Zentangle Pumpkins

My Example

More Zentangle projects - 

4th Grade students at two of my schools are reviewing lines by doing some cool pumpkin drawings with Zentangle designs drawn in them.

They seemed to really like this project. I reminded them that it takes a while and not to rush through. 
Here's a sneak peek at some student work in progress - 

I love the way the art room is hushed when students are doing zentangles. It seems to calm them and they often loose themselves in their work. 

Finding the right music to play while they are working can be a challenge though. Does anyone have any favorite Pandora channels to play during classes for elementary students?

Animals with Zentangle Designs

My Example

One of the first things I focus on with my elementary students is to introduce or review the use of line quality in an artwork. I've done this in a variety of ways over the years with the different grade levels. One of the projects we are working on this year is animals with zentangle-like designs added to them. 

At one of my schools I decided to focus on the theme of animals in art. So this project seemed to fit right in. I focused on my 4th and 5th graders for this project.

We spent an art time drawing out an animal of their choice. My goal this year is to give students as much creative choice as possible within the confines of what I want them to learn or be able to do by the end of each project. So the choice of animal was extended to include imaginary, combined, or "creatures" of any kind they wished to create.

Once their drawing was done, I went over a few different watercolor painting techniques. We went over wet into dry, wet into wet, and adding salt to obtain different results. 

When the paintings were dry we discussed line quality and I showed some examples of zentangles. I showed the students some parts of YouTube videos by the artist Milliande that I have linked on my Art with Mrs. G website. I also showed them my finished giraffe. I had a blast making it and wanted to let them know that. 

Students are still working on their animals but here are some sneak peeks of them in progress -

Art Room Job Poster

Wow! Been a while since my last post. Busy...Busy!

I have a lot of things listed on my To-Do list that I keep in my iPhone "Reminder" app. It seems as I check one off I add at least a couple more. One that has been on the list for quite awhile is making an Art Room job poster for my 3 schools. I assign various jobs to students each art time. I do this by selecting a certain number that corresponds to a student at the table. I have a colored mat on each table that has numbers painting on it. You can see this in the picture below.

Our school district uses Kagan Cooperative learning techniques and the numbers are used for that. They do come in handy even more in Art to have different students do different things. So each week I might say 1s are in charge of collecting folders and 2s are taking care of water cups. If a number I called wasn't there the job went to their shoulder partner. Sounds good right?
Well...it was until I kept forgetting to mark down who did what when so that the jobs would rotate around the table. With 3 schools, 27 classes, and let's face it age it just stopped being easy to keep track of. I'd ask the first class that came in for the week, "Who were folder helpers last week?" Of course more than one hand would go up at each table.

So I wanted to create a poster to help the students and myself know just who's turn it was to do what. I had a design in mind and finally this past week finished making 3 of them.

I laminated the palette, brush, and paint splats with jobs written on them. I laminated the numbered circles separately. I chose 5 jobs that are needed most in my rooms. "Dusty's Helper" refers to my dustpan and broom that has a face painted on it. "Dusty's his name...cleaning's his game." Adhesive backed velcro on the numbers lets me rotate them each week. 

Kindergarten Bird Paintings Inspired by Audubon

~ Geometric Shapes, Organic Shapes, and Drawing from Observation ~

Bluejay by Mathias

Kindergarten students learned a little about the artwork of John James Audubon with this lesson. We looked at some of his bird paintings and talked about how he observed birds in nature to see what they really looked like. 

We discussed what drawing from observation meant. Since we couldn't go outside in the cold and get a bird to sit still for us, we did our observation from photographs. I picked out a handful of birds that students would have seen in our area - Northwest Illinois - and printed out pictures for students to look at. We had just done a lesson in shape. We discussed the two kinds of shapes - geometric and organic (free-form) shapes before the students started drawing the bird they picked to do. I continued to remind students to look at the bird and see what shapes they saw and draw what they saw. One student got to giggling at me because I kept repeating "as you draw look at the picture then back to your paper...then back to the picture. Look at the picture...look at the paper...look at the picture..." He repeated "picture - paper- picture-paper" while giggling. But they got the idea and all really looked at the shapes they saw!

