Saturday 31 October 2015

And Just Like That

We are at the end of October.

In the spirit of All Hallow's I had Artsparks, Arts Enrichment and Art Exploration classes create Itsy Bitsy Spider Mobiles in the style of Rebecca Emberly. My Painting and Drawing students used charcoal and very thinned tempera to create Fox and Crow paintings and for All Hallow's We're revisiting The Fox and the Crow and adding a dash of bats for Art Exploration.



Painting and Drawing used The Fox and the Crow by Manasi Subramaniam as inspiration to paint these works of art. All of them are frameworthy.





I'll be revisiting this book today with my Art Exploration classes in character as the fox.

Monday 26 October 2015

Where's The Elephant, Cat Paintings and Pro D Camp work

It's really tempting to go in depth with each lesson I teach. Sometimes i's nice to just let the finished art speak for itself. 

Where's The Elephant? Art Sparks

Paint scraped over oil pastel cat drawings Arts Enrichment

Leaf Paintings Painting & Drawing



Thursday 22 October 2015

Pro-D Camp Eve

I have finished art from the last handful of classes to share. And I will but my schedule has been hectic and I haven't had a chance to get the images uploaded yet. they are coming I promise.

In the meantime here's a time lapse of what I've got planned for my Professional Development Camp tomorrow morning. I've got two very big groups to work with tomorrow!


Monday 19 October 2015

The Way Way Upside to Teaching to the Toddler and Preschool Set

Every child is an artist. 
The problem is how to 
remain an artist once we 
grow up. Pablo Picasso



And how you do that is by making a point to make art with toddler and preschool aged children as often as possible. In the two plus years that I've been teaching art to children and the two or so weeks I've  been posting about teaching art to children here; I've mentioned a smattering of times that my expectations for the final artworks for each of my art lessons is always exceeded by my little artists. 


It's how they approach making art that really does it. And it's really not that they all approach art making in the same way because boy do they not do that. What I mean is that they walk into the studio excited about making art. Even my highly anxious young artists dive into making art. Sure there are days that are better than others, there are days that the materials we use and the subject matter doesn't really do it but even on those days there is some form of visual expression that they can get behind. Even if it's just the first few minutes of class with markers and sketchbook the act of making art makes them happy.

In this week's Art exploration lesson I was treated to some serious observational skills from one of my young artists. An exploration of the materials and techniques used in the class that pushed outside the really good moment, pulled it back and pushed it further combined with a unique application that gave the creator's a super finished art work.

The lesson incorporates one of my favourite paint application techniques: gift card paint scraping and rolling. We also stamped into the painting with contrasting white paint. I pre-cut cat shapes and chalk pastel was used to add detail to the cat before it was glued down to the painting.


Friday 16 October 2015

A moon, A Tree, an Owl and Masks

One big post about this week's classes. That's how I'm doing things this week, cramming lots into one little space....

on Tuesday I had my Arts Enrichment students practice using scissors and using both a brush and an eraser topper to apply paint creating a full moon backdrop for an owl collage. I read Moon Child to get us started. It's a lovely book that follows three nocturnal creatures as they relate to the moon in the sky. The music and movement portion of our class has us curling up into a ball just like one of the illustrations in the story and it was so much fun seeing my young friends make that connection.

I've mentioned using scissors is challenge for preschool and toddler artists. I took a trick I found online to help give my young artists the proper holding position for cutting with scissors. I had  everyone hold up their scissor hands and give the thumbs up sign. My co-teacher and I then went around the studio and drew a smiling happy face on their thumb nail. When they had the happy face smiling at them they knew that the scissors were being held correctly, cutting wen t much better with our happy thumbs.


I had a cancelation for an appointment on Tuesday in the afternoon which gave me time to make more low poly paper masks for my painting and drawing class Tuesday afternoon. I actually got some photographs of the still life set up and the final paintings were beyond what I thought I'd get.



My students each approached the still life differently. Some carefully observed how each of the low poly shapes aligned together creating a drawing and then painting that was proportional, others used the masks as a jump point and painted more symbolically and other's took the shapes within each low poly mask and used them to create a pattern within the drawing which they then painted.

I had each student look at the masks and name the part of the mask that was the whitest or lightest area, where the darkest shadows were and then to make note of the areas that were midtone. I then had them sketch from the still life, They then painted the highlight area white, the dark areas black and the midtone areas grey.


Monday 12 October 2015

Voting, Thanksgiving and Low Poly Masks


My thanksgiving weekend started with a visit to the early polling stations and voting. Very glad I chose to go in early. The rest of my weekend was a blur of cooking, and friends and family and friends that are family and family that are friends and loads and loads of food.

