Category: Color

Back to it

1/26/2016

This week marks a fresh start in Art Teacher world. A new semester means class changes and new groups of students, most of whom have never had me as a teacher before.

Last week, as we finished up the semester, I was so thankful to have volunteers stay after school to help me accomplish a massive labeling task! As a teacher who lets kids loose with materials, I have learned that there is no such thing as being too organized. The response from students have been nothing but smiles when they see the neatly organized areas shown:

This week marks a fresh start in Art Teacher world. A new semester means class changes and new groups of students, most of whom have never had me as a teacher before.

So far this week, we have worked with clay on the first day, signed up on Schoology, and started getting our portfolios in order.

I also started a new class with my Dual Enrollment students this Spring. I have been teaching for KCAD in the Dual Enrollment for about six years. This is the third time I have taught Color because we alternate offerings for our students each year. This is also the first time that all the students enrolled have had be as a teacher in the past - many as a part of my After School Art Class.

It has been a delight to start again with these guys and see how they have grown in their talents. I am especially excited to see them develop their understanding of color through skill based drills into more creative expressions.

After School Art students are also hard at work with their class banner. This year they decided to use Emojis for their #classof2020 sign to hang in the cafeteria.

And finally, I want to thank all of the readers out there who have been stopping by to check out our work. Thanks to those who voted, this blog just got a 3rd place finish in The Art of Education Blog of the Year contest.

I started this blog as a way to reflect and share - it has really become such a fun five years of writing and posting!

Sidewalk Chalking

5/29/2015

Yesterday, 7th grade students and I went outside to create chalk mandalas. Before heading into the sun-filled sidewalk with our chalk, students learned about radial symmetry, Sand Mandalas, and created one out of paper. If you have not seen a Sand Mandala in process, please take a moment and check out the video below. We also looked at radial symmetry in a variety of places like the Rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral, the Aztec calendar, and evenIslamic tiles.

When students see this process, they are often shocked at the ending. In years past, I have always asked students make their mandala on paper, using a variety of color schemes. This semester, I decided to take advantage of the weather and head outside so students could collaborate. And although students knew their works were temporary, they still worked very hard throughout.

Even though our works from chalk will fade over time, we still enjoyed the process of creating - which is always something I am trying to get my students to understand. Here are some tweets from our time outside:

Adding more #artsed pic.twitter.com/x0X43n0gvN
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 28, 2015

pic.twitter.com/QgpWXniSfB
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 28, 2015

#artsed pic.twitter.com/r39bu3Q794
— Janine Campbell (@campbellartsoup) May 28, 2015

New Orleans and Knots

3/31/2015

I had a great time in New Orleans. It was quite an honor to be recognized for the work I do with students when I was awarded the 2015 Western Region Middle Level Educator of the Year.

In addition to attending great sessions, I also was a part of four presentations while at the conference.

It has been an exciting end of last week and start of this as my students finished up projects and I spent some time away at the 2015 National Art Education Association Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was so honored to get recognized for the work I do in my classroom, share ideas with other art teachers, and learn so much to help me become even better in my own practice.

While I was away, my students worked on a finishing up their Celtic Inspired Knots. We learned about symmetry, color, and some Art History in this lesson, as well as how to blend watercolors, colored pencils, and create line designs in Sharpie. I am so proud of them and here are some of their images made:

Practice Sheets:

Lily

Students worked on their drawing, value, and watercolor skills for this project by creating practice sheets to experiment on before applying their discoveries to their final large papers.

Students explored how white colored pencil can be used to blend colors evenly and how there are so many ways to apply watercolor to the paper. It was fun to see the varied results as they played.

Nichole

Traditional Media Knots:

After practicing various ways of applying the different media to their practice sheets, students worked on filling their knots with the varied techniques. I used to have specific requirements about where to put color and how, but I recently have lifted those and students are free to do as they wish. The results are spontaneous and beautiful:

Owen

Jordan

Digital Knots

We tied this project up with a final exploration of knots in the digital realm. Students used SumoPaint and the symmetry tool to create the colorful creations below:

Cody

Mason

Knots of Fun

10/11/2014

7th grade students worked on knots this week in many ways. We will be finishing up this work next week with paint and some reading as we look to the Celts and their use of line and shape in their work.

First we made knots and loops with string and drew from observation.

Then we created symmetrical knots by using overlapping lines and mirroring them across horizontal and vertical lines of symmetry.

We used the power of the sun to transfer our designs onto nicer drawing paper.

And applied various color pencil techniques to fill in the space. Next week will be spent adding watercolor and other designs.

Students finished out the week with a quick digital project to help reinforce concepts being covered this week and compare processes between methods.

