We started a new semester two weeks ago, and one thing that is very important when getting a new group of students is exposing them to the materials and concepts being taught right off of the bat. One project that we have used this year to do this is called the "Symbol Selfie" where students use basic symbols in the iPad program Procreate to make an image that shows what their preferences are using a "this or that" menu of options. 

This low-pressure, high-success skill builder helps students understand and use the basic functions with the drawing app while also letting me in on some of the things they enjoy. What is even better about this is that it is a quick 1-2 day process before students are also able to upload them to Artsonia and get used to doing that through the app, too. 

This project is adapted from Ms. Koslow's ArtRoom (@mskoslowsartroom) via Instagram. She has posted her version as well as examples of this using colored pencils online. 

Feel free to use the worksheet below or adapt as you see fit for your classroom. If you use it, please give my class a shout-out because we love seeing how others adapt our ideas! 

Two years ago, I was able to get a button maker from DonorsChoose.org. When requesting this, my goal was to use it during our Fine Arts Night as a way for everyone who attended to make and take their own Mobile Masterwork as a wearable piece of Art. 

Now that we have the tools to create buttons, we have been able to extend the use of this device to include events like our parent orientation as a way to draw people in to making something that does not take a lot of time and gets instantly satisfying results! 

Below is a breakdown of the basics with the button maker I requested for the project using Blick Art Supplies. Some additional helpful things include having a Cricut cutting machine that can precut the circles on paper, having students cut letters from magazines and store to decorate their button (using precut magazine images not only is great for recycling, but it also gives people who may be uncomfortable with drawing a way to still feel creative), and other 2D media to use with the cut paper. One thing to make note of is the thickness of the paper before you put it in your machine - it matters and can have an impact on the quality of the button made. 

I love using DonorsChoose.org for helping my classroom get fun new tools like this. If you use this link to create a DonorsChoose.org account, I will be able to help promote your project as a DonorsChoose.org Teacher Ambassador. It will let me know when you have signed up and posted your first project - I also have a code I can use to help you fund your first project! 

If you would like to help my class fund our current DonorsChoose.org request, please visit and donate here. 

Button making is a fun and easy way to invite others into your room to get creative with their ideas. If you happen to use this or have done this in your school, I would love to know how! If you do end up doing it, please give me a shoutout on Twitter or Instagram so I can see the results! 

Happy Creating! 

One fun thing about the end-of-summer-ramp-up-to-the-new-school-year is that you get to enacted ideas because there is time to stew on them and actually do them some justice. When the school year starts, much of what we are doing has been planned and tested and worked on during the summertime. 

This summer, I was inspired by teachers who use the word ARTIST as a way to chart expectations of behavior. As a teacher who leans heavily on choice in the studio, I wanted to also link these behaviors with Studio Habits and think I was able to come up with a compromise of language that both works for my students and will help foster a positive and productive environment in our classroom. I know it doesn't have everything, but hopefully when paired with the DICE design thinking (shared in the previous post) it will ALL be covered. 

Our school also focuses on "I can" statements, so I guess you can say I've got that covered, too! 

My husband and I just celebrated 15 years of marriage this week and when we got married, one of the first major decisions I had to make was whether or not to take his last name. Being a Warhol fan and the opportunity for imagery like these posters wasn't the only factor in my choice... but I would be lying if I said it wasn't - I mean, it is perfect! 

I have had multiple requests to post these for others to use (even some who want to pay me - how flattering!). I do not have a TPT or anything like that because I am ok with sharing resources, for free, with other teachers that are used to help students in the classroom. If you would like to use them as is or modify a blank version, the files are below for you to use.

I just ask that if you use it, you give credit or a shout out when you share/display (tag me so I can see it on Twitter or Instagram) and if you are feeling generous, you can donate to our DonorsChoose.org page - we are currently $168 from completing our current project. 

It is August and that means it is time to start thinking about how I am going to get myself organized for the school year. Thinking about what I want students to be able to understand and do becomes a central organizing principle for me as I ease back into the mindset of teaching and learning.