In between I managed to get a few mask shapes printed up and put together for my painting and drawing lesson tomorrow. I'm hoping to get two more put together before class tomorrow but with a dentist appointment and the possibility of running back and forth to drop my youngest off at child care before I head back in to teach I'm not going to put a lot of stress on  myself.

I put together a time lapse of putting the masks together from the template I purchased from Wintercroft Design. I contacted Steve and Marianne Wintercroft when I purchased the templates for the masks I have made to ask their permission to use them as still life objects in my painting and drawing class and they graciously consented.  I like the low poly masks as a painting and drawing subject because the geometric shapes break down the surface planes of the mask features and will make talking about light and shadow a little more simple than with an organic shape or an object that is colourful. I'm very excited to see how my students approach the subject.

Tomorrow's Arts Enrichment is a moon and owl based project unless I change my mind on the way over....

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians and if you stood in a long line up to vote early this weekend I salute you!


Friday 9 October 2015

Patterns and Klimt

This term when I sat down to create my painting and Drawing lesson plan I thought a lot about what art elements I wanted to focus on. I wanted to pick an element and then combine each lesson with another element because no art element is an island or something similarly deep and arty...

Anyway, getting back to my point I chose a running art elemental theme to run through the terms lessons and the theme I landed on was Pattern. Pattern is the repetition of shape, form and texture to keep the eye moving around. Pattern creates balance, space, and helps to organise composition. 

With this in mind we took a look at Gustav Klimt this week. We took some time to look at some of Klimt's most popular paintings as well as some of his lesser works. We discussed the patterns that Klimt used most in the art that we were looking at and then we jumped tight into drawing a portrait. I don't often do guided drawings but sometimes a guided drawing with portraits and body proportions helps to get the idea of some of the basics cemented or at the very least gets the students thinking about what they are looking at. 

As you can see from these finished examples I had a pretty wide range of portrait styles with my young artists, With students aged 5 to 11 there is bound to be varying degrees of technique. I had my students dress their portrait with patterns and then create a background with even more repeating shapes using oil pastel. The final step in the lesson was to add a water colour wash over top of the oil pastel portraits and patterns. 










It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. While most people have taken the less stress route when it comes to the Harvest feast I decided to take a different road this time around. I'll be making a lovely squash soup to take to a friends dinner party. I've committed to ham dinner with two sides and dessert on Sunday and another turkey dinner with stuffings and a few other sides on Monday. I'm going to be honest. I've got some lovely friends and family bringing dishes and important sides on both days but I will be focused on culinary creations for the next few days. I'd hoped to have a book review post about the two books I used in my lesson plans last week but those will have to wait until the thanksgiving food coma has passed or a lull in the cooking happens and or procrastination rears it's weird little head. If you are a South of the 49th you're big turkey day is coming... If you're a fellow north of the 49th parallel dweller Happy Thanksgiving. If you can go out and hit the early voting sometime in the next few days. I voted this afternoon and I couldn't express how awesome it was.




Tuesday 6 October 2015

Dragons and Sunflower Finished Art

 I'm posting the finished dragon paintings from yesterday here.





Yesterday we used paint and painted paper for our finished art. Today with the older group and a little longer class time I added a preliminary step to the process. Students used oil pastels to draw their flower centers, stems and leaves. We applied our flower petals using the same technique but the oil pastel resisted the wet paint allowing our centers, stems and leaves to peek out from behind the petals. My older artists got very creative with their dragons. We had a low relief dragon created by folding and bending the paper to stand out against the painted background. We had dragon's the emerged outside of the traditional picture plain some subtly, others more so. I'd love to say that I have a favourite (I actually do, one of the finished artworks below was created by one of my own children, as a mom hers is my favourite. I think it's amazing.) but as an art instructor I see amazing things in each finished art work posted below, and also the other two paintings that were still too wet to hang up when I took these photos. Watching today's artwork unfold I was very excited to see all the different directions my young artists were going with their art.









Monday 5 October 2015

Dragons and Sunflowers for Swords


Last year the Art Sparks and Arts Enrichment classes did a project based on Perfect Square; the book I read with my Art Exploration Students on Saturday.

I make an effort to keep lesson topics fresh and to revisit techniques instead of subjects so instead of continuing with the same book for today and tomorrow's lesson I introduced The Sunflower Sword by Mark Sperring and illustrated by  Miriam Latimer. I built a Dragon Themed birthday party around this book last year which was a big hit. Today I focused on the spread in the book that had the dragon flying over top of a giant field of blooming sunflowers.

In my garden I have a lovely patch of sunflowers this year. The bright yellow petals surrounding the smaller blossoms set out in a Fibonacci spiral are beautiful in and of themselves. Adding a dragon to the composition is a full on winner with my own little artists as well as the artists in my classes.