In Color

4/16/2014

See the progress of Tara's painting for the Kendall Dual Enrollment class. We are using a stippling technique and personal palette in this project.

Students are using all kinds of materials this week to explore color. In my Dual Enrollment class, students are finishing up their personal pallet portraits by applying the color through a stippling technique. In 7th and 8th grade art classes, students are using the glazes from our funded DonorsChoose project to finish up their creatures and Anthropomorphic Vessels. I will be firing the work later this week and into next before students post the results on our Artsonia gallery.

Dual Enrollment

2/11/2014

This is my 4th year working with students during Spring Semester for Kendall College of Art and Design's Dual Enrollment program. It is nice to make the trip across Byron Center (from West Middle to the High School) and teach 9-12th graders (many of which I had at WMS) the ideas and applications in the foundational courses where they earn college credit. This year I am teaching Color, which is an examination of the properties of color and it's interaction with compositional elements. We are currently finishing the first project where students selected an image and recreate it in 6 variations.

Paint and Clay, Day 2

1/22/2014

I am completely floored with the results from the first two days in the Art class with this new group of students!

8th grade students and my after school class has done an outstanding job of working together to create the colorful collaborative painting pictured above.

7th grade students completed their bowls for our Empty Bowls event and some even brought in their donations to secure their own bowl for the event.

I am so excited with the progress in just two days of class… I cannot wait to see what else comes out of these classes as we progress through the term!

Lots of Knots

10/6/2013

7th grade students learned about theBook of Kells and Celtic Knots for this project before creating their own symmetrical knot both with traditional and digital media. The above slide show explains the process we used to create these symmetrical designs with colored pencil, paint, and sharpie. Below are video examples of finished works students created using this method and also Sumopaint.

You can see ore examples on our Artsonia gallery at www.artsonia.com/schools/byron1.

The week that was Art

9/28/2013

This week has been a whirlwind! Students have been drawing, painting, sculpting, entering competitions, and working out their Photoshop skills! It has been amazing to see and be a part of and here a a few highlights from the week:

1. ArtPrize Entries

Students worked on their ArtPrize ArtStart online Youth competition entries this week. It was really fun to see them come up with so many different ideas inspired by what they saw art ArtPrize this year. You can view more on our online gallery at www.artsonia.com/schools/byron1. We will find out the winners of this first ever youth competition this weekend - good luck to all who took the plunge and entered!

1. Photoshop Phriday

Photoshop is an amazing tool. I am very fortunate that my students all get the opportunity to use this tool on their computers whenever they want. As a 1:1 school, students have access to their MacBooks daily and students in Art have Photoshop installed on their machines. I decided to try something new this year to replace the common sketchbook assignment and that was Photoshop Phriday. The goal was that we would start a Photoshop work on the first Friday of the month and throughout the month use various tools and acquired skills to add elements of what we were making in class to it until we turned it in by the end of the last Friday of the month. You can see the full array of examples on our gallery.

3. Rocking Artsonia!

Our classroom has been an active member of Artsonia since 2007. It has been through various updates and changes over the years, but the new use of Art Classroom mode has been revolutionary for both me and my students in our classroom! Instead of taking individual pictures myself and uploading their work to the site, students take the pictures and use a class code to upload their projects to the proper page. They edit their images and write corresponding learning statements to help the viewer understand what we were learning in class and how that shows through in their work. The response has been amazing - we are currently ranked #1 in Michigan and have close to 500 works posted in just the first 24 days of school! That is amazing! Please consider leaving a comment for one of our artists and checking out their learning journey as you read their statements that go along with their art.

4. Other amazing work that happened this week:

starting knots and other stuff

1/31/2013

Students uploaded their work to Moodle today, finishing up their beginning projects dealing with abstraction/line/games as we got into the swing of what Art class is going to be all about this semester. You can see the new additions to the Modified Blind Contour and Exquisite Corpse galleries on Artsonia.

Moving along to our next project, 7th grade students were using the window to help transfer their beginning design inspired by Celtic Knots. They are creating a symmetrical design that will be transferred and filled in with a variety of colors and materials. We watched the last minute from "The Secret of Kells" to reference some of the imagery of the book (many of the students said they were going to rent the film when they got home) and we also looked at a variety of ways the Celts created never-ending lanes with overlaying pathways. Students will read more on this topic next week using Scholastic Art Magazine.

8th grade students practiced their abilities with blind contour drawing as they drew a variety of things before selecting one to enlarge onto watercolor paper with glue. We will be using watercolor with these next and then explore the concept of value once it dries.

But all of those plans might have to wait until next week... depending on how much it snows tonight. :)