Wild Beast Landscapes

My fifth graders started the year learning about fauvism, and we've been working smaller than normal (9 x 12 vs 12 x 18).  Mostly because I know my Artome' show is in the spring and I want to be R.E.A.D.Y. this year (no desperate last minute gluing at 10 pm the night before it needs to be mailed, or at least LESS desperate last minute gluing).  I'm also taking an online course for graduate credit to update/better use Schoology, which our district uses for online things rather than Google Classroom.  It's really forced me to think about what students are doing, what leads to what, etc.  All that being said, this is our last paper fauvism project (I still have a digital one for them to complete in my online fauvism folder, but that's more a leading-to-cubism assignment).
Student used ONE COLOR of Mr. Sketch markers to draw a simple landscape, and then traced their marker with glue:

Ugggghhh, sorry it's sideways.  This is an example of
the appropriate amount of glue (and that line going through the
tree can/will be fixed later with paint).

This is an example of WAY TOO MUCH glue.

The biggest problem at this point was having a totally flat surface for drying (drying racks angle too much for some) and drying time (it's been super-duper rainy here).

Once they dried and their glue was all colorful (it pulls the marker out and changes the glue color) we used liquid tempera to paint them wild colors:

They're really beautiful, and even the ones that were a little muddied are pretty great:

Not everyone fully finished, so we might still add some oil pastel details.  Or not.  We'll see what this wild beast of an art teacher feels like doing this afternoon!

About That Yarn Bombing. . .

A few weeks ago I wrote about being inspired to do a yarn bombing after seeing what happened at fall conference.  I kind of wonder what I was thinking, because I thought I'd be able to go home and get it all done.  Um, knitting enough to cover a tree takes a while???? And crochet may be faster if you know how to crochet (which I did not). I also didn't have that much actual yarn at home, so it's a work in progress:

The upper branch zig-zag piece was a donation from someone's relative.
A chain-smoking relative, so it never made it out of the box,
PERFECT for outdoor art.

Note the crochet circles--they all look like the cups of bras,
because I was in the learning-to-crochet-from-YouTube stage,
many mistakes are/were made.

Obviously, it's still a work in progress!

I've learned so much.  For example, there needs to be some cohesiveness in color or form or something to make it look intentional, and not like you're just some loon knitting a tree.  The loon label may still be up for debate (about me) with my neighbors.  Also, to keep momentum going, you must have something to knit or crochet with you at all times:

In my purse at all times for long lines and church.
(I tell myself I listen better while my hands are busy)

The plan (for now) is to add more crochet'd circles and another knitted scarf-like piece or two around the trunk.  It really does add some cheer to my street on gray days (and we've had a lot lately!). I'm hoping for lots of knitting time this winter [read: snow days].  And because I blogged about it to the entire internet, maybe I'll feel some pressure to get it all covered.  Either way, look for an update in a few weeks, months, years.

An Update on Money and Glue

Fourth grade ancient coins, done and painted!

They're ah-mazing! The sound they make is so satisfying and old-coin-y.  That's the official term (I know because I just made it up). I wrote about our first steps to this project earlier this year.  After firing, we used metallic tempera block paint to paint them, and acrylic gloss medium (plain and platinum for extra sparkle) to seal them.

My fourth graders worked hard to get them painted and sealed in one forty minute class period.  We laid them out on my back table to dry, and they dried enough for them to take them home the same day (I have fourth grade in the morning, and I delivered them to their class at the end of the day).

And now a glue update.  Guys, upside down glue is AMAZING.  I'm never going back! Some unexpected bonuses: it's very easy to see when glues need to be filled, and it's relieved some of my heavy sighing about filling all glue bottles at once (because I can just quickly look and fill the 3 or 4 that need filling).  Students are really into checking to make sure glues are closed, taking better care of the nozzles and bottles.  I have almost no one telling me glues are empty when really they just need to be opened.  I have had to re-glue some magnets a few times, but not often.  Life changing, this upside down glue!

About Me Books To Share At Parent Teacher Conferences

I started fifth grade off a little differently this year, which was both good and bad.  Good because it made me think about each step along the way more than usual.  Bad because later I went to grab their sketchbooks and realized we never started them (I hadn't even copied them).  But it's all working out.
We started the first art class with some brainstorming about themselves.  What do they like? What questions (about anything) do they have?  What are their goals.  Then each student got a piece of 12 x 12" white  paper that we folded into fourths. They drew some things like right now in two squares diagonal from each other, and free painted in the other two squares:

The next page in this project was their names, drawn block style, and colored with neon crayons (again, the 12 x 12 paper was folded into fourths):

The two squares are intentionally left blank.

The final page was a 12 x 12 piece of construction paper we collaged with goals for our future.  One fourth was for home goals, one for goals with friends/relationships, one for goals for school/academic, and the final one was personal goals. About half way through I was really wishing I had a broader selection of magazines, because the going got rough there for a while finding images that fit student goals.

