Blog Archives

almost too much for one post...

9/21/2011

To mark the kick off of ArtPrize, I went downtown and took in as many sights as I could. This allowed me a preview of what is to come later this week, when I take a group of students downtown as a part of Artcation Day 2011!

Here are just a few of the things I saw today and I am so excited to share this with my students when we travel to this wonderful art event.

My favorite piece so far is the girl with the beach ball. It is a larger than life sculpture that is so life-like and peaceful. It even has the beads of water on the skin... it is pretty amazing!

8th grade students worked on turning their contour drawings into glue line images that will be painted tomorrow. They also used graphite on manilla paper to create "reverse" drawings in eraser tomorrow. We are working with line and color and value for the next few days and I cannot wait to share more!

faces in all types..

9/20/2011

From Photoshop to Clay, students are playing with the power of the portrait today in Art Class!

8th grade students uploaded their type-face faces to Moodle today and I promptly uploaded them to our gallery! They are bright and colorful and say a lot about the artists who made them. After School Art kids are working on a plethora of items, including the creation of clay portraits from plaster molds of their faces. These experiments in portraiture are exciting and I am looking forward to seeing the results!

7th graders are moving onto knots, after their digital adventure shown yesterday. We reviewed line (by dancing a line dance, of course) and applied it to a new image. In this image, students are also using symmetry and it is sure to be a stunner once all is said and done. Check out the kids below working on transferring the image using the line of symmetry.

phinishing photoshop - phor now...

9/19/2011

7th grade students are finishing their Photoshop Profile Collages today and turning them in via Moodle. In addition to uploading the image, students must also write an artist statement that explains an aspect of the project (what they liked or learned or would do differently next time).

8th grade students are still working on their portraits that use words to describe their personalities (example of a finished piece in the middle) and are in the process of saving them as JPEGs and uploading the work to Moodle. They will be due tomorrow.

I am really excited with how both projects have come along and I look forward to promptly posting them on Artsonia!

scholastic sign-up

9/18/2011

I love my students!

I can always count on them to push me and reflect back my hyped up passion for the arts and all things art related! That is why it was no surprise to me to receive emails from students this weekend asking about the Scholastic Art Awards (whose deadline is not until December 13 - ah, how I have trained them well).

BCWMS has done extremely well each year we have competed and this year should be no different! If you would like to compete, please register and give your work to me at school. I will be choosing the top 20 to compete and represent our school in the West Michigan Regional competition at Kendall College of Art and Design. If you would like to see last year's regional winners, go here. If you would like to check out the national winners, go here.

I look forward to posting more on this topic as we get closer to competition!

almost artprize

9/17/2011

This evening I went downtown and walked around to take in all of the sights and sounds of ArtPrize, pre-ArtPrize.

The first day of ArtPrize is on Wednesday September 21st, but there are signs of it all over. Many pieces are up and many more are going up as I type this post. There will be even more pieces popping up and around downtown throughout the week.

I am SUPER excited to take students there Friday. We are going as a part of Artcation Day, through the Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids.

Students will spend the day attending workshops at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art and the Grand Rapids Art Museum as well as walking around to take in the sights.

I will definitely be going downtown more than once in order to take it all in - with hundreds of artworks to see, there is no way one visit can fit it all in!

This is a very exciting time of year, and a great way to celebrate the start of Fall.

doodle bombs

9/16/2011

What do you get when you give kids a topic, a sheet of paper and a pencil, and tell them to show that idea exploding across the page in doodles? A Doodle Bomb, of course.

Here are some of the pieces students turned in today, after having five minutes each day this week to draw out the answer to " What is Art?"

You can see the others on our Artsonia page.

I made one, too - and had a BLAST doing so (get it, blast...).

We will start a new on on Monday!

progress with photoshop

9/15/2011

Students are still working on their Photoshop projects to better show me their personalities and likes or dislikes. I am excited about the work they are creating and look forward to seeing the end result!

photoshop and online voting

9/14/2011

Students are working on their Photoshop projects in class this week. 7th graders are filling their heads with images that represent them, and 8th graders are using words.

Students also were able to support Tucker in the Artsonia Artist of the Week contest by voting for his work!

If Tucker wins, our classroom will get $100 in supplied!

Please vote daily for Tucker - we will find out the results on Sunday.

hands and faces, oh my!

9/13/2011

Are after school art students preparing to be mummies for Halloween? No, they are just creating plaster casts and molds of their hands and faces!

This is one of my FAVORITE activities and I am so glad to be able to bring it to my students!

I am also excited to see what students do with their face molds once we get the clay impressions going... STAY TUNED!

social contract results:

9/12/2011

Looks like #3 was the favorite - I am going to print it off and we will go over the Social Contract and sign it tomorrow!