After drawing with pencils, I had the students go over the lines with a black Sharpie marker. The next class students painting their birds. Again they picked up the bird photos so that they could look at the colors as they painted. The birds below were painted with tempera cakes.  See more of our Kindergarten birds in our Artsonia gallery.

Mallard Duck by Alandra

Cardinal by Hailey

Robin by Olivia

iPad Art - Our Chalk Cupcakes Go Wild - Digitally!

Our chalk cupcakes got even sweeter when we had fun with iPad apps!

I photographed the students' chalk cupcakes for Artsonia, as I do with the majority of artwork created. Because I planned on having the students use these images on the iPads, I also created folders in Dropbox with each class's pics.
My 4th grade students (and a few 5th graders in my 4/5 split) learned how to find their cupcake image in Dropbox and download it to the camera roll, on the iPad they were using. I introduced two apps to the whole class using the iPad connected to the projector. I showed the students how to open the app, upload their picture from the camera roll, and how to adjust settings until they liked the creation. I then showed them how to email the finished image to me. I didn't spend a long time on this demo in front of the whole class though. Instead I spent more time with the first 6 students (I currently have 6 iPads) on teaching them more in depth. Then after they finished their digital images, those students chose another student to teach. This cycle continued until all students were finished. By learning and then teaching to another person you retain more knowledge.

One of the apps we used was the Percolator App. It has a lot of manipulations and adjustments that can really transform one artwork into another!

The other app we used was PhotoTropedelic  It's a very fun colorful app!

See more in our Artsonia Gallery 

Wayne Thiebaud Inspired Chalk Cupcakes - 4th Grade

4th Grade students learned about American artist Wayne Thiebaud while creating these yummy-looking artworks.

After we spent some time learning about Thiebaud, students were able to practice using chalk pastels to make a drawing of a ball. We went through how to make an object look more 3-dimensional by using highlights and shadows. They practice blending and keeping fingerprints and smudges off their work. We also talked about being safe and smart with the dust that is created. No blowing or wiping away the dust. Instead it is tapped off into a garbage can.

The next class students worked on their cupcake. I think the practice they had really helped students feel more confident about created their cupcake.

Here's some of my favorites -

See more on Roosevelt's Artsonia Gallery

We will also be transforming our cupcakes using one of two iPad apps. *that post here*

And...our 2D cupcakes will go 3D with a clay project!

iPad Art - Words and Landscapes - Manipulating Traditional Art with an iPad

Have I mentioned how much I love iPads? Once or twice :)

This first semester we've been enjoying our 6 iPads in my art rooms. Students have to take turns or work in groups but they don't seem to mind. They all love working with them. We will be working on creating original works directly on the iPad soon, but for now we have been using them to transform our traditional works in a few different ways.

The first example of this is adding words to the Grant Wood inspired Landscape Collages. After students finished their collage works, they used the app WordFoto to add a set of words to their art. Students learned how to use the iPad to photograph the artwork. Then they added 5-6 words that were inspired by their artwork. The first word they were asked to add was their name.

Here's one of the traditional works -

And here's her work full of words - 

The WordFoto app is customizable so that students can pick different fonts, colors, and other options to make their work as individual as them! They had fun playing around with the settings.

When a student liked their digital work they emailed it to me so that I could add it to their Artsonia Gallery.

The best part of this project was how the students worked on it. I showed the whole class using the iPad hooked up to the projector so they could see how it was done. Then while most of the class worked on another project, 6 students came back to an area of the room to work with the iPads. I helped these students on the steps, answering their questions and showing them some options. When they were finished I showed them how to email the image to me. Then the magic began - these students were asked to go bring another classmate back to the table and they taught that student by using words or pointing (not doing it for them) how to use the app and then how to email it. So by the time everyone's work was done they had been taught how to use the app and then they taught someone else how to use it!