into the deep with yellena.

I've loved the work of Yellena James for many years. 2 of her prints hang in our living room and they are such a treat in terms of shape, pattern, and subtle movement. she was one of the first living artists that I brought into my elementary curriculum and I think it's long overdue to share her work with another generation of Zamorano students.

Recently, Yellena has been working on dark backgrounds and creating shapes and patterns with colors that are most luminescent. I love the glow and the mystery of these darker compositions. To me, they appear to be fantastical studies of underwater sea life.

With my 3rd graders, I'm using her work to start their line unit. We are looking at a number of her paintings and using them as a springboard to experiment with contour line, pattern, and space. When students use sketching to plan their compositions, we talk about how they should be drawing from 3 things- Yellena's work, their personal experiences with nature, and their imagination. After creating at lest 2 sketches, they describe which one they would like to move forward with and then get rolling on the black paper final drawing.

When starting on the black paper, I encourage them to draw out the shapes softly with our crayola colorsticks- this will allow them to erase and edit if necessary. Once things are laid in, they add patterns and other details. Then they can start playing with hand pressure to make some of the elements brighter to pop and to make other parts submerge a bit into the background darkness. I encourage them to elaborate on their sketches- adding more pattern, detail, and color.

There are a few constraints with this drawing activity- a minimum of 3 shapes, 3 patterns, and a use of overlapping. I also encourage them to play with line thickness as well as hand pressure, so that focal points stand out a bit more.

I really am enjoying the variety of compositions that are coming from this drawing experience! next week, they are going to use line a lot differently, so they can see the range of possibilities with the similar elements and materials... stay tuned:)

A few more classes have yet to play, so I'll come back and showcase their work, too.

These are from Thursday:)

Doesn't this necklace totally fit in with the drawings???

making meaning with jean-michel

The 3rd graders are starting their color and chalk pastel unit by looking at the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat for inspiration. This activity allows students to focus on meaning in art and gives them opportunities to experiment with themes that are important to them. 

I have always loved the boldness and the energy of his work. There is a rawness to it the captivates me. I know his work can be difficult to approach with students, but I encourage you to give it a chance.

We start out by looking at a couple photographs of Basquiat at work, so the students can identify with him. We talk about how his parents were immigrants- his father was from Haiti and his mom from Puerto Rico. At Zamo, we have a diverse population and many of our students have family members that have come to the US from different countries. We all know the political climate today, and I think it's so important to recognize the positive impact immigrants have had after they and their children have established themselves here.

We then look at three paintings that Basquiat created. I ask the students if art needs to be pretty or beautiful all the time and they have responded with a resounding NO in each class. We talk about how art can convey different feelings by how things are drawn or depicted and I ask them to keep this in mind as we look at his paintings.

In the first one we focus on his use of large areas of background color and the presence of a portrait in the painting. We agree that the portrait is not realistic, and that we still recognize it as a face. The second one leads us into a discussion of symbols and how they can convey meaning to the viewer and that we may "read" the meaning of those symbols differently than one another, depending on the experiences each of has had. Students see that he has used a crown in both paintings. I bring up the fact that Basquiat used those to signify his importance in the art world. He was visually establishing and connecting himself as part of an art royalty.

Students also notice the amount of words used in the second painting. They recognize Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford. I point out Miles as Miles Davis- the amazing jazz pioneer and how Basquiat was deeply moved by jazz, blues, and hip hop, rap, and experimental forms of music. They also notice Frank and the fact that we don't know who HE was, but the name/person had significance to Basquiat.

We look at one more painting and notice another crown, more connections to money and commerce, more bones, including a skull and teeth.

Before getting started with the hands on portion of the activity, I remind students that we aren't copying his work, but we will be borrowing his methods for constructing his art and his use of symbols and words to create meaningful self portraits.

Step one is to create a gestural abstract background with 2-3 colors that are important to them. We apply color with the side of the chalk, working to keep elbows up in order to keep the color from smearing. After adding the background, students can add areas of white to lighten colors and they can smooth areas as well. I encourage them to find a balance between smooth and rough areas.

Next come the symbols- I ask them to add 2-4 personal symbols. These are things that have importance to them- they could connect to family, school, hobbies, sports, etc. We use the point of the chalk to add these elements. I encourage students to hide or obscure symbols if they aren't satisfied with how they are drawn or if they want some messages hidden in their work.