One thing, if nothing else, that I want to help my students understand about being creative is that you CAN DEVELOP a process for it. That if you are "bad" at art or making things or coming up with ideas that are interesting and new, you can use a process that will help you develop the stamina to push through roadblocks and find interesting solutions. 

About five or six years ago, I went to MACUL and attended a presentation by D'Andra Clark that explored design thinking in her classroom. She is an art teacher who had partnered with the technology teacher and they decided they needed to come up with a common language to help students see the commonality in their classes. They used DICE (illustrated by me above and below) as a way help reframe the approach to design thinking. 

I knew as soon as I heard this what had been lacking between Art and STEM all of these years at my school. We needed to adapt common practices and ways of working that would help students see a routine in the way we work and shared language in our content areas. 

You are welcome to download the files and print them out or make them into bigger posters. If you do, please just credit the illustrations and do not copy and sell them. I would love to see how you do use them, so please make sure you share what you do with them, including @campbellartsoup on Twitter or Instagram.

When I had shared that I was planning to post these, many teachers said they would like to offer some kind of something for their use. If you would like to support my classroom, you can donate to our current DonorsChoose.org project or purchase my illustrated works on items in Artsonia's gift shop (20% of purchases goes back to our school). All of these were created this summer using the app Procreate with the iPad and Apple Pencil. 

For 11 years, I have been encouraging and preparing students to participate in the Scholastic Art Awards. This competition is a great opportunity for students to see how they fair beyond the walls and halls of our school as they go through a blind adjudication of distinguished judges who evaluate their work. Work is juried based on originality, artistic skill, and artist's voice or vision. 

To be honest, I was unsure of how we would fair this year, as the competition is very tough. Students are not really competing against anyone other than the standard set by the judges. Sometimes we do really well and this year has proven to be one of them. 

BCWMS students will be walking away with 32 awards, and the nine gold key winners will move onto the National competition. We have been very fortunate to have had at least one national winner since 2015 and can hope to keep the streak alive when we find out results later this Spring. 

Our high school also did very well and students earned 47 awards. You can see the full list of regional winners here.

​This is an awesome kick off to 2019 and I look forward to seeing how students use this accomplishment to swing back into creative exploration as we return to class. 

Sophie Schans and Ellie Smith

Chelsea Wierenga

Chelsea Wierenga, Reese Gildea, and Kylee McConnell

When first transitioning the Art and Design curriculum at my school towards a more student-centered and choice-based approach, I struggled with how to best approach teaching media-specific methods that didn't take too much time away from students getting to work on their own creations.

I recently wrote an article for SchoolArts Magazine about how using stations around the room, with short introduction of materials and timed sessions can help students experience each media before deciding whether or not they would like to use it for their work. In the article, I highlight a series of 2D media that students used like watercolor, collage, and ink.

This past week, I tried it with printmaking.

In the one-day demo, students had the opportunity to try collagraphs, block printing, dry point (with cereal boxes), monoprints (with Gelli Arts printing plates), and silk screens (using Mayco Designer silkscreens). During the five minute sessions at each station, students worked in teams of 3 to create at least one usable print. This was a great way to promote experimentation and help with understanding as they walked each other through the process (using the introduction cards as a guide). 

During the rotations, students also took notes in their sketchbooks about how each print method worked, the materials needed to accomplish the effect, and whether or not they liked doing it. Once done, students had a chance to reflect on the process as a whole group and discuss which prints worked and which didn't and why that was. 

The next day, students spent 10 minutes transforming their prints into a collaborative collage before uploading it to Artsonia. In addition to deconstructing and reassembling their prints in this collaborative effort, students added other collage elements to complete their creations. Because they were working in groups of three, students had one student be the scissor-handler, one worked the glue, and one acted as a director for the composition.

My goal is to give students the understanding and skills needed to make informed choices about what they want to create. Although some students may never use printmaking again outside of this hands-on demonstration, I know that they and the ones who immediately changed their project idea as a result of this experience benefit from the chance to manipulate media and make informed choices based on what they hope for their own work.

Here are some examples from the collaboration:

We learn best by doing. 

When teaching techniques, it is great to do demonstrations and show students how to use materials and the different things they can do. I have found it is best, however, if I can engage them in an activity that they do and then can decide if they would like to adapt independently to another situation. 

