illusions with oz.

As a follow up to the line drawings that were inspired by Mister Phil, this week, my 2nds created pieces that put their own, individual spin on an illustration by Olimpia Zagnoli.

We started off by visually identifying anything and everything in her illustration. After that, we talked about how her illustration compared and contrasted with Mr. Phil's pieces. We also noticed that she created a cool optical illusion by playing with the sizes and placement of the hands and cloud filled background. Of course, we then had a bit of fun by experimenting with this in real life, as we "pinched" each other's heads from across the room.

We saw how their were no outlines in Olimpia's work, but that lines were still present all over- made by simply having one color ride against another to create that edge.

When getting ready to create our drawings, I emphasized that we would draw a hand together, so that we could check out the relationship of the hand parts to one another- proportion and placement. Once the hand was drawn, they would bring their voice more into the piece, by using an object they were interested in, as the background pattern element.

As with the Mister Phil inspired drawings, many of the student creations made a lot of us giggle:)

filling like mister phil.

My 2nd graders have started the year by exploring how line can create shapes and patterns in art. To better engage my student artists, I shared the work of English artist Mister Phil. We looked for shapes and patterns in a number of his drawings and also talked about how art does not need to be serious all the time. We all agreed that Mister Phil's work seems a little silly! (And that is okay;) We also noticed how he filled larger implied shapes with  A LOT of shapes and patterns created with lines.

As we started, I reminded my students that we wouldn't be copying Mister Phil's work and we would use it as inspiration to create our own unique drawings.

We started off by experimenting in a couple practice drawings. I demonstrated drawing a large shape very softly in a rectangle. This shape was then filled with shapes and patterns of each student's choosing. I asked my artists to do at least 2 practice drawings. They then decided which one would be more interesting for a final drawing and put a check mark next to that particular sketch.

When they were ready to start on the larger drawing, I encouraged them to draw light until they had it right. I also reminded them that it was okay if their final drawing changed a bit from their original plan. As artists often do, they could revise and enhance their bigger drawings to make them even more successful than their sketches.

Once the pencil work was done, they could choose one color to trace their lines with. When adding color to the final drawings, students could use any colors they wanted and I reminded them that they could press hard and soft to make dark and light colors.

Once my artists were done with their drawings, I asked them to write Mister Phil a question regarding his artistic process. Here are a few of those questions-

"Mr. Phil, why did you become an artist?"

"Mr. Phil, how long does it take you to come up with ideas?"

"Mr. Phil, how did you get so good at drawing?"

"Mr. Phil, will you be my friend?"

"Mr. Phil, do you have a dog?"

murals with maya.

So, I was planning on having my 2nds experiment with shape and cut paper collage this week... and then I went to a makerspace session at naea17 in nyc last week and changed my mind.

I watched how a morphi representative took a 3d solid she designed in that app and dropped it into a image from google earth to serve as a virtual sculpture. Boom! I loved that idea. Now, I am not fluent enough in morphi to teach it to my kids yet, but I immediately realized I could do something similar with the assembly app with my students.

Last year I had a number of grade levels experiment with the assembly app and found that there was a lot of student success and high engagement while working.

So, this week, my 2nds have been looking at the work of artist Maya Hayuk for shape and mural concept inspiration and then working with a partner to play and explore the app while they create a virtual mural for our school community. When looking at Maya's work I have emphasized her use of layered, overlapped geometric shapes. I don't expect the kids to copy her work, but I do want them to focus on geometric shapes and layering. We also have noticed that some of her murals have a strong sense of symmetry while others do not. I want students to be able to recognize this principle in their designs as well.

I have created a short video how-to for the app that I share with the students as we prepare for using the app in class and we view this in a couple chunks after looking at Maya's work. (i'll post that soon:)

I really encourage play with this project. Since it's a digital collage, they can erase shapes and delete parts they aren't digging with the touch of the screen. Assembly is a very user friendly app- it's quite easy to add shapes, flip and rotate them, change sizes and colors.

I went around on Monday with a bunch of ipads and took photos of several blank walls on campus. Students select one of these to serve as the background of their assembly creation. Then, the teams of two start to experiment. Once they have a satisfying composition, they save it and continue to play. They can choose a different wall and go, or simply clear the shapes and work with the same wall.

I have been transferring the images to my mac and then emailing them to the classroom teachers, so they can look at them on their smart boards back in class. I will be printing a bunch of the images out to include in our annual student exhibit that will take place in a couple of months.

There are many choices for students to make with this project. I do have a few rules- no natural shapes, include overlapping shapes, and all of the design must be on the wall. This last one is key because a muralist can not paint on the sky in real life.

My students connect with murals because our campus is covered with them and because we had a local muralist create one on campus earlier this year and they got to see the whole process. I think this project is a great way for them to think about designing with a purpose. In this case it was making something that would turn their playground environment into something more beautiful and enjoyable.

I was only intending these designs to remain digital, but after seeing some of the results, I do believe I need to find the time to make at least a couple of these actually happen on our campus!

plenty of portraits.

Last week the 2nd and 5th grade classes experimented with making tints of colors while creating portraits. Both grades used chalk pastels for these drawings, so the process was a lot of messy fun:)

The 2nds looked at the work of Argentinian painter Dan Casado for inspiration. We talked about how he exaggerates and changes the face parts, and that we can still recognize his people as people. We also noticed how he uses bold outlines to separate those face parts and other background elements.

We started by practicing a portrait on smaller paper and as we went along I modeled different ways they could approach the shapes. If they wanted to go at shapes differently, I encouraged them to try it out. We also added background elements that added to the personal quality of the drawings. For the final drawing, we drew them out on 12x14" brown paper, traced the lines with black crayon, and add chalk pastels to the paper.

When applying the pastels, we practiced not resting hands and arms on the paper to keep the paper (and ourselves) as clean as possible. Once we had most of the paper colored, I modeled adding white to certain areas to make lighter versions of those colors. I also then showed them how to smooth or blend certain areas with a finger (just one:)

I loved seeing the wide variety in face/background shapes, and color choices in these. Some kids were very delicate in their pastel handling, while others were much more aggressive and bold in approach.

The 5ths also looked at Dan's work for inspiration, but we also compared and contrasted his work with the work of San Diego based artist Gloria Muriel. She's one of my favorite artists working right now and I have been fortunate enough to see her at work while she was painting a mural in downtown San Diego. While Dan's forms are solid and blocky, Gloria's are much more elegant and flowing. Dan's portrait heads tend to take up the majority of the picture plane, while Gloria's more often are smaller in scale, allowing her to explore the rest of the space for hair, water, and other flowing natural elements. Despite all the differences, they both use bold dark lines throughout their compositions and both use tints of colors to great effect in their work.

After discussing the work of both artists, we set off to create a couple practice compositions inspired by their work. Kids could focus on the style of one or both artists. Furthermore, if someone went their own way with their portraits, that was okay, as long as they incorporated the required elements of bold lines and color tints. After sketching and sharing, we got to the large versions and like with the 2nds, I demonstrated chalk handling, creating tints, and blending colors.

I have been blown away by the diversity in portraits with this project. So many different compositions and takes on the portrait concept.