, symbols, and pictures to express themselves and tell the viewer a little something about themselves as well.

These drawings are due on Monday, March 10th, so if you did not finish yours in class, it's homework over the weekend! On Monday, we'll be writing some artist statements about our work before we turn our drawings in. This artwork will be photographed and published on our Artsonia gallery after it is graded.

7th Grade Art:


7th grade spent the majority of the week (and short classes due to ISAT) working on their first sketchbook drawing, which is a SURREAL landscape that incorporates 2-point perspective boxes. This first drawing will be due this Monday, March 10th. 

Today in class, however, we spent some time taking just the right "selfie" for our portrait painting unit, which starts next week - we'll be using Adobe Photoshop to alter our photos to 4-levels of value and reproducing the look in painted form.

The Chromebooks (along with the Pixlr-O-Matic app on Chrome) were the perfect tool for snapping a variety of portraits in order to get just the right look and mood for our final artwork! Since I shy away from posting actual student photos on the blog, I decided to man up and post some of my cheesy mugshots above. That middle one is supposed to be "deep thoughts," but somehow just looks kind of sad... oh well...

8th Grade Art:


It's hard to believe that we only have ONE WEEK of art left in 8th grade after this week! Man does time fly by fast! We spent ISAT week trying to get our projects finished up as much as possible. We worked really hard to finish up our pixel portraits, but some students will end up having to take them home over the weekend in order to finish them up so that they can turn them in on Monday, March 10th. Our last day of the quarter is Friday, March 14th, so all of our work has to be finished and turned in by that time.



We finished up glazing our ceramics, so the final week of art will be spent firing our projects one last time for the glaze! By the way, do you see our brand-new vent hood? Just last week it was installed, and just yesterday we were able to test-fire it for glaze and it WORKS! It feels so good to finally have a working kiln system in the art room. It's been years in the making. What a relief! Our plan is to enjoy our new ceramic pieces on the last day of the quarter by pouring some hot chocolate into our mugs!



I'd also like to give a special shout-out to Ellie, an 8th grader who's been crocheting some awesome donuts to sell alongside our mini ceramic mugs to benefit UCCA food pantry this spring! More to come later, but I can't even stand how cute they are! Adorable!

In other art news...

Youth Art Month festivities are in full swing! The main office has a beautiful flower arrangement from Pink Carnation florist in Riverside - with primary colors and even paintbrushes! - to remind visitors about Youth Art Month.

CREATIVITY CHALLENGE UPDATE!
I've been getting some really awesome submissions for the creativity challenge - some even from non-Sandburg students! Mrs. Beg from Churchville has been tweeting up a storm, sharing all sorts of creative things going on in her neck of the woods:



Also of note: my Aunt Denise all the way in Michigan, inspired by our video, wrote a poem for her "creative thing!" Here are some student responses for the creativity challenge I've received so far:

• Joey G. in 6th grade said the he drew a rocket ship in extended seminar class!
• Georgina T. in 8th grade made bottlecaps for her locker! She says, "The bottlecaps take about 10 minutes each, and are just original illustrated fandom references glued into bottlecaps of varying colors."
• Erin S. in 8th grade painted her old guitar!
• Gracie in 8th grade sent me these awesome drawing photos:

Remember to send me your "creative things" ALL MONTH via e-mail or via the web (must be logged in to D205 student account) in order to enter the challenge contest!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.