a little giant.

As in a sticker. A small sticker.

The 5th graders and I looked at the work of Shepard Fairey this week. I gave the kids a little background into who he is and what he does and then shared with them the image that really got things going for Shepard.

A small sticker of the professional wrestler and Fezzic from the Princess Bride. This sticker went viral at the end of the analog age. I remember seeing them in Philly and New York when I was a senior in high school:)

We looked at how Shepard's style and changed since this image. Much more posterized and abstract. 

At this point in the lesson most of the students recognize his work. Some kids were even wearing his OBEY GIANT brand in class.

At this point we shifted the discussion to logos. We looked at the Obama logo and a couple incarnations of Shepard's OBEY logo and discussed how often times logos are bold and somewhat simple or economical in their design. 

Then I shared the particular pieces of Shepard's that we would use as inspiration.

We looked at the 2 logo variations, talked about the presence of notan, the Japanese design concept that focuses on the play of light and dark, or positive and negative. I explained to the students that they would create a cut paper design and create a personal logo to be placed in the center of their design.

Students made the cut paper design just like they would if they were making snowflakes. They folded their paper twice and then drew and cut out a quarter circle a the bottom of the triangle. They then drew out their design, trying to keep shapes a finger's width apart, and keeping in mind they were going to have to cut the shapes out. 

I asked the students to keep track of their cut out pieces because they could use some of them later. After they were finished cutting I asked them to unfold their paper and reflect on the design. Were there areas that looked to empty? Did they have a variety of size shapes? Was there anything they could still add? They could then refold it and remove paper in other areas if needed. I showed them how to fold the paper one more time to be able to cut into other sections too.

Once cutting was done, they glued the red paper onto white. I then showed them how the could trim some of their cut outs and glue them back on to add more variety to their design. Students could also use a red marker to achieve this effect as well.

Students then drew out a logo in the center and traced and/or filled in pencil logo. I emphasized the use of thick and thin lines. Most students chose to do logos based on their name.

I gotta say, there was a lot of success with this project. Overall compositions, creative solutions, and being critical of their progress. They dug Shepard's work and were engaged throughout the lesson. Good stuff happening in the art room:)

a lil' positive with the negative.

The 3rd grade project this week was inspired by notan, which is a Japanese design concept that focuses on the play of dark and light when placed next to one another in art.

The project was also inspired by the fabulous heart notan designs that Mrs. Haake's 5th graders created at Apex Elementary School in North Carolina.

I started the lesson by explaining what a notan is. I shared a Yin and Yang symbol on the board ("hey, that's from Kung Fu Panda!") to talk about dark and light shapes in art. I also used my body and the space around it to demonstrate the difference between positive and negative shapes.

I then walked the classes through the steps of the project by drawing out each step on the board.

When I shared examples of the finished project, the kids got pretty excited with the possibility of making their own heart notan designs.

There were many interesting variations in heart shape and the shapes that were cut out from the heart.

There were a few recurring issues. The first was that numerous students in each class made their hearts too small to have much success when they had to cut shapes out of it. I tried to remedy this by having students get my approval before cutting the heart shape out. This worked out pretty well in the long run.
The second issue was that some students had a hard time understanding how to reassemble the pieces once they had all the small pieces cut out. This worked out pretty well when I worked with those students individually after modeling it for the class as a whole. There weren't as many issues with this as there were with heart size, but it came up a few times with each class.
The third issue was that some students wanted to make their cut out shapes too small and/or too detailed and/or too close together. I emphasized that they should draw their cut out shapes so they could easily cut them out. We talked about keeping the shapes a finger width apart and too turn the paper to help them cut out tricky and detailed spots.

Overall, the kids did a great job with the project. It was a fun way to introduce the concepts of positive and negative shapes with the students:)