This Week in Art! March 16-20, 2015

6th Grade Art:


This week, we applied and FINISHED our paper mache layer on our letter sculptures! Today we started thinking about how we will add decoration on our sculptures, so we started practicing painting with acrylics and blending two colors together. Our favorite blends will be used as a background layer on our letter sculptures, and we'll add a fun all-over pattern on top of that. Hopefully we'll be able to finish the sculptures (painting and all!) by the time we leave for spring break!

7th Grade Art:


Seventh grade students are super busy right now, painting their final monochromatic self-portraits. We'll continue the intense work through next week, and hopefully complete these paintings before we leave for spring break.

8th Grade Art:

Today was our last day of art for Quarter 3. Gracie summed it up this way:

"This past week has been so hectic around here. We are trying to finish our pixel portrait, any unfinished drawings, and lastly to upload our drawings to our website. All of our pixel portraits look AMAZING!!! They look exactly like ourselves. Everyone's clay project look great and creative! I'm going to miss art so so much! I love our movie Mondays and the inspiration Mrs. Leban gives us; "You have to hate your work to make it amazing..." I'm not too sure where we really came up with that but I know everyone will remember this class as their best U.A. in their 8th grade year! "

- Gracie W, Period 1

In other art news...

In the last two weeks, eighth grader Emma (from my first period class) has been having me record her while drawing to create a time-lapse video of the creation of her pixel portrait. We were able to do this for about five class periods of about 35-40 minutes each. I strung all of the time-lapse videos together today and posted the result on our YouTube channel. It's pretty amazing to watch!

ALSO ON YOUTUBE:
It's Youth Art Month 2015! We're having a coloring contest here at Sandburg to win awesome art supply packs! Iggy has returned again this year to help me hype the event. Our latest videos can be found on our YouTube channel: here's the intro video, and here's our first update video. There will be one more video next week before the coloring contest winners are chosen!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: 3.2 - 3.6.15

6th Grade Art:

Diego's drawings!

"These are two of my drawings for art. This are the Rainbow D and A self Lego Portrait. I like both of these drawing for two reason. I like the Rainbow D because of the 3D part of it. I like the Lego Portrait because it shows my type of person."

- Diego N, Period 8

7th Grade Art:

Joel's project is almost ready to begin the final painting stage!

"What we did in art this week was mainly around the self portrait Monday we worked on pictures to make them black and white and to give it only 4 shades. Then we worked on painting colors in a scale by adding either white or black to make or lighter or darker. Now we are finishing up transferring the picture to a white piece of paper in an outline form then next we will paint. Bye."

- Joel C, 4th Period

8th Grade Art:


This week, 8th grade students continued to make progress on their pixel portrait project, while their ceramic pieces were fired in the kiln. Students photographed their finished ceramic pieces for Artsonia when they were finished - you can check out our ceramics gallery on Artsonia here.

On Friday, we had a mini end-of-ceramics-unit celebration before taking our projects home. The cafeteria let us borrow their hot water percolator and we had some hot chocolate in our handmade mugs! Fun fact: did you know that these ceramic creations are dishwasher safe? The kiln gets to almost 2000 degrees, so your piece will surely stand up to dishwasher heat!

In other art news...


Let's connect! Are you following the Sandburg Art Room on Instagram? I post fun facts and images from student work and the classroom several times per week. This week, we experimented with a time-lapse video of an 8th grade student working on her drawing.

Today is Take Your Action Figure to Work Day! Did you celebrate? I did:



Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art! February 16-20, 2015

6th Grade Art:

Scott drew some emojis as part of his drawing challenge assignment.

"It was the last week of art, which meant *gasp* GRADING TIME! It was a fun week though. We did photographing most of class Tuesday. Wednesday we colored our photo background. We worked on this for the rest of the week. We made our pictures like a Kehinde Wiley painting."

- Scott P, Period 8

Identities have been altered to protect student privacy :)

7th Grade Art:

Emily's "Evolution of a Pop Can" drawing. I love the shading on this!

Today was the last day of art for seventh grade, so we spent the time finishing up our projects as much as possible! Students turned in their completed "Evolution of a Pop Can" observational drawings, and some students even had time to do an oil pastel study of their pop can!

Our pop can drawings can be viewed here on our Artsonia gallery. Enjoy!

8th Grade Art:

Luke's text box sculpture has been glazed and is awaiting a kiln firing to make it bright and shiny!

"This week in art class we worked on glazing our clay projects. We got to choose from four projects, the monster pot,the mug, the word box, and the human figure sculpture. I chose the word box, and I had a lot of fun working on my project."

- Luke C, Period 1

In other art news...


Winter art classes at the Elmhurst Art Museum start this Monday! Check out this link for classes, more information, or to register.


Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art! February 9-13, 2015

6th Grade Art:

Abby's Chihuly-inspired abstract flower!

