This Week in Art! May 26-30

6th Grade Art:


This week, 6th grade students finished up their comic book pages for final printing/assembly/distribution, which will be on Monday. They also took a few days on Wednesday and Thursday to photograph and upload their letter sculptures to Artsonia before taking them home for good! I made a short video (with a little help from a 6th grader!) all about the process of uploading to Artsonia using "Classroom Mode" via the iPad. Check it out above!

7th Grade Art:


This week, 7th grade students finished up their oil pastel drawings of pop cans. (insert "Pop Art" pun here.) At the end of class today, students turned in their drawings, and recycled their aluminum cans. Art grades will be finalized over the weekend!

8th Grade Art:


We're in the home stretch! Almost on to the high school! Our final drawing assignment was a "trace your face" profile, which was then filled in with black and white designs with the theme "Middle School Memories..." It's been really, um, interesting to see what students pick to represent in their drawings! Some fond memories, some not-so-fond, and lots and lots of inside jokes that I'm clearly not in the loop for! Overall, it's been a fun way to look back on our middle school experience and put it into our art!

Here's a quick how-to video below for tracing your face. Have you ever tried this? It really works!



In other art news...
Next week, I'll be announcing the winners of our promotion program cover contest, and the agenda cover design contest at the honors assembly! So, be on the lookout for the results after that time! How exciting!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This week in art! May 19-23

6th Grade Art:



This week in art, we finished up our letter sculptures! Next week, we'll photograph them for Artsonia and get them graded so that they can go home.

Today, we started our final project for art - a class comic book! Our theme this term is "If I was the teacher..." and students will each create one page for our book. The end result should be pretty awesome! We looked at the work of some other comic artists/cartoonists for inspiration.

Also today, we turned in our second sketchbook drawing: a room design in 1-point perspective.

7th Grade Art:


Today was the start of our pop can drawing assignment! Students brought in a can of pop and were allowed to drink it in class while working on an observational drawing of the can. These pictures will be colored using oil pastels. We will work on them all through next week, and they will be due next Friday, May 30th.

The beginning of the week was spent finishing up our monochromatic self-portrait paintings. Those will be graded and uploaded to Artsonia soon! We also have a sketchbook drawing (black and white hand/contour drawing) due next week on Wednesday, May 28th.

8th Grade Art:


This week, we brought our ceramic mugs home! Today, we drank lemonade out of our mugs to celebrate the conclusion of the unit, and took our work with us at the end of class.

We spent the earlier part of the week finishing up our 8-Bit/Excel art unit, and catching up on any other missing work. Students took screenshots of their Excel designs and uploaded the images to Artsonia using "classroom mode" on our laptops. They also wrote short artist statements about their work, explaining the choices that they made in their designs. You can check out our gallery of designs on Artsonia here.

In other art news...


I have some SUPER EXCITING news to share! One of our seventh graders, Jack R, was selected to be a part of the IAEA (Illinois Art Education Association) Student Art Show!

Sixty-two art teachers throughout the state of Illinois submitted over 725 artwork entries for selection, and only 40 pieces are ultimately chosen to be a part of the show. Jack’s observational colored pencil drawing of an aluminum can in various stages of crush was one of only two artworks created by seventh graders in the collection. This show will be on display at the IAEA conference this fall, and at various other locations throughout the state as the show travels from October 2014 through June 2015.

Jack’s work will be professionally matted and framed for the duration of the show, and there will be a reception honoring the winners, their parents, teachers, and administrators on November 8th, 2014 at the IAEA fall conference in Lisle, IL.

Congratulations Jack! What a great honor!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art! May 12-16

6th Grade Art:


This week, 6th grade students applied paper mache to their cardboard block letter sculptures! It was messy, gooey, gross, and super fun! By Friday, students had finished applying the paper mache layers to their projects. Today, students are using puffy paint to create a raised texture design to the front face of their sculptures, which will be painted next week.

This week, we also began our second sketchbook assignment, a 1-point perspective room design drawing. You can watch a playlist of videos on my YouTube channel all about perspective here to help you with your drawing. This sketchbook drawing will be due on Friday, May 23rd.

7th Grade Art:




Seventh grade students worked pretty intensely this week on their monochromatic self-portrait paintings, as you can see from these animated gifs we made earlier in the week! We hope to get these finished up next week, and maybe even move on to a new fun project before the year is over!

On Thursday, I introduced the second sketchbook project, which is a black and white design that incorporates contour drawing methods to make it look like your hand is popping out of the paper! You can view some drawings from students earlier in the year (on Artsonia) here. This sketchbook assignment will be due on Wednesday, May 28th.

8th Grade Art:


Eighth grade art is in the second half of their 8-Bit/Pixel Unit right  now, which is all about creating designs using pixels! Students are creating designs on graph paper using squares - as you can probably see, we are very much inspired by 8-bit video game design. Once students design four possible compositions on graphs, one of the designs is then created and printed out using Excel on the computer.