The portrait element is the 3rd step. Again, I emphasize that the portrait does not have to be perfect. We are aiming to give the viewer an idea of ourselves. I put Basquiat's paintings back up to see and I also let the kids know that if they have a certain way of drawing people/characters, that they can use that style as well. We draw the portrait in chalk and then go over it in oil pastel to give the lines more clarity. This also connects to how Basquiat used large oil sticks to create lines, symbols, and words in his work.

Finally, come the words. Students add a few words that connect to family, heroes, friends, etc. We talk about text as a visual element. Do they want to use all capital or lowercase letters? Do they want to mix them up, do they want some words to read upside down?

Then, it's time to clean our mess up;)

Next week, I plan on having the students reflect on the process by having them do a short written reflection on choices that they made throughout the activity. 

exploring shape with mr. smith

My 3rds have been experimenting with collage and geometric and natural shapes over the past couple weeks. They first created robot collages that focused on symmetry, geometric shapes, 3d shapes, and color value.

The next week they looked at the work of Tom Abbiss Smith as inspiration for a second round of collage work. Tom is a UK based artist who creates digital collages that smartly play with the juxtaposition of natural and geometric and positive and negative shapes. We noticed geometric shapes similar to those we used in the robot designs and also noticed how much he uses a variety of plant shapes in his work. Looking at his art allowed students to contrast between cut and torn edges as well- we talked about how the torn edges can give shapes a more natural feel. We also saw how he used a cut out shape AND the leftover (digital:) paper elsewhere in certain designs.

After viewing and talking about Tom's work, students were ready to play and create their own compositions. I emphasized play here because working with collage lets you move pieces around to different spots before gluing, so that you can see the possibilities that different arrangements may hold.

Students selected a background color and each one started with a large sheet of black and white paper to create natural shapes from. I left a few of Tom's images on my big screen so kids that were stumped to start could borrow from his shape vocabulary. As they started drawing and cutting, I passed out 3 more sheets of colored paper. When doing this, I guided color selection a bit, responding to the color of the background color each student chose.

After about 25 minutes, students could start to lock down compositional elements with glue sticks.

Most students did not finish in one hour, so they saved any paper they might need when they came back. This week has been parent conference week and my schedule has some flexibility in it, so I was able to bring each class back for a 30 minute session to finish and reflect on the 2 shape projects. It was interesting to see how much or how little students added to their designs with this extra time. Some that I thought were near done, continued to add and add, while others had a more minimal aesthetic.

They wrapped up the process by completing an exit slip that had them comparing and contrasting the 2 projects and describing which piece they liked more and why.

I absolutely love the variety in these pieces. There was a really intriguing range of style from figurative landscapes, to figurative abstractions, to more nonobjective pieces.

lining space with gp.

The 3rds are experimenting with line as they look at the abstract compositions created by Gary Petersen for inspiration. To start the lesson, we look at several of Gary's brightly colored abstractions. Specifically, we look at how, even when an artwork is non-objective, it can still have a sense of 3d space that is achieved with repeated diagonals and the changing height and width of included lines.

After identifying how space is created in 3 of Gary's pieces, we experiment in a similar fashion on our practice paper. When doing so, I remind students that these are not expected to be perfect, but I do want them to try their best while they play with line.

After we practice, I ask the students to select one sketch they like more than others and to think about why they think that one will be more interesting as a larger drawing. We then partner up and share our reasoning for choosing one sketch over the other. I point out that this oral practice will help them write a reasoning statement about the project once their drawing is done. They are using this oral sharing to rehearse their reflection sentence.

When we draw out the larger design, I remind my student artists that they may add more detail to it with line and shape and that it's okay if the design changes some from the preliminary sketch. Students are free to use color as they like- I do model changing hand pressure to create light and dark color values because this could heighten the implied 3d qualities of the drawing. I also express that they can leave areas white if they want to do so.

This guy's shirt was a fantastic example of spatial line!

I love that even though we practiced similar compositions, there is still a wide array of variety in the compositions created. Students wrote out the reasoning statement that they rehearsed as a quick wrap up activity.