The Last Blog Post!

It's the last blog post of the year, and the last blog post for Mrs. Leban's Art Blog, as I'll be moving on to a new adventure in the computer room for next year. Physically, I'll be down the hallway just around the corner, but on the web, you'll be able to find me at the Leban Tech Blog - very soon!

6th Grade Art:


Sixth grade students are closing out the school year with our melted plastic Chihuly-inspired project! This time around, I found a really cool short video about Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle. It looks amazing, so if you're headed that way this summer and get the chance to check it out, I totally would!

We've spent this week painting our plastic, and we'll start melting them on Monday.

7th Grade Art:


This week, seventh grade students finished up their monochromatic self-portraits (view them all on Artsonia here). Students who finished their painting early were able to do some free/exploratory painting with watercolors: we used oil pastel resists, rubbing alcohol, salt, and even did some "blow" painting with straws to create some fun abstract compositions!

You can design your own coffee cup and view it in 3-D using the Quiver App!

Today, students had the option to play around with the Quiver augmented reality app (formerly known as ColAr) on the iPads. Students chose a pre-printed picture to color in and/or design (such as a bird, or a Starbucks coffee cup, shown above), and then use the app to view a 3-D version of their design!

8th Grade Art:

Check out this cool blinking red light on the scoreboard!

This week, eighth grade students finished up their paper circuit collages! These might just be some of the best artworks I've seen all year, and a great way to close out eighth grade! Our Artsonia gallery with all of our collages can be found here.


In other art news...



Congrats to Sam, our winner of the promotion program cover contest! You'll be seeing her work next week at the promotion ceremony! You might even be able to convince her to give you an autograph! :)

I feel the need to say some final words here, as I finish 13 years of teaching art. It's been awesome, but I'm also super excited for a new challenge teaching computers. I know that Sandburg will be in good hands, as Mr. Walker from Emerson Elementary School will be coming up to the middle school level to take over the art department here. But I'm not going far - remember, I'll be just around the corner!

Thanks for another great YEAR! - and have a great summer, too!
- Mrs. L.

This Week in Art! 9.30-10.4

6th Grade Art:

 

Welcome to art!  This was our very first week of art in 6th grade - and for middle school!  It can be hard adjusting to a new school, a whole bunch of new teachers, and expectations for all of the different classrooms.  On the first day of art, I send home an informational letter that includes a permission form for Artsonia - our online student art gallery.  These forms were due today, but students may still turn them in if they haven't done so yet.  Need another copy?  Click on the link above, or visit our 6th grade webpage for additional copies of any/all handouts from class, including grade sheets for assignments!

In class, we are currently working on our first sketchbook drawing assignment, which is a one-point perspective name design.  This finished drawing will be due next week on Friday, October 11th.  You can view examples of past student artwork for this assignment here.

7th Grade Art:

 

This was also the first week of art for 7th grade (UA Term B) students!  Besides the usual "welcome to art" presentation, we started our first sketchbook drawing assignment, which is a surreal landscape drawing that incorporates three boxes drawn in two-point perspective.

We looked at a lot of examples of Surrealism by famous artists, and even watched a cool video about it. We also checked out a free iPod/iPhone app that gives your photos a surreal effect: raining business men in bowler hats, a la Rene Magritte!

These drawings will be due at the end of next week: Friday, October 11th.

8th Grade Art: 

Eighth graders are nearing the end of the quarter... it's coming so fast!  We're working on some 8-Bit art designs on graph paper, which will then be re-created on the computer using Microsoft Excel and printed out.  These printed out designs will be used for one final project, which I'm going to try to keep a secret surprise until the last week!  This 8-Bit design project has two separate graded assignment pieces: the four-graphs design worksheet (pictured above, left) and the printed out Excel design (pictured above, right).

Our third sketchbook assignment (a copy of a "master," or famous artwork) was due TODAY.  Make sure your grades are in order by checking Powerschool every week - you don't want any missing assignments to pile up/sneak up on you at the very end of the quarter!

We will have one more sketchbook assignment to go (that's #4!) before the end of the quarter, which we will begin next week on Monday and Tuesday (10.7 & 10.8).

Lastly, have you checked out your "Pixelated Portrait" on Artsonia?  They're pretty awesome!

In other news...
I would like to give a super-huge THANK YOU to Mrs. Krueger and Mrs. Jardina, who came in this week to help me out by matting a whole bunch of student artwork for an upcoming exhibition at the Elmhurst Art Museum!  More info to come soon!

Thanks for another awesome week!
-Mrs. L.