That is what mini-challenges, like this line and watercolor portrait, is all about in my classroom. 

To start, students take a set of notes that define line, various line directions (and we even do a little dance for this part), and then put those lines into action through a series of portraits.

In their sketchbooks, they create a bilateral continuous contour line portrait, a dominant hand-directed contour line portrait, and a non-dominant hand-directed contour line portrait using various classmates from around the room as subjects that switched for each of the drawings.

After these drawings are complete, students were given a 6x9 inch sheet of watercolor and a white oil pastel to translate their sketches onto, creating a composition on the page with the lines.

The following day, students used their watercolor paper with the oil pastel drawings on them to experiment with a variety of watercolor painting techniques. We went over wet on wet, wet on dry, salt, sponge, resist, and a couple of ways you can use the air from your mouth to get a splatter effect on the page. 

Once the watercolors were dry, students went back in with sharpie and made choices about where to add emphasis. This was a fun way to talk about materials, abstraction, and how artists can adapt ideas for future projects. 

I know students will use these concepts in different ways throughout the term and I look forward to seeing their results. 

Getting to know students is the most important thing when starting out the school year. Knowing their interests can be key to developing classroom culture and helping students when they are stuck on a design challenge and not sure where to go with it.

One way to draw out those ideas visually is through a design challenge that also helps decorate the front of student portfolios: The Personal Logo Challenge. In this challenge, students are asked to create their own logo based on who they are. 

To start out student are asked to make a list of four to five of their favorite things in their sketchbook and then draw a symbol or sketch that represents what they wrote.

We then look at a variety of logos. From fast-food to clothing companies and cars, we look at a wide variety of logos and examine how color, font, and overall composition can help offer the viewer ideas and insight about what the company sells or what core values the company is trying to portray. After looking at large company logos, we then turn to logos associated with specific people and compare the way they look. 

After that, students are asked to review their lists and symbols from earlier and find ways they might be able to combine ideas, use select font styles, or other visual cues to create potential sketches of their logo. 

Once they have three sketches of possible designs, they select one to apply to their portfolio. After sketching it out on their portfolio they are asked to use colored pencil and/or marker to complete their work. 

This opening project is a great way for me to get to know my students better and it also helps me teach concepts about composition as well as colored pencil and marker techniques. 

For many years now, I have opened the school year with the story "The Dot," by Peter H. Reynolds. It is an inspirational story that so many young (and old) artists can relate to when trying to overcome self-doubt while making art.  It is something I need reminding of, too, in my own work and when promoting my students to push themselves more than they think they can go. 

​This year, I to jump into the story of "The Dot" by having students use Batik to dye scarves. This was a risk, as I have not done this with students in this way before, but it was well worth it. You can hear more about the process in the video below (and the images, too):

To start, we watched the story as a class and had a group discussion about the meaning of the project. This was a great way to get everyone's defenses down about being creative and approaching our own dot activity.

To start, students received their materials as pairs. As pairs, students used dowels, cups, and other circular objects to apply the resist material to their scarves (the scarves were folded in half so they would end up being symmetrical). 

After a day of drying, students selected three colors to use for dying their scarves. They used bamboo brushes to apply the dye to the work. This was done until the scarves were filled with color.

After a day of letting the dye set, students rinsed out the resist in a series of three buckets. I released students by table to do this. Once dry, we were able to marvel at the beauty of the white dotted marks littering the gradations of color dyed into the material. 

I hope everyone had an awesome Dot Day! I am very excited that these scarves are now going to be for sale during Parent Teacher Conferences and the BCFAB craft fair to benefit our Art and STEM program. 

​If you are interested in learning more, please ask! 

For this week's share, take a moment and be amazed with the collaborative powers of the Byron Center Public School Visual art and Design program. We are so excited to showcase the skills and hard work of our students in our entry for the Youth Collaboration Award at ArtPrize10. This piece is on view in the Downtown Market's second floor through ArtPrize in hopes we might win the $2500 grant for our program! 

​This project was inspired by a student work:

From this, we brainstormed ideas on how we could work together and create a piece that represents our school community. You can listen to more about the work in the video I made below: