what's a jolby?!

Not really a what, but a who...

I have been wanting to do a project based on the work of this Portland based design team for a while. I plan on doing another one based on a guitar painting they did (while listening to much Fleet Foxes... added cool points.).

The 2 founding members of Jolby are Josh Kenyon and Colby Nichols, who met at art school right here in San Diego. Many of their designs have a wonderfully animated style that kids and grownups alike can appreciate that have a great infusion of texture and pattern achieved the repetition of line.

The design I chose as inspiration for this kinder project is the front cover of a cd/album cover for Stacy Clark.

I was attracted to the play of the watercolor up top against the hard edged water patterning at the bottom.

I focus a lot on pattern recognition and creation with my kinders, so this design lended itself nicely to being incorporated into my curriculum.

I showed the classes some of the designs from the Jolby website and we talked about what a designer does, how they use pattern, and a variety of materials to make their work. My classes loved the shoes for DC and they thought the Gibson guitar design was super cool too.

We then looked at the design for Stacy Clark's album and discussed materials and patterns there as well.

We approached this project in 3 steps-

1. paint the upper 2/3 of the paper with watercolor to create a sunset/giant peach/whale head meeting the water's edge

2. draw the water wave pattern on a separate sheet of colored construction paper and add patterning with construction paper crayons

3. cut top edge of waves off and glue in position to watercolor paper

The project went pretty smoothly for a mixed media project with kinders...

The kids enjoyed the painting. we tried to make the sun shape look 3d by starting with mostly paint and a little water and adding more and more water as they crossed the shape.

The cutting portion of the lesson was a good extension of their cutting practice on the Kim MacConnel projects they did the week before.

One kid enjoyed the paint so much he needed to lick the watercolor set. In my 9 years of teaching here this was a first in my class room. It was the black pan. He looked like he was dripping zombie blood...