Honored!

I am thrilled and honored to be blogged about on Jon Contino's website! The kids loved studying him in school. They did a fantastic job creating the letters to their name for a project just like Jon! I also talked to my kids about how hard work can really get you places! See the my original blog post [here] and Jon Contino's blog post [here].

Also, what a wonderful way to close out this blog! I an no longer working at Jefferson Middle School in Washington DC , where U taught for the last two years. This year I am moving on to a new school, still in DC, called Langley Elementary school. I am more than excited to be working with a younger age group again. However, I am yet again faced with very little budget for art supplies. Please feel free to donate to my cause at Donors Choose. Anything would help!
 
I also invite you to come and join my new blog for Langley Elementary School, its called Northeast City Art.

Cherry Blossoms!

My students participated in the National Cherry Blossom Festival this year. All of the students worked on Cherry Blossom themed drawings and paintings. Nine of Jefferson's students had their final art work hung in Union Station in NE Washington DC!

Contour Line Bright Shoes!

Both 6th and 7th grade learned about contour line drawing last week. We opened the lesson by an exercise of placing shoes in a time line. I gave the students 12 shoes, ranging from 400 BC all the way to the 2000S and had them place them in the order in which they thought the shoes were made. It was a lot of fun seeing how the student's worked together to figure it out.

Next, we talked about how artist used to record things like shoes and style of clothing and architecture in their paintings and drawings. We then moved on to recording our own shoes, in contour line. We then added fun details like their names in the shoe laces and bright colors.



March is Youth Art Month

The National Education Association has declared March as Youth Art Month! The students and I reflected about what art is and what art isn't on a post it note last week. We displayed our thoughts in the hallway to celebrate art and bring awareness to March being Youth Art Month! Read NAEA's fantastic art flyer [here]

More Middle School Portraits

In the past week, the students have experienced using mixed media as an art form. The 6th and 7th grade created portraits with different types of materials. The oil pastels and paint were by far the most popular choices.

Jon Contino Artist Study

This past Friday the 6th and 7th grade students and I watched a short video of the typography artist Jon Contino. I wanted to show the students his work because not only do I think that it is creative and fun, but his video shows how hard he worked to get where he is today. The students first watched this inspiring video of Jon talking about his art work and then wrote three words to describe Jon. The kids came up with fun, hard working, determined, caring, and cool. After this, the students used Jon's lettering as a guide to influence their own hand letter in class. The students created their names, first using pencil, and then tracing over it in ink. The results are awesome!

Jon lives in Brooklyn currently and works constantly. He loves to design new lettering styles and has had some exicitng clients recently. See his portfolio [here]

I contacted Jon, via emailed, last week and told him that we would be studying his art form in my middle school classroom. He was thrilled and excited to hear about this. So, this post is for him.

7th Grade- Recycled Items into Architecture!

For the last week of the semester my 7th grade students worked on a group project that centered around architecture. The students read about Frank Gehry and observed quite a few of his architecture examples. After getting inspired, the students picked teams, created an architect business name, and started to assemble a model out of recycled materials. The students each had jobs that included designers, maintenance, masons, and time keepers. Students made restaurants, amusement parks, wind turbines, and even a firehouse! The creativity was flowing!

Value Painting Meets Zentangle Drawing

I taught the 6th graders how to make a tint of a color by starting with white paint and adding just a tiny bit of another color to create a new color. This is called a tint. The tints are then made darker and darker to create lot of value of the same color. The students practiced this on their own, using old plastic lids are their paint pallettes. They did a fanstastic job making tints and values of their one color.

With their one color, the students painting in a background to a flower drawing. Each student had 1/4 of the flower on their paper and their table partners had the other 3/4s. So that when each students has completed their paper and places them with their table partners, an entire whole flower is created.

After painting the background and sketching out their 1/4 of a flower, the students were taught how to draw in the zentangle style. We watched a video to get us inspired. Afterwards classical music was played and the students really, really got in to their zentangle styles. The students were completely silent and really enjoying the concept of "zenning out" to the music and enjoying how to make repeated lines and patterns. Next, the students began to zentangle draw on their flower petals with fine tipped sharpie pens. The results have been not only beautiful but also inspiring to me!

I am looking forward to them being displayed together in the hallway for the arrival of spring!

7th Grade Nature Words

The 7th grade has been working on a three day project discovering the benefits of good graphic design. We talked about needed to ship a package over night to our cousin in another state. As we were looking for companies to use we found one with a snail as their logo. I asked the students if they thought this was a good choice for an over night shipping company. They all agreed that the use of a snail icon was not the best choice. They all responded with cries of "No!! It should be a cheetah or a bird!" Which, I completely agreed.

Using the knowledge of understanding that images help our graphic design art work, we create words from nature that displayed characteristics of that word. An exanple would be the word ICE and the letters forming icicles and colored in with blues. The kids really did a fantastic job designing their words.

Busy, busy, busy!

Oh my goodness, the last two months has been very busy for the students in Art Room 101 at Jefferson Academy. On the night before our last day of school before winter break, Jefferson Academy held its 2nd Annual Music and Arts Festival.

The students and I set up two hands on art activities in the hallway, including an "I Wish" tree where parents and students could write the 2013 Wish. We had a wonderful evening listening to the middle school band perform and viewing art work from both the 6th and 7th grade students.

Here I am with one of my students who added a very sweet wish to the "I Wish" 2013 tree.

I hope that all of the students and staff have a wonderful and restful winter break!