Category: 3d

Week Thirteen

4/27/2018

Last STEAM Collaboration

Students presented their last STEAM collaboration for the year this week. For this challenge, students were asked to design and create structures that represented spaces we use like schools, businesses, homes, and other architectural works.

It was fun to see students from both classes work together to create a variety of buildings using blueprints, digital renderings, and physical models. The pieces are currently on display in our Library until the end of the year.

DE is DONE

Another semester of DE is in the books. It has been almost 8 years since the last time I taught 3D and I am so thankful I was able to come back to it with this group. These kids were amazing to work with, full of so many ideas, and willing to push themselves to try new ideas and techniques.

I was really excited to see their final exam projects complete and how they took the opportunity of designing their own prompt with their choice of media. It gave students to try some things they were interested in doing or revisiting ideas left undone from the past. Here are a few of the results:

For our final farewell of the group, we met at the Meijer Gardens to complete a scavenger hunt and sketchbook activity. A special thanks to The Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters for sponsoring our trip!

Building More Skills

Students also spend this week building skills by learning about printmaking and observational drawing. Our newest themed project asks students to examine the objects we interact with on a daily basis and make art that focuses on that relationship. In addition to that, students are also being challenged to use a different media to work with for this piece.

Next week we will spend time refining ideas and finalizing media for use to work towards project goals. Here are some works in progress so far:

Arts a la Mode Prep

We are getting excited for our annual Fine Arts Night on May 22nd and starting to put the finishing touches on our preparations for the event that includes Empty Bowls, Performances, Art Displays, and STEAM activities (two of which were funded with DonorsChoose.org requests earlier this year).

We are also in process of gathering volunteers for the night, asking students and parents to help out. If you are a student or parent at BCPS and would like to help, please contact me for more information.

Finishing touches on bowl for May 22nd Arts a la Mode event at BCWMS. pic.twitter.com/ztubEqKIdC
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) April 26, 2018

ArtPrize10 Update

We are continuing work on our part of the ArtPrize piece this year. I am so excited to see it coming together, but know we still have A LOT of work to do before it is complete. This week was spent cutting a lot of reflective paper and then figuring out how to place it on the work.

Hopefully next week we will be able to get our profile up and running and start to secure a venue. If you would like to connect, please visit our ArtPrize page.

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Week Seven

3/9/2018

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Building More Skills

This past week, students were introduced to their next major project theme: Spaces and Places. It was fun to see students shift gears and think about how we can depict different places based on our experiences and interests.

To get students started, we looked at a variety of artists and then spent sometime on building understanding and skill with two challenges: Fast Collage and Photoshop Challenge 2. Both looked at how we can bring images together to make something new and both focused on students working with spaces by establishing a foreground, middle ground, and background in their work. In both works, students are asked to create quickly. It is always amazing to see what they can make in such short periods of time. The goal is for students to use this understanding of space in their project as they see fit moving into next week.

Here are examples of the work below:

Isaac: I created this by using an abstract collage with various scapes and figures, along with putting an unrealistic twist to the size of figures when looking at depth

Kari: I made an interesting piece of collage. There is a really cool background and the middle ground I had cats and then I had a dog for the foreground.

Bryce: I like this piece because it really shows the horizon and the mountain and also the lake thats in it. This could be one of my favorite pieces of all.

Gage: I made this with photoshop I outlined the mountains and the grass. Then I made the little details like al of the trees in the photo and the twigs on the ground. I liked this because I like to do photoshop.

Madeline: I selected the space challenge because I enjoy looking at the space and see all the cool things out there. I liked being able to create a cool effect with the sense glare and with the stars. It was all cool to see how you could create the planets with different patterns and colors. To see how the project came together to create something a whole image was very fascinating

Eli: In the photoshop challenge 2 I did The space image. This was an intermediate challenge and I really enjoyed it. I Learned many new things with photoshop and how it works. I also use lots of factors of art and the composition to get the whole art work. I really loved how the lens flare and the stars make the space look really realistic.

Olivia: To create this piece I used a graffiti name maker to create my name in graffiti. After that I put it onto a photoshop piece with a picture of the wall. Then I made it look like the graffiti was painted on the wall and had been weathered there over time. This made it look real even though it isn't, and that is why I decided to do this piece. It looks so real and it's really cool to have my name painted on the wall.

Niklas: I created this name using Graffiti Creator. I think the shape of the letters look very cool and I also really like cool colors like blue and green. I think the colors show me as a fun person.

Zander: The hallway I made was made in photoshop and it was made with a line tool, The gradient I used was a cool one that I found and this is what I made

Aron: In this image I have made a hallway. First I took a picture of a hallway, and I used the pen tool to fill in the lines of the image. After that I then used the gradient tool to make the background colorful. Finally I used the extort tool to add some cubes for the background. I selected this project because I wanted to try the most challenging project available, because that is kind of fun and the most rewarding in the end.

