Wednesday 30 September 2015

Still Life




My Tuesday afternoon Painting and Drawing class has student's aged 5 and older. This means that the style and skill of the artists in that class varies all along the spectrum of art skills for children. 

I should preface this post with an apology for not getting a photograph of the still life set up I had for this class. The time between set up and beginning of class is a bit of a crunch and Time got away from me. I set up boxes of varying height covered in draped fabric, Two glass jars with cut flowers, a pair of beautifully embroidered and beaded purple shoes and an assortment of fossils, minerals and crystals. I am really kicking myself for not thinking to document it until after getting home last night, it looked fabulous. 

To start with, we talked about lights and shadow and how they form shapes on the objects that we draw. We looked at examples of still life drawings and discussed how using light and shadow to create form inside a drawing also creates space within the drawing adding dimension. We also talked about looking at our subject and our drawing at the same time as we draw so that our eyes and our hands work together. 

Each student, dependant on time drew with charcoal on white paper focusing on shadows. They then drew with white chalk on black paper focusing on highlights and then finished on coloured paper using both the chalk and charcoal incorporating both highlights and shadows.

As you can see from the drawings I chose to display from the lesson, each artist's style is completely different; as is the way that they chose to look at and draw the subject. The older of the artists in the class focused on more detail, really looking at the still life and how the light and shadows worked within the composition. Some artists chose to interpret the still life into their own style of drawing and the younger artists were still able to capture the idea of what was in front of them with their emerging skill set. 

I chose my favourites from the finished drawings to display. 


Tuesday 29 September 2015

More Flowers and Balloons

Just like last week I kept Monday and Tuesday lessons pretty similar. Since our Tuesday students are a little older and have a longer lesson than Monday, I added a few changes to extend the lesson. We started the lesson with a reading of the picture book Rose's Garden by Peter H Reynolds. I decided on a different book for this group because it was a little more involved than yesterdays while still keeping within the same theme.

My little artist's started their project by learning how to hold and cut with scissors; this is a skill we will revisit again and again with this age group. It's always a tricky lesson for me to teach and for the little ones to learn but it's very important for later when the same grip is used for holding a pencil. each child was given a piece of construction paper with a teapot shape pre-drawn on it. Following the instructions for holding and using their scissors each child cut out their own teapot. Every teapot is unique to the artist who cut it out. Some were given a little help by myself or my co-teacher, howeverthat number was considerably less than I anticipated. Given that the class size is quite big we did quite well with our cutting. We decorated our teapots with white glue and fine glitter and set them aside to dry.

We used balloons to create our flowers again filling our whole page with balloon impressions. Once our pages were covered in flowers we glued our teapot on top referencing the final illustration in Rose's Garden where the heroine's giant teapot sits as if floating on a sea of colourful flowers.









Monday 28 September 2015

Week Two: Zinnia's and Balloons



It's week two and I'm anticipating the joys of balloon painting with my young artists. The cold I caught from one of my preschoolers has left me with a drippy nose and a scratchy voice. I didn't help this when I stayed out a little later than usual yesterday to see the lunar eclipse but it was worth it.





The technique I taught today and tomorrow is one I found on Pinterest and immediately tweaked. It has a big "wow" factor with the young ones and lends itself really well to certain subjects; flowers for instance. The Pin I first saw this technique used in was a take on Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar.  I love Eric Carle, some of my favourite projects are created with painted paper and collage. I think his paper collages are very distinctive and wanted to try something different in my own classes so I came up with a theme that I thought suited the technique even better and allowed for a little discussion about colour theory and of course the use of a varied and interesting colour palette.

Last week we collaged and painted leaves; very suitable for autumn. This week I'm bringing in some of the zinnia blossoms from my garden and blowing up balloons for the students to paint with. This lesson works best with a contrasty selection of paint in each tray and I do find that I have to impress the importance of not squeezing the balloons while painting to the students (otherwise: POP). I also find that it's a good idea to have a few extra balloons ready just in case. I have a hand pump to blow them up before the lesson begins. While we are on the subject I also try to blow the balloons up at most about 1/2 the capacity. This makes them easier for small hands to grasp, easier for transport inside the studio and also makes them less likely to pop. I have in the past used water balloons for this lesson with good success but the smaller balloons are also thinner and more likely to pop unexpectedly.