Close up of some school goals.

The final step was to glue the three pages together and fold along the diagonal.

The first and last pages were folded artwork sides out, the middle was folded blank/back side showing:

Name side folded in. You can see the backwards fold line
in this photo for the first page.

So at the end it's a neat little 6 x 6 bundle, and we added a cover with marker.  Here's a video of it unfolding (thanks to a co-teacher for being the model):

I did give them to the fifth grade teachers to hand back during parent teacher conferences because I couldn't figure out a good way to display them. My goal was for them to have a little snapshot of themselves as fifth graders for their future (and also to get them thinking about their future goals, Leader in Me style).

Are You A Member Of Your State Art Organization?

I (maybe wrongly?) assume that if you're the type to be reading art teacher blogs, then you're probably pretty aware of and involved with your state art education organization.  If you're not a member, you should be.  If you haven't gone to events, you totally should! Just that time around all those like-minded people is worth it's weight in gold.
My state (Missouri) has two conferences a year: fall, at a state park, and spring, in a city (it rotates to various parts of our state).  Fall conference was last weekend, and here are just some photos of some of the workshops:

Some yarn bombing.  Inspired me to yarn-bomb the tree in my front yard.

A lesson from our Drag 'N Brag, which is at night
and in the rec hall, where the light is terrible.

Stitched portrait from a Drag'N Brag session

Getting ready for some printmaking luscious-ness

I also attended a session on automatas, and here are some videos from that session.  The first one is one of the presenter's student work.  The second one is Mr. Hodes, of previous-student-teacher fame if you're a regular reader of my blog.

My automata is currently under construction, because I made it way way complicated, so it's taking me a while to figure it out.
I do understand that your weekends are precious and you might not want to be away from your family, but trust me, it's so very worth it.  You'll meet other amazing art teachers, you'll have this whole network of people to call on.  You can use it to your advantage when a new-to-your-school student mentions where they came from and you just might know their previous art teacher.  It helps, it works.  We all need vibrant communities of like-minded friends.  Your state art education association can be that for you.

Summer Gelli Printing Fun

Hello, my name is Aimee and I'm a Gelli printing addict.  Seriously.  It's probably one of the fastest rising new disorders among art teachers and artists today.  Here's my new Gelli printed project:

My aforementioned disorder has me awake at night thinking 'what the heck am I going to do with ALL THESE GELLI PRINTS?'  Even though I opened a second Etsy shop for all my printing, they're not exactly flying off the shelves AND there are some prints that just aren't very good. So, one Sunday night when I'd napped too long and couldn't sleep and oh-my-gosh-why-am-I-still-awake-I-have-to-work-tomorrow I decided I needed to do more printing (of course, more Gelli printing is the solution!), but this time with my new circle Gelli plate (bought at NAEA in Chicago) and on the back of my not-favorite prints.  Because it seems way to hard to explain that with typed words, I made a video of my paper flower printing with a document camera I'm trying to get used to:

After I made several flowers (when I should have been sleeping to prepare for a full day of elementary art teaching) I decided to make them into a necklace.  And it worked! And I wore it all around and basked in the compliments! Then I continued making more and more flowers and making different things (like broach/pins, which I haven't worn yet) and toyed with the idea of putting them into my Etsy shop, but I just haven't done it yet.  So if you're interested in A) learning how to make these flowers into a necklace, or B) would maybe purchase one from me on Etsy, could you let me know?  Then I'll get more document camera practice and/or get more Etsy sales.  
Happy and restful summer for all of you who [like me] are soaking up every minute of rest and relaxation and I FEEL YOU for those trying to make it to the bitter end (you've totally GOT THIS, you can DO IT 'cause art teachers are AWESOME).

Yay For Another Conference!

Just back from Missouri Spring Conference--YES, it was my third art conference this year (for those who were keeping track) and it was AWESOME. One of the sessions I attended was a lesson by United using Pacon's plastic posterboard.  It's a pretty cool tempera monoprint lesson, but look at that price tag: $57.95 for the plastic posterboard.  Um, I'm all out of $57.95? 
So I decided to try an experiment using some of the old overhead sheets (the boxes and boxes and boxes that our school secretary happily gave me) and some tempera paint I had:

Totally worked!

The idea is that you paint on the plastic surface (the pricey posterboard, or in my case, the free overhead sheets) with tempera (I actually used washable Crayola).  I taped my overhead sheet to the table and painted with primary colors:

I printed on damp white Pacon construction paper (so it doesn't matter if the paint dries on your overhead sheet):

I made the decision to use white construction paper because some other teachers who attended the session were talking about how they liked using it over white drawing paper due to how fibrous it is (is that a real word?). To make the paper equally damp, I actually sprayed it with a water bottle and then pressed a sponge on the surface to have equal wetness:

I'm very excited that this worked so well, and plan on doing this with my adaptive group.  Yay again for conferences and new ideas and time with art teachers!