Technology-based Work

In my STEAM class, students are focused on technology this week for their second major "Can Do" project. They could make anything as long as it was technology focused. It was fun to see the variety of works students have started to make and how they have employed materials we have obtained thanks to grants from DonorsChoose.org and TangerKIDS.

We will be finishing up these works this week and moving onto the next focus: Engineering.

Mini-Hideaways

My 3D students are working hard as we hit the final stretch of class and our last major projects before we complete the course at the end of April. It is crazy to think of how quickly we have gotten to this point. This week, students finished working on their mini-hideaway projects and took photographs of them on their desired locations.

It was neat to see them completed and on location as well as read why students selected the places they did for their work.

Last Collaborative

One of my favorite components of this course has been the amount of collaborative work students have done along the way. We will be finishing our final one next week, where students are asked to create a large cardboard camera.

My students decided to use this older example as their inspiration and also make it wearable (since our next project deals with wearable works). It will be fun to see this come together in the next week.

Making Connections

This week was also spent making connections with our NIS program through Google Hangouts. It was fun to have students discuss various opportunities to create in our program and answer questions from 6th grade students about what it is like to be in Art and STEM in 7th and 8th grade.

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Week Five

2/23/2018

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Working

It was exciting to see student use the smART lab space this past week. I still need to organize items to best fit our needs, but this was a great start!

Students finally began to dive into their first major theme of the semester: You, Me, Everybody. In doing so, they started developing sketches and ideas of what they wanted to create for their work and using the various skill-building exercises, applied the media they deemed most appropriate for the assignment.

This is always an exciting time in the classroom because there is so much happening and so much potential for what can still happen. I am excited to see these works develop over the next week and be submitted to our online gallery for a grade.

Here are some of the works in progress below:

Panels Complete

We finally finished the larger set of panels this week. It was a lot of work to get them completed, but I think the results were worth it. These will now go into the office for display in our conference room.

Miniature Hideaways

In my 3D Design class this week, we glazed our descriptive word ceramic forms and started the miniature hideaway project. We are using celluclay to cover the forms and so far it is working out quite nicely.

I am excited to see these works finish up next week and then get photographed on location.

I am particularly excited to see how students apply the finishing touches and where they decide to photograph their work.

Meijer Great Choices

Finally this week, students were given the opportunity to participate in the Meijer Great Choices Film Festival by creating videos on topic-specific content like Celebrating Diversity and Making Healthy Choices. We had two entries for this year and you will be able to vote for them starting on March 1 by going here.

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Week Three

2/9/2018

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Photoshop Challenge 1

It is amazing to me that in three weeks of seeing this new group of students, they already have three works of art published on Artsonia. For their third work published, students created either a beginner, intermediate, or advanced level work based on a series of choices in Schoology. These series of challenges are designed to help students get a better feel for materials and create works that build skills and understanding in hopes they will be able to select those concepts for their personal works for major thematic units.

It was fun to see students make choices this week as they finished up these works and hear time and again that they enjoyed learning more about how to use Photoshop. Here are some examples of the types of works students created from beginner to more advanced skill-building challenges.

Gibson

Lucas

Zoe

Evan

Artist of Interest

Since moving to a thematically driven curriculum, it has been increasingly important to me for students to have as much exposure to a variety of artists using a variety of methods to create their art. I know I cannot possibly cover them all, or even come close, so one of the activities I engage students in is called "Artist of Interest."

In this activity, students are asked to use our digital subscription to Scholastic Art Magazine to access past issues and select an artist they think is interesting and that may inspire their work. Students are asked to describe the work using an element of art and principle of design, give their opinion of the work, as well as what meaning can be found in it as they write their response.

I do this as a discussion board in Schoology so that students can view each others responses and get exposure to dozens of artists that they might not otherwise see in our projects or challenges. This is also a great way to get students to read non-fiction texts, summarize and interpret what they are reading, and use examples and details to help support their ideas.

Here are two great responses from this activity this week:

Tantamounter and 100 objects

This week in my 3D class, students were challenged to create another collaborative. In this team-building activity, students were told they were going to be copy machines and started by shopping the classroom for what they would like to see recreated. After about five minutes of "shopping," students had to exchange their object with another group and then they had about 25 minutes to make a copy using whatever they could find in the classroom.

Many classrooms have done a similar exercise with great success. It was great to see how students worked together to recreate these objects and how close they were able to come to the original using completely different materials. My favorite of the group is probably the spider below. The group's copy was created by a damaged styrofoam head for the body, a Pringles can and pompoms for the head and eyes, metal tubing for the legs, and felt for the striping details. I am still amazed that the groups did what they did in such a short period of time.