If students have ALL of their other artwork completed and turned in, they will then get to move on to the most fun part: creating their 8-bit design using perler beads! These tiny plastic beads are placed on a peg board, and then ironed together, which melts the plastic to fuse the design into one plastic piece. How cool!

Next week, we'll finally be photographing and uploading pictures of our ceramic mugs onto Artsonia, and having our mug celebration. After that, we'll take them home!

In other art news...


We're in the news! Find us in Suburban Life today.



Crochet club yarn-bombed my skeleton! They surprised me with it down in the art room after school on Thursday. I LOVE all of the colors! Crochet club has named him "Bob," and some students have already started taking #selfieswithbob - ha!



Ms. Skinner (art teacher @ Churchville) and I have started making art how-to videos for clay projects. We hope to use these next year with 8th grade. I enjoyed getting to test out my new iPevo articulating stand, which I won from their Wishpool program. I shot the entire movie on my cell phone!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: May 5-9, 2014

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 turned in their first sketchbook assignment (their 1-point perspective name design drawings), and began work on their block letter sculptures. Ms. Heuel has already begun to grade, photograph, and upload sketchbook drawings to our Artsonia gallery! Don't see your work? Make sure that you turned it in! Check your grade in Powerschool here.

Next week, Mrs. Leban resumes teaching art classes. We'll start applying paper mache on our cardboard letterforms, and we'll begin working on our second sketchbook drawing.

7th Grade Art:


This week, seventh grade students turned in their first sketchbook drawing (2-point perspective surreal landscapes), and began work on their monochromatic self-portrait painting unit. Ms. Heuel took photos of students with the digital camera, and students used Adobe Photoshop to alter the photos into only 4 levels of value. These 4 levels will be translated into 4 values of paint color that the students custom mix, and match up like a paint-by-number. We spent time on Thursday and Friday transferring the outlines from these printouts (shown above) onto white paper for painting, which will begin next week, when Mrs. Leban takes over classes again.

8th Grade Art:


This week, 8th grade students closed out a whole bunch of projects! Pixel portraits were turned in, large clay mugs were glazed and fired, and today, students spent the class working on sketchbook #3: a master copy. Check out this cool gif we made of Hollie working on her master copy! Mrs. Leban had fun showing students how to use "auto-awesome" on Google+ to take photos in succession and create an animated gif automatically! Sketchbook #3 is due on Monday, so don't forget to finish this weekend!

Next week, Mrs. Leban takes over classes, and we'll be starting a whole new project!

In other art news...

Our tent at Art in the Park raised $571.43 for the United Community Concerns food pantry last weekend! 

I want to make sure that I acknowledge 8th grader Ellie’s important contribution to our efforts. Ellie’s crocheted donuts are responsible for approximately $200 of the money that we raised. Also of special note is Mrs. Nancy Bensfield, who crocheted coffee cup sleeves for our tent sale, and who volunteered hours to man the tent on Saturday. Additional parent/student volunteers over the weekend were: Ellen & Beth Fazzio, Wendy & Natalie Rinchiuso, Betty & Mary Kritikos, Evan, Riley, & Shari Haug, Mary Brynn & Mollie Rosenstein, and Teresa & Amy Roberts.

I am overwhelmed and amazed with the generosity of our Sandburg community, and proud to be able to present the UCCA with such a donation!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: 4.28 - 5.2

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 have been hard at work on their drawing skills. Ms. Heuel has had students creating two different sketches: the 3-dimensional name design using 1-point perspective (sketchbook #1), and a creative abstract "endless line" drawing where students demonstrate their knowledge of warm and cool colors and practice their colored pencil coloring skills. Both of these drawings will be due next week.

7th Grade Art:


This week, 7th grade students began their monochromatic painting unit. Work began by creating value scales in a variety of colors. Students will choose one color to create a self-portrait painting. Ms. Heuel took photos of students, which will be manipulated on the computer next week using Adobe Photoshop in preparation for our final paintings next week.

Also in art, students worked on their sketchbook drawings (surreal landscapes), which will be due next week.

8th Grade Art:


Eighth grade students started glazing their mugs this week! Yay! Next week, students will be finishing up a couple of projects, actually: pixel portraits will be turned in, glazed mugs will be finished and fired, and sketchbook #3 will be almost ready to go...

In other art news...

• Kailee67, one of our 7th graders, has been nominated for Artist of the Week on Artsonia! Please vote for her to win! You can vote once per day, per device. Voting ends on Saturday, so please vote and tell as many friends and family as possible. If we win, both the student and the school win gift certificates for art supplies from Blick!

• Art in the Park is THIS weekend! Please come and see our Sandburg tent in Wilder Park!

• Doodle 4 Google guest judges have chosen the 50 state winners. Now it's your turn to vote!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.