blowing bubbles.

Spring is in the air:)

My daughter was playing with a gallon full of bubble solution at her brother's birthday party a couple weeks ago and poured most of it out on the lawn. Doh! It was around this time I came across the poster below, by Telegramme Studio in London.

Bobby Evans is the illustrator and designer behind all of Telegramme's creations. Bobby does a lot of designs for musicians and bands, but also does work for a wide variety of other clients. I like the weathered, vintage, letterpress feel of many of his images. They're clean designs with a bit of a rough edge to them.

This project would allow my kindergarten students (age 5) to practice drawing and cutting skills. I shared the image with my students and we identified what the person was doing, what kind of shape we saw a lot of, and what sizes of those shapes we saw.

After that, the students and I got to work. We drew out the hand shape together. This was the most challenging part of the exercise, but I feel that it also added a lot of character to each of the designs. No two were alike. I did put a dot on their paper, so we all started in the same place and the hands wouldn't be super small in the final drawings.

They then colored the hand. I asked them to press hard, so that the color looked nice and bold. The wand came next, followed by a few hand drawn bubbles. I asked them to use big, medium, and small circles here. When they colored the bubbles in they were supposed to press softly, so they could add a shadow too.

Once they were finished coloring the bubbles and they had added a "C" shadow on one side of them, they were ready for some cutting. Each student got two pieces of paper. One square had a large pre-drawn circle on it, the other was folded and had a one medium and one small circle on it. Students cut out these bubbles and placed them where they wanted them to go. I wanted them to lay them all out before gluing to get them to start thinking about planning in art. Then they got gluing:)

The final step was to add simple designs to a few of their cut out bubbles to give their designs a little visual variety.

I also did this lesson with our moderate/severe special day class. I am working on developing their fine motor control. They have done some collage work with me before. I pre-cut the shapes that they need for each project. I have been working with them on holding gluesticks and crayons correctly and firmly so they can add glue or leave bold marks on their paper.  Some of the students require assistance with this, while others are more independent. This class did a great job with this project. 

zamo at sdai!

Last night was the opening reception for the Zamorano student exhibition at SDAI, the San Diego Art Institute. The museum is located right in the heart of Balboa Park.

The exhibit featured the work of 36 of our talented students and over 20 of them and their families were able to make it to the reception:) I saw so many smiling faces last night!

The exhibit is a showcase of the immense talent and creativity that students have when given the chance to create and express themselves on a regular basis.

The exhibit is also an opportunity to share the hard work of our art department, who guide our students through gaining an understanding of the different elements of art so that those students can create visually striking works of art. The other members of the Zamo art team are Kathi Arinduque, Danielle Guimond, and Melony Vance.

A special thanks to the education team at SDAI for putting on these student exhibits throughout the year and including Zamorano in their exhibit rotation!

coloring with philip.

This week I wanted to do a lesson with my 1st graders that had them mix all 3 of the secondary colors they have learned about in previous lessons.

I have been a fan of San Diego based illustrator Philip Tseng for a few years now. I was first introduced to his work on the threadless online t-shirt store. I did a project based on his playground take of Mondrian's work last year. I love how his sense of humor shines through in his designs.

I shared a few images of Philip's from his website with the kids at the beginning of the lesson. We looked at how Philip, even in his funny designs, often made things look a little 3d because he uses light and shadow. We also looked at how he used secondary colors in some of his designs. There were many laughs to go round:)

When I stopped on our focus piece, I pointed out both of those elements. The students all agreed that this was a fictional scene, because, um, crayon boxes can't color by themselves! They need US:)

We drew out the box, crayons, and limbs together. I asked the students to decide how their box was feeling and to draw a face that showed that. Students then colored the box hard on the front and soft on the side to make it look more 3d. Then they colored their crayons, some with just primaries, others with mixed secondaries. The final step was for students to add what their crayon drawing on the ground.

This guy flipped the whole drawing. Totally correct. I find this fascinating.

Vampire!

Sinister?!

I love how narrow the box is.

The kids had a lot of fun with this project. At first some thought it was going to be way to hard, but so many students had success drawing the box well. It was also a good review of how to make their secondary colors.

I love the variety in boxes and the expressions that are on them. 

Some of the classes finished glazing a clay project before they started this exercise. They still did this drawing, but it was half the size of the other class drawings.

more devries.

One 4th grade class focused on a different painting by Shane Devries when they used color and shape to create 3d space and volume last week. These are a few of the best drawings from that class:)

twistin and turnin.

This has been a fun one:)

The 4th grade classes needed a little extra time on their Shane Devries landscapes, so I wanted to do a low stress, high success project with the shorter time I had left this week.

Thank you Ms. Novak over at Organized Chaos! I recently came across a project she did with her students a while back and thought it would fit the bill perfectly. The project is to make a paper sculpture with warm and cool colors, one long cut, twist and turn the paper to create interesting loops and pop outs, and glue those pieces together.

I shared Ms. Novak's blog post and examples of her students' work with each class. I did this while some were finishing up with their previous project. My students had a hard time believing that "little" 2nd graders actually made the stunning examples they were looking at:)

I also very quickly shared a couple sculptures that Frank Stella made, so they could see how a "bigger" artist used the same concept of twisting and turning a shape to make something new and interesting.

When the students were ready to start, I shared 3 photos of my sample, so they could see how they would add warm colors to one side of a sheet of paper and cool colors to the other. I also showed them a photo of my continuous line on the warm side. With the last one, I emphasized that the line started on an edge and ended on a different spot inside the square and that no 2 parts of the line should touch each other.

Adding the warms and cools to the paper was simple enough. When it came to adding the continuous line,that's when some of the students had a little difficulty. Some made completely closed shapes, some made their line to simple. These students were able to modify their designs before cutting after discussing the issue with me.

I then modeled how they should "play" with their cut pieces to find interesting solutions to their sculpture problem. Once they tried out a few ways to shape it, they could then add glue to make parts stick to each other. Echoing the sentiments of Ms. Novak, I emphasized to the students that they couldn't really go wrong with this problem. As long as the sculpture didn't end up flat like a piece of paper, they were creating a 3d form.