oh my... octopi.

Each of the 5th grade classes needed a portion of their 2nd meeting with me to finish up their bike drawings, so that left me with a shorter time to do a follow up lesson with them than normal.

I decided to do a fun activity based on a Brooklyn based (Philly loving) illustrator named Alex Eben Meyer. I have done a few projects based on Alex's work before and his artwork has always been well received by students big and small. We briefly looked at a few of his ink drawings and then looked at some of his images that are created digitally. We identified his use of contour lines to define shapes. I have always dug Alex's style, his simplification of some forms and exaggeration of others. His work allowed me to introduce representational style to the 5th graders.

The images that we focused on were a series of octopi illustrations.

Since the their bike drawings were based on observation I asked the kids if they thought Alex had observed these creatures in the wild. The kids smartly told me that Alex had used his head to create them. His imagination. We then agreed that even though they were based on his imagination, that they looked a little real (representational style) because of his use of overlapping, his use of limited shading, and the water's transition from light to dark.

This left us with about 45 minutes to create our own octopi. I demonstrated how to practice the lettering and tentacles, and then the kids went for it. The students had some great ideas, but what they found was that it was kinda hard to translate these ideas to "tentacle script". As with the bike project, I knew this would be challenging for the classes but I am pleased to say that there were no quitters in 5th grade:)

After they practiced, students softly (most of the time) drew out their scenes to fill the front of their 8x10" paper. They then traced the contours of the back of the tentacles and filled them in. I asked students to use warm colors on the suction cups and cool colors in the water. Students used crayola color sticks to add the color to their drawings.

There are a bunch more cool variations on the octopi theme that are not quite finished. I am hoping those kids will come down at recess to get them done and I'll post up their pics too:)

scraper mashup.

Today was my last day of classes for the next couple of weeks so the art team can prepare thousands of works for our end of the year Celebration of Art.

It was an extra day with my 2nd graders and the last time I would see them for the year. Looking for project ideas I came across the work of photographer Matthew Reamer. One series of photos he did focused on the scraper bikes that are being made in Oakland by kids and teenagers. Babye Champ (aka Tyrone Stevenson Jr.) is the founder of this movement and team. I loved the reuse of materials and the patterns and colors that these guys are playing with. The other thing that is cool about these bikes is that the club/team is used as an incentive for kids in dangerous communities to stay out of trouble.

To join the team you need to have a B average in school and maintain it. The team provides these kids with a positive environment and pushes their creative muscles. They reuse and recycle bikes and parts and decorate them with new and reused materials. I'm thinking of getting a couple bikes and allowing our students the opportunity to alter them like the kids up in the Bay area are doing...

Last year I did a project based on a bike illustration that Alex Eben Meyer did with my 4th graders. When I discovered these scraper bikes I thought it would be interesting if the two worlds met. After showing the students images of both the west and east coast bikes, we got started creating our mashups of them. In this case, east and west coast got together like peaches and cream.

We started creating our bike drawings together. We used geometric shapes for the frame and wheels and then I modeled different types of seats and handlebars the kids could make. Once the first bike was drawn on their paper then they needed to add more parts to it. I told them they needed to add at least 3 extra wheels. Any other additions were up to them. I offered suggestions like fenders, lights, extra seats, and so on.

The kids definitely got into it. As the day went on the classes (and myself) got more adventurous with what we added on as well. When the pencil drawing was complete the students had about 25 minutes to add color to their monster scraper bikes. I emphasized adding patterns to the wheels first and then moving on to the other bike parts.