"This week was really exciting because we got to start a new Chihuly Flower project and we get to hang them from the ceiling of the cafeteria.So to make the Chihuly Flower you need to draw a design of a piece of plastic and paint it what ever color you want but make sure you can see through it. then you need a blow dryer craft thingy from the craft store and a cardboard tube and take the plastic and rubber band it around the tube and start blow drying it and then take it off and there you have it, a Chihuly flower. ;)"

- Abby H, Period 8

7th Grade Art:

Alexsija's "Evolution of a Pop Can" drawing

"This week in art class, we worked on still life drawings. We practiced still life by drawing soda cans. The first day we started by drawing the basic shape of the can, then slowly, we added more detail. We used different shades to show lighter and darker parts of the can, the highlights and the shadows. It taught me a lot about how to draw with dimension and depth."

- Alexsija I, Period 5

8th Grade Art:

Emma's work in progress...

"This week we worked on our pixel portraits, pixellated drawings of our faces. I started mine by working on the areas that were all one color, then began working in rows across the bottom. We worked on these every day this week, and so I've gotten pretty far on it."

- Emma R, Period 1

In other art news...


Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow! I hope you're doing something fun to celebrate! I'm working on this fun (and sort-of Valentine-y) painting of donuts using mostly watercolors, and some other mixed media. Notice the heart-shaped ones? Yum!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: February 2-6, 2015

Today I am roller-skating in PE classes. I stopped briefly during lunch to get the weekly blog post completed for this week! Gotta roll!

-Mrs. L.

6th Grade Art:

There are a lot of "E"s in the sixth grade this term!

Sixth grade art classes finished their letter sculptures this week! Be on the lookout for an Artsonia gallery upload real soon! Today, students will be learning about Dale Chihuly via Scholastic Art magazine, in preparation for our Chihuly "melted" abstract flower project, which we'll work on next week!

7th Grade Art:

via our Artsonia gallery (from earlier in the year)

Students should have finished their portrait paintings by now, and today some students began creating Campbell's soup labels after the work of Andy Warhol. Our "pop" art unit continues into next week, when we start drawing... pop cans! Students should bring in a canned beverage for art class on Monday. We're going to create observational drawings of our can, to help improve our drawing skills!

8th Grade Art:


Eighth grade students just started on their pixelated portrait "selfies" this week! This is a time-intensive project, but they look so cool when they're finished! While students were working on their drawing, Mrs. Leban got all of the clay work fired for the bisque firing... which means that in a week or two, we'll be working on our glaze! Yay!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: January 26-30

Today is a teacher institute day; therefore, no student bloggers this week. 

6th Grade Art:


This week, 6th grade students worked on the base, or background coat of their letter sculptures using acrylic paint. Each student picks two colors, and tries to have the two colors blend across from one to the other, creating an "ombre" effect. Next week, we'll begin adding all-over patterns on our sculptures, like the examples pictured above.

7th Grade Art:


We are making good progress on our monochromatic self portraits! We hope to finish these up next week, and even get started on a new project.

8th Grade Art:


This week, 8th grade students completed construction on their ceramic art. After air-drying, they'll be put in the kiln for their first (bisque) firing, where they'll turn white. After that they'll be glazed and fired again. Next week, we'll begin a new project while we wait for the ceramics to dry and be fired.

In other art news...


Crochet club has made a bunch of tiny red hats to be donated to the Elmhurst Hospital for newborn babies. Aren't they the cutest?!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: January 19-23

Guess how many days of art we had this week because of MAP testing...
Did you say "one?"
Then you, my friend, are correct!
Each student had one day (albeit a double period) of art this week. Sheesh.
The good news is that we had the return of student bloggers! Enjoy.

- Mrs. L

6th Grade Art:

Left: Liz's letter "L," covered in half-wet paper mache. Right: a rack of dried letter sculptures.

"Since this week was MAP testing, we only have one day of double period art. But we finished up our papier-mâché letters today. Well, most of us. We're also working on our art challenges from day 15 or less."

- Liz Y, Period 8

7th Grade Art:


"Today we worked with value scales using tints and shades. We had to use a color and make 2 tints and 2 shades, all on a value scale. The hardest part of this, for me, was making the change between values more gradual. I enjoyed working with tints and shades."

- Joey G, Period 4 

8th Grade Art:

Camille's mug awaits firing!

"This week, we worked mainly on adding details to our clay projects. We learned how to balance the moisture level in our clay and how to use different tools to add texture. We are almost ready to fire them all."

- Camille S, Period 1

In other art news...

In case you're wondering, these ARE my actual skates...!

P.E. classes are in the middle of their roller-skating unit right now,and I could not be more excited about it! On Monday afternoon I'll be skating with 6th grade classes, and on Friday, February 6th, I'll be spending the WHOLE DAY in P.E. roller-skating!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art: Jan 12-16, 2015

I admittedly am having a hard time having student bloggers on the blog lately due to our out-of-the-ordinary scheduling. Next week won't be much better due to MAP testing... students will only have art class ONE day next week!

So, my apologies for not having more student writing lately. As soon as I can get enough time to grab some student bloggers and get back on track, I will!

- Mrs. L

6th Grade Art:

Abby's super neat letter "A"!

Sixth graders built cardboard block letter forms this week using cereal box cardboard. Everyone got to choose their own letter to create. 9th period has a LOT of letter "E's"! Today (Friday), we started layering paper mache over our forms. Hopefully we'll be able to finish this up next week!

7th Grade Art:

The transfer looks like a big coloring book sheet!

This week, 7th grade students altered their digital portraits using Adobe Photoshop. They then printed them out poster-size, which meant six sheets of paper! The printouts were taped together, like a puzzle, and then transferred onto large white paper using graphite paper. Next week, we will practice painting with tints and shades in preparation for our final painting work!

8th Grade Art:

Jaden rolls out his clay...

This week, 8th graders started working with clay! We finished planning our clay creation (first talked about last week), and on Wednesday, students who had completed a plan were given clay to begin rolling out and constructing their artwork! Students had to watch a how-to video that was unique to their project choice before they started working with clay. Want to watch some of these how-to videos? Check them out on Mrs. Leban's YouTube channel playlist here.

In other art news...


The Art Institute of Chicago has free admission for Illinois residents on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and every Free Winter Weekday (January 5–February 10). Plus, kids under 14 are always free—every day of the year. It’s the best museum deal in town!



Special thanks to Elijah's Coffee in downtown Elmhurst for hosting our crocheted coffee cup sleeves holiday fundraiser! We raised close to $200, which will be donated to UCCA Elmhurst to benefit the food pantry!

Stop by and enjoy the January special at Elijah's Coffee in Elmhurst: from 3:00 pm until closing get a small Hot Chocolate for only $1.79. Make it a Mocha for 70¢ more! Valid at both locations until Jan 31, 2015.

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

This (short) Week in Art: January 5-9

Well, this has been a bit of a weird week back! We had school on Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday and Thursday, school was cancelled due to extreme cold temps! We're back at it today, but there's a shortened ("extended seminar") schedule for classes, which will also put us a little bit behind. Keep fighting the good fight, and don't forget to bundle up! Here's what went down this week:

(Please note: no student bloggers due to the shortened schedule.)

6th Grade Art:


Welcome back to school 6th graders, and to a brand-new term of art class! Students who have art Term "D" on their schedules started class this week. On Monday, we had our "first day of art" presentation, followed by an introduction to the drawing challenge assignment. On Tuesday, we worked on the drawing challenge, followed by a show-and-tell in front of the class of our artwork.

On Friday, we started sketching and planning for our first sculpture project: block letters! You can view past 6th grade work to get a preview of this project here on our Artsonia gallery. New 6th graders, make sure that you have your Artsonia permission form turned in so that I can feature your awesome work on our online gallery!

7th Grade Art:


Welcome back to school 7th graders, and to a brand-new term of art class! Students who have art Term "D" on their schedules started class this week. On Monday, we had our "first day of art" presentation, followed by an introduction to the drawing challenge assignment. On Tuesday, we worked on the drawing challenge, followed by a show-and-tell in front of the class of our artwork. We also had our photographs taken in preparation for our monochromatic portrait painting project.

On Friday, we watched a demonstration on using Adobe Photoshop to alter our digital portraits in order to prepare for painting. We'll continue this process next week!

8th Grade Art:


Quarter 3 8th grade art students began class this week! (Can you even believe that it's third quarter already? I can't!)

As with 6th and 7th grade classes, Monday was our "first day of art" presentation, followed by an introduction to the drawing challenge assignment. On Tuesday, we worked on the drawing challenge, followed by a show-and-tell in front of the class of our artwork.

Today I introduced our ceramics project to the class, which is a choice project! Students get to pick from four different projects. Homework over the weekend is to decide which project and theme the students want to create! We'll finish planning on Monday, and start working with clay next week.

In other art news...


Over winter break, I was able to do a couple of pretty art-teacher-y things. First, I went to the MCA and caught the David Bowie exhibit in the last few days! It was really great. (They didn't allow photography inside, so you'll have to settle for these outside pics!) I especially enjoyed seeing all of the costumes on display alongside video clips of David Bowie wearing them! How cool!



I also went to the movies and saw "Big Eyes," a Tim Burton film all about Margaret and Walter Keane and the controversy surrounding the true artist behind the big-eyed paintings. Highly recommended!

Thanks for another great week!
- Mrs. L.

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.

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.