Print Making

Print making is a great way to further explore positive and negative spaces.  Allowing the students to carve out their own design onto styrofoam, or easy cut out blocks.  The students will also need tools to do the carving, which can be found at art supplies stores.  You will also need enough plastic boards for the entire class, paint and rollers.

                                                   

When we did this in class we used different colour construction paper to put the print on, which added a nice pop to a lot of the pieces.  We also used a lot of coloured paint, but this can be done using just black paint, which adds a nice dramatic look.

I carved two panda's and bamboo and layered the two on top of one another.

 I borrowed the sun from a classmate and carved my daughter's names.

Aprilleras and Sock Dolls/Puppets

Apprilleras

Definition:  One of a kind, three dimensional wall hanging or pillow decorated by appliquéing, quilting and adorning different fabrics (like a story board).

These are very popular in Chile and served as a way of smuggling out messages to the outside world during Pinochet's rule, in a time before facebook, youtube, and twitter.  When teaching this in art it is important to teach their history as well as the significance.

Sock Dolls/Puppets

This is a great idea for creating global awareness in our students.  If we are able to connect with a school in a developing country it is a great idea to exchange sock dolls.  We did this in high school with a school in Kenya, and it was very rewarding, especially when we received pictures of the children playing with our sock dolls.

In class, three of us made aprilleras and three of us made sock dolls.  Our story was past, present and future habitat of the three little Spirit bears.

Spirit Bear

Future City

Reflection

It is important for our students to have some sort of a close to an art unit or art journey.  In the case of our class we were asked to write a reflection about our visual journals and the course in general.  We could type it, write it, colour it, paint it, or even burn it.

Elements and Principles

Think about how we see...

Take a line for a walk and think about lines, place lines out or create sculptures in nature using lines.  Andy Goldsworthy is an excellent source for lines in nature.  The Sculpture Park in New York State (http://www.socratessculpturepark.org) or The Storm King (http://www.stormking.org) are both excellent sources for inspiration. How we see things is all about light and reflections.

Elements:
Texture, line, shape, form, colour and space

What are these?

Line:

Look at the ceiling, under the tables, where they are created in nature.  How are we looking at something?  This helps us take things apart and allows us the ability to see the lines.
Lines -> Outline -> Need Light

Form:

(3D) This can only be seen in the real world (in person so to speak).  Pictures are not form, but they can give us a strong indication of what the form is meant to be.

Texture:

Having our hands in the world.  Illusions of texture are interpreted through pictures, like what we see in a magazine, this is called visual texture.

Colour:

Highlighting colours and shades in nature.  We are under the illusion of what green is, but in nature it can be so many different things.

Principles:
Movement, rhythm, repetition, pattern, balance, emphasis, contrast and unity

What are these?

Patterns and Repetition:

Honeycombs, stonewalls.  The use of the line is structured by a pattern that is repeated.

Balance:

Inukshuks or rocks.

Emphasis:

Where is your eye brought to?

Contrast:

One colour against another.  Andy Goldsworthy uses this technique with leaves in a circle.

In class we sorted through magazine images that included all of the above elements and principles.

Art to Music

1.  Have the students put their heads on their desks and listen to the music

2.  Rest and reflect about the sounds and the instruments they have just heard for a few minutes

3.  Listen again, but this time have the students draw what they hear on a blank sheet of paper silently

* The students should have different coloured markers and change the marker every time the music changes

When we did this exercise we did not listen to the music and reflect about the music and instruments that we heard, instead we dove right in are drew what we heard as we were hearing it for the first time. This was a very relaxing exercise that incorporates visual arts and musical arts together.  This is a great exercise for calming down the classroom.

Blending Colours

In your classroom the only colours of paint that you absolutely need are: red, blue, yellow, green, white and black.  If you have these colours you are able to make pretty much any colour in the rainbow.  When starting a lesson on paint it is important to start with what colours are.  Having a worksheet that describes the colour wheel and having children recreate it; as well as different blending techniques will help the students gain a better understanding of colour blending before diving off the deep end into their piece with no knowledge.