3D students also started their 100 object sculptures this week. This is a project that asks students to rethink non-art materials in new and creative ways. After sketching out ideas, students came prepared with a variety of things (Qtips, rocks, toothpicks, colored pencils, and more) to turn into sculptures.

I am excited to see how these come into form over the next week.

Looking Ahead

Because of the nature of the class, some students are actually thinking about their final projects and experimenting with options for it as they are also working on their 100 objects project. For their finals, students are asked to create a project of their choice. I am very excited to see how and what they decide. One student started experimenting with some ideas this week, using the 3Doodler pen that was recently funded through a DonorsChoose.org project. I think it will be really exciting to see how this turns out or changes along the way.

MAEA Region 9 Show

Thursday was the opening reception of the Michigan Art Education Association Region 9 Show at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. It was really fun to see students see their work on display at the museum. It was also great to see the Warhol show.

With 23 works from our k-12 Visual Arts Program on display, it was great to see our Bryon Center Artists celebrated in this way. The works will now move on to the State competition and we will find out the results from that part of the competition in March.

Digital Storytelling Match on DonorsChoose.org

We have had such an awesome amount of success this year getting special resources funded through DonorsChoose.org. I am so thankful to parents, friends, and interested donors for giving to our projects to ensure my students have access to equipment and materials that will push them as creatives in the classroom.

Our newest project is being matched by AT&T because it involves digital storytelling (you can click on this to find out more). We are hoping to get an animation and green screen app as well as stylus's to help students create a variety of digital stories using iPads. We have less than $200 to go thanks to the match.

It is going to be awesome to see how students use these tools to share stories with others and make a variety of animations and film. Maybe we will even be able to enter some into competition soon.

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Week One

1/27/2018

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New Semester with New Students

This installation was completed by over 200 students in our school. It encircles a tree that was planted years ago to honor our veterans and is also next to the entrance of our school and flagpole.

Our Art classes run in semesters, which means I get to greet new students after 18 weeks and start over again with them. It is fun to see how this new set of students approach the content already covered by first semester and bring their own experiences to the table to complete various pieces of content and creation.

One of my favorite things about this first week, was getting to finish our installation of painted rocks inspired by the story "The Dot," by Peter H. Reynolds. I have been using this story for at least the last five years with my students to inspire legacy projects in our school. We have made paintings, paper globes, and now these painted rocks as a way to make our own mark on WMS.

Each year I do this, I am usually doing something with my students for the first time and not 100% sure how and if it will turn out. I openly share this with my students and explain that taking creative risks is one of the duties of an artist and it is up to all of us to be courageous in this class with the work we make. I am very pleased with this year's outcome and look forward to seeing what legacy project we come up with for next year.

Here are some thoughts from the students on their work:

Avery: For this project I created a rock that displays an abstract pattern of dots. I decided not to focus on a specific pattern in order to incorporate the Dot story. The Dot story talks about about how all artists work is unique and anyone can create art. My piece, and all the other rocks created in class, are different in order to represent diversity and beauty in art.

Gage: This is like in the story the dot because we started with one dot and we began to do more. Also it represents that anyone can be creative. Finally, it was the first project of the year.

Brady: I made this amazing piece of art because of the book, The Dot. I just made one dot and went on from there. This rock was made from a bunch of random dots and then I made more.

Katie: In this artwork, I started with one big dot--the sun. It popped into my head as soon as we started. This connects to the book because starting with one dot made a bigger thing called art. It connects to real life because we are leaving this artwork behind just like we will have to leave other things behind as in our legacy.

This is a more complete view of the work.

Empty Bowls

For years, I have engaged students with clay on the first day. This semester, I switched around some activities and actually started with paint and waited until our third day together to work with clay.

When I informed one class that we were going to work with clay, it was greeted with a "Woo Hoo!" I know that not all of my students will choose art as a career, but I do hope that they will continue to create and appreciate art as grow up and react with a "Woo Hoo!" during those experiences.

It was fun to see students work with clay in this way and for 7th graders to create bowls for our annual Empty Bowls night. Even better will be once these are fired and we get to glaze them in a variety of colors.

Henna Hands

Something new was tried with my 8th graders for our first clay experience. Instead of making bowls like they did when they were in 7th grade or the leaves like last semester did (because it is January in Michigan and there are no leaves), students created Henna-inspired patterned hands.

Inspired by this post and henna-painted hands, I decided to try this out with student and see how they turned out. For the most part, there has been success so far (only a few repaired fingers along the way). In the future, I would probably have students keep their fingers closer together or use the slab roller in order to avoid some of those issues.