We started with an application of yellow and orange paint with sponges and also foam shaped stamps. I then instructed my artists to add the brown centres of the flowers with a round brush. The opportunity to bled the brown paint provided with the still wet oranges and yellows was taken by a handful of artists in the lesson and the brush work they used added energy  and interest to their compositions. A few other artists were more interested in precise application of the brown and others were more interested in applying the yellow and orange and only a small amount or no brown was added at all. Our next step was to use scissors and painted paper scraps to cut out the shapes to build our own dragon. The dragon was glued onto our under painting and a final addition of a googly eye ( or three, or five or two) was added.

Regardless of what steps were taken or left out in the process each of my young artist friends learned a little bit about texture, pattern and shapes today. It is always really fascinating to see the ideas of children this age emerge onto paper.

Once the finished works are dry I will post some examples.


Saturday 3 October 2015

Perfect Square






This time last week I was steeling myself for the possibility of only one class on Saturdays and I am pleased to now have two sessions of Art Exploration classes for two age groups Saturday mornings. Art Exploration as the name suggests an exploration of art materials and elements for toddlers and a caregiver and for children aged three to five. Last week we explored oil pastels and paint on paper with leaves. This week we're looking at things from the shape of a square

A few years ago I was in the library looking for a picture book that had a focus on circles for my very first art class at Artspace. While looking for a circle book I saw sitting on the shelf a book about a square. I of course picked up this book and brought it home all the while wishing that my lesson was about squares (because back then I was a little more rigid with my lesson plans; I was a new teacher and very far out of my comfort zone so keeping within my plan was all about coping). This Saturday class will be based on the illustrations in that book and that book is called Perfect Square by Michael Hall.

In the past I've taught this lesson in two parts. Students would paint a rainbow onto mixed media paper and then in a second class the paper is transformed with scissors, folding and cutting into a picture that has it's inspiration from one of the pages in the book. This time around, because we have an abundance of pre painted paper at Artspace we'll be creating our art from the stock of painted paper. Focus was on choosing papers that appeal to the artists, composing an image onto paper and practicing scissor and glue skills.

























The purple pieces were done by my toddler artists. Each one of the artists was fully engaged in the process of the art today. During the lesson I was talking abut how focus in the  lesson is getting engagement from our artists and not looking for anything specific within a composition, I went on to say that often allowing the freedom to engage with the materials brings out some very amazing finished artworks. Today's lesson illustrated that point to a T. Each of the artists in the toddler class was allowed to compose their image with very little involvement from their caregiver. My favourite parts of the lesson was watching the thinking process in where things were placed on the page. In all cases the artists made very specific and engaged choices for their work and it shows.

The Blue backed art was done in the Preschool class. In this class we had the same focus and engagement. Each artist approached the project in very different ways. From the deconstruction of the backing paper into a new shape (which referenced our inspiration book) to the minimalist compositions and the compositions that used multiple layers and or broke out of the image frame. I was very pleased by the outcome of each class and love that I get to share the work here with you.


Friday 2 October 2015

Friday Book Round Up


This week I referenced two books for my balloon painting lessons. 



I'm a very big fan of Peter H Reynolds' books for their art inspiration. His illustrations remind me strongly of Illustrator Quentin Blake of Dr Seuss Great Day for Up! fame. But it's not just nostalgia for one of my favourite books as a kid that I like. It's the stories that he tells in his books and how they promote being creative, thinking outside the box and being an artist. I have added three books from Mr Reynolds' bibliography to my own book collection. I've mentioned that I don't often buy books unless I really love them and these certainly fit that criteria. Rose's garden isn't in that bunch yet. I ran across this book while researching for this weeks lesson and as soon as I saw it was a Reynolds' put a hold on that baby. I was not disappointed. 


http://www.biblio.com/book/planting-rainbow-ehlert-lois/d/543053532



In addition to loving Reynolds Ehlert is another go to favourite author illustrator for both bedtime reading with my children and for art lesson inspiration. my kids often pick up a Lois Elhert (both illustrated and authored and illustrated) book from the library as one of their free choices. Her cut paper shapes and the bright colours lend themselves to preschool and toddler art lessons especially because the shapes she cuts are both engaging and simple. One of my favourite Elhert title is Hands: Growing up To Be An Artist which is an artwork in itself. 

If you're interested in either of these books click on the image of the book and find yourself at Biblio.com an independent book selling website or visit your local indie bookseller and buy your copy from a real living breathing person. Also feel free to visit Amazon.ca (or.com)to find the book you're looking for.By preference I try to buy from independent book sellers but I  also know that sometimes convenience and price are better if you have a tight budget.