My co-teacher for the Artsparks class read the book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehert to our young artists and their caregivers and then once a short break had been taken and snacks consumed my class joined me in the art studio. Gree paint was used for grass and stems and then I had my young artists stamp their balloons into the marbled paint and then onto the paper. the wow factor happens when they see the colours transferred from the balloon onto the paper. The excitement from the ballon painting was felt throughout Artspace. As a final step white glue was applied to pre-drawn styrofoam stamps and a dusting of fine glitter was added to the tacky butterflies, caterpillars and bees wchich got this lesson a super double wow ovation.

When I left after clean up the art was still drying. Once it's hung I will follow up with images of the student's art.

The Really wonderful thing about this class is that all the caregivers are very open to letting their children, grandchildren and friends explore the materials in their own way. Of course there are small nudges here and there to remind our small artists what was said in the demonstration but the final work is always very much the work of our little artists.



 I use balloons for paper mache projects at Artspace as well a painting tool. Usually I save paper mache for week long camp lessons so that there is enough time to add a good number of layers. If you use balloons in your lessons let me know how they work out; if you have tried something different please share.

Saturday 26 September 2015

Saturday Class: More Of The Same But Different

By looking at my posting history one would think that all I do is post new entries here.  This last week you wouldn't be far off. Starting a new blog is a slow process and I always find the beginning to be a little lonely with only one or two posts in the first week or so. I find writing posts to be a time consuming process.

Getting the ideas out, uploading images and deciding what to share take time, and then there's the proofreading process which I will admit I am a little out of practise on. I've been trying to go through each post before it goes live and again after I've had some time away to catch any mistakes in grammar or phraseology. Feel free to grammar police me if you see anything I miss.

Today is the last class of the week for me. So far registration has been a little slow for my parent participation Art Exploration class and today's Painting and Drawing Class has been cancelled for this term due to lack of registration. My preschool class, which has always been my fullest class is a go so I'm headed in to make more art with kids again today.

Usually I have a separate lesson plan decided for my Saturday classes but the leaf projects from earlier this week were so amazing that I'm going to keep that theme going. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing today, that should come on my walk to work while I collect leaves from the sidewalk and grass in the neighbourhood. Sometimes no matter how good a lesson I have planned is; I just feel the need to change things up. I know it's not the most ideal thing to share on a blog about building and sharing lesson plans but I think it's important to share the spontaneous side of my lesson building with you too. In fairness; the spontaneity usually fits within the same parameters. I'll expand later when I've shared today's end results.


I did mentioned the book I used with the lessons on Monday and Tuesday but I thought I'd share the cover and link here to Amazon in case you were interested. A Leaf Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas is beautifully illustrated with dreamy images and the text paints a word picture while being simple and poetic that using the book as a starting point for making art is almost a no brainer. The number of ideas I've gotten for lessons with this book, based on both the illustrations and on the words themselves is worth owning this book instead of hoping that it's available at the library when I need it.


Friday 25 September 2015

Ohika Collages and Assemblage


Today was a Professional Development day in the school district and instead of regular Friday lessons, Artspace ran full and half day camps. As I mentioned in a post this morning I taught campers a mixed media art exploration class.

We used the art of Magaly Ohika as a jumping off point for the day's project. Students used chalk pastels. painted papers, fabric scraps and yarn to create Ohika-esque figures. A handful of my campers took the opportunity to create purely from their own imaginations. 

Campers are split into groups based on age; With my older campers we turned the collage project into assemblage with the addition of circuit boards to the composition. I loved seeing how and where each camper placed the board into their art. 

My younger group focused on the collage aspect of the project. The project was fill of colour, pattern and texture. 



















A Leaf Can Be Follow up and Pro D Camp Plans

I've got a Professional Development camp today. I'll be teaching a total of 23 artists today, using the artist Magaly Ohika as our inspiration. 

I love her work. I've been cyber stalking her distinctive art for years. Today I'll be sharing some of it with the campers and we'll be putting our own spin on it with some recycled electronic circuit boards. My plan is to shoot grouping of the artist's creations to share here. 








As promised here are the finished art pieces from my Arts Enrichment group. With a combination of oil pastel rubbings and painted applied to the leaves and stamped onto the paper I couldn't have been more pleased with the finished work. Since this age group has a focus on exploring and making art I was pleased to hear one of my favourite questions during the process:

Teacher, How do I make brown?