I am excited to see how they finish out and what happens when we apply a glaze treatment to them. This was a great alternative to the leaves and students seemed to really enjoy the process of creating patterns.

Collaboratives

Collaboration is something I am passionate about in my classroom. I feel strongly that success in team format is much more powerful than individually. It takes much more skill and understanding to work with others and find common ground than it does to go it alone.

For the first day of our STEAM class, we brainstormed ideas that show what we value at WMS: Academics, Arts, and Athletics. These symbols were then drawn by students on canvases with WMS on them and a grid. Every time a shape changes on the grid, so does the color (keeping cool colors for the backgrounds and warm for the letters/objects).

We are more than half-way to our end goal with these works (once they are done they will be showcased in the office) and we hope to complete them next week. This is my first time teaching STEAM as a class, so it will be a learning experience for both my students and me this semester!

Can you see the WMS?

Drawing in Space

For our second collaboration in 3D, students had the opportunity to explore the concept of drawing in space by using wire. In teams of two and three, students selected an object and then sketched out the object using contour lines. After, they turned that line drawing into a sculpture using wire.

It was interesting to see that multiple groups selected cameras as their object. Below are some process and final images of particularly successful attempts.

#FirstMillion Funding

On January 25th, our latestDonorsChoose.org project was funded thanks to the matching funds from #FirstMillion, celebrating the first million funded projects on the site. I am so thankful for the additional materials we will now have due to the generosity of others.

If you are interested in helping fund a project, I recommend visiting their site and seeing a variety of opportunities to do just that!

Woo Hoo! Thanks @DonorsChoose #FirstMillion pic.twitter.com/DK8mBl6Wbv
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) January 25, 2018

This week was really packed with a lot of amazing things. I am so thankful and excited that I get the opportunity to be a part of all of it.

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Week Eighteen

1/20/2018

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Goodbye with GIFs

For our last week of class, students focused on their exams. In Art, there are two parts to their final exam before leaving for a new rotation in second semester. The first part is to create a GIF using works from our Intermediate and Elementary students art that is posted on their Artsonia sites. The second part is a test that asks students to more formally answer questions based on the content they learned covering media, artists, and techniques.

To help students study for their test portion, we use a study guide and play a game called "Stump the Student" where students ask each other questions on teams for points. It is a fun way to end the semester and creating the GIFs gives students a chance to make some art as a final way to express what they have learned in the class. Here are a sample of what was made (a special thanks to Ian Sands for the idea years ago):

Final Thoughts

Areas students said they felt were covered in class and through projects.

In the effort to improve what I do as a teacher, I ask students to provide me some feedback for the end of the semester. I ask them what areas they feel like they learned new information about, something that was the best part of the class, something that I should do differently for next time, and then a section where they can send me a message of their choosing. This is anonymous, so I never know who left what as their comment and it also opens students up to give me genuine responses.

From their responses, a few things are clear: 1. Students appreciate having choices in their learning, 2. Students would like more opportunities to collaborate, 3. Students appreciate the work I have put into making this class what it is.

It was fun to read through the messages and it offered a nice boost to the ego as we complete the term. This was a really nice group of students. I look forward to getting to start a new term on Monday with another set of great kids!

Just a sample of some the things students said was the best thing about the term.

Some lovely final thoughts from my students as we gear up for a new term with new classes.

First Projects Complete in 3D

Last week students worked on collaborative drawings based on the work of Heather Hansen. This week, students took those drawings and translated them into relief paper sculptures. It was really fun to see how far students stretched their original works and ideas to land on their final projects.

In this challenge, students were asked to create an asymmetrical and symmetrical relief sculpture. Here are some of the results:

This was a pretty action-filled week and I know next week will be even more so with a whole new group of kids to teach in art. And we are starting a BRAND NEW class next week, called STEAM. It will be fun to post more about that in the coming weeks!

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Week Thirteen

Last STEAM Collaboration

DE is DONE

Building More Skills

Arts a la Mode Prep

ArtPrize10 Update

Week Seven

Building More Skills

Technology-based Work

Mini-Hideaways

Last Collaborative

Making Connections

Week Five

Working

Panels Complete

Miniature Hideaways

Meijer Great Choices

Week Three

Photoshop Challenge 1

Artist of Interest

Tantamounter and 100 objects

Looking Ahead

MAEA Region 9 Show

Digital Storytelling Match on DonorsChoose.org

Week One

New Semester with New Students

Empty Bowls

Henna Hands

Collaboratives

Drawing in Space

#FirstMillion Funding

Week Eighteen

Goodbye with GIFs

Final Thoughts

First Projects Complete in 3D

Archives

Janine Campbell

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