As a group we created a sunrise that incorporated greens, browns, yellow, oranges, reds, pinks, violets, and blues.  Again because we were working as a group and our mixing strategies were all very different we had to make sure our colours flowed nicely.

When teaching this technique it is important to give the students some guidelines for their first piece, but allow for individual creativity after the concept has been introduced.

There are a number of different ways to use paint as well in the elementary school classroom.

Opposite Colours:

Blending with White:

Oil Pastels and washing with black paint:

Blending neighbouring colours Red and Yellow:

Self-Portrait and Draw Anything

I had my daughter Aoife, 4 years old, draw a picture of herself.  I told her she could use whatever colour she wanted and she could draw herself in any way shape or form.

I then asked Aoife to draw anything she liked.  We had just returned from Hawaii a few weeks earlier where we had seen a lot of humpback whales and they were all she talked about, so it wasn't much of a surprise when she decided to draw a humpback whale, which turned out fantastic.

Of course I couldn't leave my youngest, Ciara (2 years old), out of this fun art time.  Ciara wanted to trace her hand and colour with scented markers.

It is very important to remember when teaching young children while their art may not look eye appealing to you, it is still art.  Every child should have a piece of art hanging in the classroom, not just the artistically talented.  

Clay

Using clay is a great way to get students using their hands and really creating something original with their hands.  Clay is not that expensive and is easy for upper primary and intermediate students to use.  Understanding how work the clay and create different pieces is very important for this lesson.  Explaining what slip is and how it works is also vital so that there are no meltdowns when a students art has fallen apart in the kiln.

It is important to teach the students how to work the clay so that it doesn't dry out and crack, but also how to be safe.  Clay dust can be very uncomfortable if it gets in your eye and students need to be aware of their space and make sure that it is clean.  A safety talk should also be done around the kiln when explaining how it works and fires the clay.

We created 5 different shapes with the clay and then were asked to create an animal.  I created a lion, which I was quite disappointed with.  I think that it is important for our students to make sure we give them enough time to work and allow them to come back to their piece if they want to smooth it out or finish it.

There are so many different mediums for clay and different kinds of clay as well.  It is important when teaching about clay that we do not get focused on one process, but allow ourselves and our students to explore a range of different ways, like Raku firing.

What defines form?

Form:

is space, both negative and positive, materials and context.  Positive and negative space are very important parts when thinking about form and 3D objects.

Function:

is a more intellectual thought process

Both form and function go hand in hand and can be very complex.  In the classroom we talk about "art" and not "design."  It is important to bring design into the classroom.  Example: today we are going to design new scissors - using different objects to cut up paper, perhaps for a collage.

Andy Goldsworthy is a very good resource for elementary art.

Finding Colour in Nature

On a very rainy day we set out on a walk around the Scarfe building trying to find anything that was blue and told to bring the objects back to class.  We were not that successful in our hunt as most of the things we found were nailed down.  We had much better luck when we returned to our classroom and searched through our bags.  We came up with a great arrangement that we thought might look like a wave or a whirlpool.  During our gallery walk one of the other groups thought that our piece of art was "Identity Theft," which when we looked at all of our blue UBC cards and Save-On More cards actually made a lot of sense.

This would be a great lesson on a nice day.  Encouraging the students to head outside and search for different colours in nature and bringing the objects back and creating a piece of original art together.  Again, this was a group assignment, which helps when not all members feel as creative as the others.

Blue Group Collage

Using magazines we ripped out pages that had the colour blue on them.  Once we had a variety or blue colours we ripped the blue pages into small squares by hand and then cut some out as well.  When we were finished ripping and cutting we decided what we would make using the theme "under the sea."  We decided on creating a mother and baby humpback whales.  It was a collaborative project because we had to decide which colours would go where and how dark or light they should be together.  The finished product looked fantastic!

What is a collage?

Definition: A form of art in which various materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric are arranged and stuck to a backing.

There are a variety of different ways to use this medium in art.