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:)

moonlit nights and what some lazy guy wore to art class today.

For the 2nd graders' second project in their shape unit, we focused on identifying and using natural shapes in a drawing. We also took some time to talk about and identify positive and negative shapes in our work, too.

This project was pretty easy to execute and the results are pretty terrific. I found the project on pinterest. No info except for four student examples in a photo. The drawing took us about 40 minutes to do, which left 10 minutes for our exit slips and 10 minutes for choice centers at the end.

The moon shape was made by laying down a circle template and pushing out away from it with the side of our color sticks. I pointed out that the shape was NOT outlined, but showed up because of the difference in light and dark along that edge. This was their first experience with creating implied instead of contour lines.

We then drew out our tree trunks, trying to make them go from thick to thin to make the scene look more 3d. We filled them in with the wide side of the large chisel tip sharpie markers. We then added 10 big branches, then 3 smaller branches, and then one small branch to the drawing. We could also add a few animals (natural shapes) to the scene, as long as they were completely filled in to be consistent with the rest of the drawing.

Since the skull painting project went long last week, the first exit slip questions was to tell me which of these projects showed symmetry and how did they know that was the case. Their second question was to identify the types of shapes they used in their tree drawing.

One of the second graders made a moving monster over at the monster block center at the end of their class! Very cool:)

If you are active online, checking out projects by art ed bloggers around the country, you are probably familiar with the work of Cassie Stephens. She does some amazing work with her kiddos and she makes a whole lot of awesome outfits in her spare (ha!) time. Anywho, she does this "What the Art teacher Wore" series and I thought I might spend a minute here or there sharing what a lazy, yet somewhat creative and silly art teacher wears out here in San Diego. Starting things off is this fab ensemble;)

shorts- Old Navy, glasses- Nike, shirt- Target, gray hair- Mother Nature

3d teddy.

I just met with the 4th graders again. Their first 2 week rotation focused on using contour line to describe shapes. This lesson had them using value and color contrast to define edges of shapes.

I recently found out about the work of Teodoru Badiu. He is a designer and artist based in Vienna, Austria. He creates most of his images digitally using programs like photoshop, illustrator, and cinema 4d. His visual vocabulary is quite diverse and has created many surreal visual worlds and characters.

When I introduced the students to Teodoru's work I used images from one of his websites. The kids LOVED the characters they saw.

We talked about the fact that Teodoru makes these characters look like they could be real (or at least made out of clay) by using color contrast to define the edges of objects (no outlines!) and by using tints and shades to define their volume.

The image that we focused on was one that was inspired by the Mexican holiday of the Day of the Dead. We talked briefly about what the holiday was about and then revisited what made the image look 3d.

While viewing the image we also identified the symmetry running through every part of the composition. Symmetry creates unity in a design and it also tends to focus the viewer's attention down the line of symmetry. 

This art project involved a lot of folding, cutting, and gluing. Students folded each layer before cutting to reinforce the symmetry of their design. We designed the skull first. I talked about and demonstrated what each of the bumps were on our head. After cutting out e skull, students added shading with a black crayon to it look more 3d and added a symmetrical crayon design to it.

Students then cut the middle and back layers, tucking each layer into the fold of the previous layer to make sure each was big enough. All 3 layers were then glued to the background sheet.

Since Teodoru's design uses multicolored shapes at the top I decided this would be a good opportunity to use the tie dye paper that I had gotten earlier in the year. These are pre-printed 8.5x11 sheets that come in a variety pack. This created variety in their individual designs and also created it across classes for exhibition purposes.

Students cut and applied this paper into large and small shapes to add a variety of positive shapes to the background negative shape.

Different classes had different background colors. There are ones with red backgrounds that are not pictured yet. I chose white for the first class and they did an amazing job constructing their designs, but I do like the ones on darker colored backgrounds more. The skull and other parts really vibrate against the darker colors.

it's a small world.

Totally a small world.

This is another project that was inspired from an artwork that I had pinned a bit ago. When I saved the image I was not familiar with  the artist who made it. I liked the feel of it. Simple geometric shapes, patterning, and brightly colored. The image reminded me of the work of Rob Dunlavey, who I had done projects based on last year.

Well, after googling the artist's name I quickly discovered that this Mary Blair was not a contemporary artist, but a legend in the canon of Disney art and animation. For many years she worked for ol' Walt and she was the art director of animated classics such as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. She created the look of those films. When Disney was building a little them park in LA he asked Mary lend her considerable design talent to a number of attractions. Mary was the visionary behind the facade and interior world of.... It's a Small World. I love the front of that building and here, I had stumbled across it's creator. Cool to say the least. Very cool.

I really enjoyed being able to share the design work of this trailblazer for women in animation and creative design. Since we are only an hour and a half from the theme park itself, most of the kids in my 5th grade classes had already seen her work firsthand.

While most agreed that the art of the attraction was great, there was more debate on whether the song needed to be played throughout the entire ride:)

After viewing photos of Mary and some of her "cityscapes", we got going on creating our own small worlds. The emphasis was on using a limited range of geometric shapes to create unity in the image. The students could add variety by using different sizes, colors, and patterns to their buildings. We also discussed how animators that work on cartoons that look hand drawn rely on contour lines to define their characters and shapes. 

Students drew out the basic building shapes first, then added different tops and patterns to them. Befor students started to color I pointed out that the contour lines present in their pencil drawings would disappear and be replaced by implied lines because we would see the edges of shapes only when two different colors met up in the composition.

The only thing I would change about the lesson would be to reduce the paper size. Students were working with a 12x15" sheet. A bit too much to fill in the 40 minutes of coloring time they had, after my intro and the pencil drawing.

deux fois speakerine.

For the third grade classes I had today, I decided to reverse the color of the support that the students did their speakerine inspired designs on. The students still used silver sharpies, but switched over to colored markers instead of construction paper crayons for the pattern making.

A wide range of natural shapes were used by students for this project.

I wore the perfect shirt to reinforce the use of implied and actual lines in art today:) The design is by Joe VW, who has inspired 2 different lessons of mine.

stripes aren't just for zebras.

The second 3rd grade project this year is the first lesson I did that came from my interest in pinterest. Somebody posted it and I saved it to my "super cool art lessons" board. I am loving pinterest! It's such a great way to visually collect things that you want to reference later.

This French artist goes by "Speakerine" and is real name is Florent Bodart. I like his combination of realistic silhouettes and repetitive design to fill these shapes. The class and I looked at a number of images from his website and we discussed how Speakerine uses contour lines to make shapes and patterns, but then uses implied lines to describe the shapes in the image.

The students could choose any creature to base their design on. I did a number of examples on the board and I emphasized the importance of making their positive shapes big enough. If not, there would be too much negative space and the image would not be as successful because of that.

1. students drew out their creatures (if too small they started over or added another creature to fill more of the negative space)
2. students added light lines to the positive shape/s to create stripes
3. students filled the stripes with patterns using silver marker and construction paper crayons

The lesson was a good extension of the line lesson they did the week before, and it allowed more artistic license for them in the type of natural shape they wanted to use as their subject/positive shape.