What followed was an experimentation of how many different shades of brown could be made using only yellow, green, red and orange. As you can see from the posted art here each of my students has a unique style to their art making already. The first picture in this set has a wonderful example of positive and negative space where the artist used the leaves to mask the paper while painting. Some of my other artists were more precise with their paint applications and rubbings. 

What ways do you use the autumn leaves in your art practice? 


Wednesday 23 September 2015

Mini Exhibition: Joy Walker Inspired Tape Drawings


A few doors down from Artspace there's a coffee house that displays some of the art that is made by the students at Artspace.  The photo above shows the randomly selected tape drawings that the coffee house has on display now. The  art that wasn't chosen for the coffee house are on display at Artspace. You can see them in the photograph below.






The lesson was based on Joy Walker's  tape drawings. We talked about lines and their use in creating art, the different types of lines in Walker's art and how to make our own tape drawings.

As always I allowed a great degree of freedom for my students to explore the media assigned to the day's art lesson and their own ideas.

Happily I was not disappointed. The students explored line length, thickness and creating shapes and space. They also made great use of colour in their projects and in some cases adding
even more pattern with their paint.

All the art created yesterday went above and beyond my expectations. I have never been let down in my expectations for what my students can create. This lesson was no exception. It was a great beginning for the fall term and a great lesson.

Topping this weeks lesson is going to be quite a feat



Tuesday 22 September 2015

A Leaf Can Be Second Time 'Round



While yesterday's A leaf Can Be lesson was a great success I decided to go in a different direction. Tuesday I teach Art's Enrichment; a preschool Music, Movement and Art class for preschool aged children.

Today I collected some leaves on my way into class. As you can see in the time lapse video we painted our leaves in fall colours and stamped the painted leaves onto black and blue construction paper. We also made use of oil pastels to make some leaf rubbings.

The finished art was beautiful and varied, just like the artist's who made them. I don't run my art lessons very strictly; I like to allow my little artists the freedom to express themselves and explore the media. If I stuck to a strict lesson plan opportunities for young artists to explore different techniques would be lost. One of my students today created leaf shapes in negative space by applying the paint to the leaves on top of his art paper. The result was phenomenal and one that would not have happened if the artist was stopped and directed to follow my directions to the letter. As long as my students are respecting the space, their fellow artists and the materials I am more than happy to let them walk to the beat of their own drum.

I'll update this post later with finished art from the students.

Monday 21 September 2015

A Leaf Can Be

Today was my first class of the fall term at Artspace.  Artsparks is a parent participation class that combines music and movement with visual arts. Today we used a wet on wet technique to create trees with our hands, water and droppers of brown paint, sponges to lay down grass and sky and tissue on clear adhesive sheets to give our trees some fall foliage.

My sample piece for the lesson is to the left. My students did each step except adding a yellow sun and their art was so well done. I know what toddlers can do when it comes to making art; in case you want to know it's make art that professional artists work long and hard to replicate.

Students sprayed their arms and hands to make them very very wet. They then took droppers filled with brown tempera and dropped the paint into the wet areas of their paper. This created their tree trunk and branches.



Using sponges my students applied blue, white and purple paint to make a sky around their tree and yellow and green paints to lay down some grass beneath their tree. once the paint was applied we set the paintings aside to dry while we made the foliage for our trees.




Students placed leaf shaped tissue onto a lear adhesive sheet. The backing of the shelf liner that we used to collage our foliage onto is saved for use in a future lesson. All the instructor's at Artspace feel that reusing, repurposing and recycling is super important. If we can save something for another day it gets put into the back room. Once the smaller leaf shapes were placed down we used glue to layer larger tissue shapes onto the adhesive sheets. We then took the sheets and placed them collage side (and also adhesive side) down onto the branches of our hand shaped trees.



As a finishing touch red apples were added by stamping red paint onto the trees, on the ground and wherever my little artists wanted to.
I know I shouldn't be surprised by how amazing their creations are but I always am. I should also mention that I have very high expectations for my young artist friends. After all I am always striving to make art just like they do.








With this age group I'm more interested in engaging my students with the materials than I am with how much like my sample piece their project looks like. In fact because this is a caregiver participation class I find that I am often helping to teach the caregivers how to let their charges take the lead. Sometimes that can be more of a challenge than the art itself. At the end of the lesson what we really want is for our young artists to have had fun, gotten messy and to be really excited by what they made. As a first lesson for a lot of my students today it was a pretty good success for everyone.