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???

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.

it's all natural.

The 1st graders continued their shape unit by looking an an image by Polish illustrator and printmaker Barbara Dziadosz. We started the lesson by reviewing the elements in their Marcus Oakley inspired still life drawings from the week before- geometric shapes, natural shapes, and primary colors. After that we took a close look at Barbara's piece.

We identified the natural shapes. Then we talked about how the leaves were different- shape, size, direction, and pattern. We also noticed that Barbara did NOT use contour lines in this piece. 

The dog was done with direct drawing instruction while the leaves were more independent. We put dots near the top and bottom of the paper and I modeled different types of leaf shapes and vein patterns. When cutting out the leaves, we practiced turning the paper instead of turning our scissors. 

We arranged our leaves how each of us wanted and glued them in place. We did our best to do the gluing on top of the white paper and NOT the bare table tops, so we wouldn't leave them sticky for the classes that would come in later.

We wrote at least one sentence about our project together and another one that was created more independently, using vocabulary on the board.

boom boom.

Parent conference week at Zamo, so I have a mixed bag of classes. I take the afternoon classes that are impacted by our minimum days and meet with them in the morning. So far, I have worked with a few 3rd grade classes and we have continued working with geometric and natural shapes with this extra time together.

I'm sharing a poster that Portland based artist and designer Dan Stiles did for the band Dr. Dog for a gig they had in Colorado earlier this year. We talked about how Dan makes a living creating all sorts of really cool projects for bands and other companies. We also talked about what a boombox was and how I had one back in the day and I would walk around my suburban neighborhood jamming to the likes of KISS, john Cougar Mellencamp, and Michael Jackson... I have always had musical tastes that were ALL OVER the map;)

We started by cutting & gluing geometric shapes to make the boombox. Then students were free to design natural shapes popping out of the antenna.

I like the way these turned out and the kids had fun with them. Quite a few put their collages on their shoulder and strutted back to the recycling bin as they were returning scrap paper:)

joshua trees and sunset skies.

My 2nd lesson of the 3rd grade shape unit is focusing on natural shapes. For this project I am sharing one of my favorite places with the kids- Joshua Tree National Park. I'm sharing sunset photos taken at the park that make the natural shapes of the trees really pop out from the background sky colors. I share a little about how Joshua trees got their name and how they are built for the desert. When looking at the photos we also notice how the trees that are closer are big and they get smaller as they get further away.

The how to for the lesson is pretty simple- draw  the ground line with crayon and fill below it, add large, bold tree as a funky capital Y, add smaller tree/s, add a few more branches, add spiky "leaves" to each of the branches, lightly draw cloud shapes in pencil, and paint the sky. Ba da bing, ba da boom.

Students finish early enough to complete an exit slip that allows them to reflect on this project and their Book of Life abstractions from the week before.

This lesson has also got me super stoked for our camping trip to Joshua Tree for Thanksgiving break! A week of amazing sunsets and rock scrambling while calling our vintage camper, Cecil, our home base:) I can not wait!