Frank Stella

I needed a project that would get my eighth graders excited to be in art again (I hadn't had this group for over a year and now I have them during their LAST TRIMESTER AT THE SCHOOL! IN THE SPRING...hormones are running rampant and many brains are on vacation already, to say the least!) and have wanted to try a project inspired by Frank Stella...so here it is!

To make these 3D paintings, low-relief paper sculptures...or whatever you want to call them, we started by spending 2 days making painted paper using tempera on drawing paper, thin cardboard and corrugated cardboard.  This was my hook - low stress, high success, and oh-so-messy painting!  Each student painted at least 3 pieces of 12 x 18" paper, one cereal box (thank you to my Mom, sisters, and many teachers at school for collecting boxes for me!), and one rectangle of corrugated cardboard (the corrugated cardboard is what we used as the "base" or "canvas" that we later built upon).

Next, we did A LOT of cutting.  I had some sets of French curves (Stella is known for having derived his forms from cones, pillars, French curves, waves and decorative architectural elements for some of his works in the 1980s) that the eighth graders traced and they also cut out some of their own shapes.



Before constructing, we watched a short video of Stella talking about his process and viewed images of some of his works.  For our projects, we did it backwards (we painted THEN cut our shapes instead of making what we wanted to paint on first as Stella does) but I still thought it was valuable for them to hear the artist talk about his work.  To put all of the pieces together, we used thin strips of cereal box cardboard folded into accordions and hot glue.  To quell my fears and protect fingers, each glue station also had a pair of inexpensive garden gloves for the kids to wear.



The eighth graders did a beautiful job and our school community was enthusiastic about seeing some abstract work on display!  They've been up for several weeks now and I still see kids, parents and teachers checking them out everyday! 

Oil Pastel Butterflies

Third graders got in the mood for spring when they drew these colorful oil pastel butterflies.  This lesson was inspired by Patty of Deep Space Sparkle and her fabulous watercolor butterflies.  We started by folding a 12 x 18" piece of white sulphite drawing paper hamburger style (or taco style as we call it in the Art room!).  The artists unfolded their papers and then, using a black oil pastel, drew HALF of their butterfly's body starting and ending on one side of the fold.  Working on the same side of the fold as the body was just drawn, they drew one of the butterfly wings and added designs (I challenged them to have a minimum of 6 shapes/spaces decorating their wings).  

Then they re-folded their papers, with the oil pastel drawings on the inside, and rubbed over the lines using a craft stick.  When unfolded, voilà, their drawings were transferred to the other side of their paper!  They outlined the transferred drawings and then set to work coloring their designs symmetrically. 

I love how the black pastel from the outlining smudges in with the colored areas!  Enjoy!

Red + Yellow = Orange!

I saw this idea on one of my favorite blogs, Art Project Girl, and had so much fun doing it with my Kindergarten classes!  Here is a link to Art Project Girl's post: Easy Project You Can Do Tomorrow.  The kinders loved making their bright flowers as they practiced double loading their paintbrushes with red and yellow paint to make different orange hues.  They also practiced thick lines, thin lines and outlining. 

Aren't they just lovely?  Thank you, Art Project Girl!

Charcoal and Pastel Owls

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have 2 bonus class periods with my 6th graders while my current middle school group (8th grade) was in Washington, D.C. for the annual 7th/8th grade travel week.  Because I hadn't had my 6's in a couple of months, and I only had a little over 1 hour of usable art making time with them, I knew I needed a project that would get them excited and keep them on task so that we would have finished pieces of art at the end of our time together.  I decided that something BIG and a little bit messy would be right up their alley.  For whatever reason, kids have a very high success rate with bird images (and cats, too!) so I decided we would draw owls and focus on drawing big, using lots of visual texture, and variation in value (lights and darks).

To help the kids dive right in, I had some owl images available for them to look at (photocopied from Animals: 1,419 Copyright-Free Illustrations).  They worked in charcoal on 19 x 25" tagboard that I had cut down from larger (25 x 38") pieces that I found in the paper room.  To make their work really pop, they selected an area or two (usually the eyes, background or beak) to add color to using chalk pastels.  The results were stunning and several are proudly on display in the lunchroom for all to enjoy!

 

Hello world!

Hi!  For those of you who know me in real life the title of my blog might seem weird, because you have never called me MJ!  This is what most of my students call me now.  It is "Mrs. J" in an even shorter, kid-logic form.  And, according to my spunky 4th graders, it is fitting because I rank right up there with 2 other (slightly more famous) MJ's: Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson!  Ha!

For those of you getting to know me through this blog, I am a 3rd year, K-8 Visual Arts teacher in Minnesota.  I have about 360 students and get to see my K-5 classes twice a week for 40 minutes each period.  Middle schoolers (grades 6-8) have my class for one trimester, 30 minutes every other day.  My classroom is in the school basement right across the hall from the Music room and right next to the cafeteria.  Because of this, and because they are just phenomenal people, the Music teacher and head of the school's hot lunch program have become some of my biggest supporters and best givers of advice (in addition to my patient and understanding husband who gets to hear all the trials and triumphs of each day when he gets home!).  I also work with a whole crew of awesome teachers and the best staff I could wish for here!

Without trying to sound like too much of a Pollyanna, I really think I have one of the best jobs in the world!  My goal for this blog is to share some of my classroom management techniques, organization systems (which are still being developed - there are so many supplies in an Art room and SO MUCH PAPER!), favorite projects, as well as some things about the rest of my life (some of my younger students think I sleep on a cot in my coatroom but I do (try to) have a life outside of teaching art)!  It is not all sunshine and lollipops, though, and you'll probably get to read about some of my bad days on here, too!