Handmade Paper Dragon Books

This is another lesson I got from Keeli, who also gave me this awesome lesson.  Handmade Paper Dragon Books starts with making handmade paper (pretty self explanatory, right?).  Many many years ago, I taught some summer art classes through a community Arts Council, and taught papermaking and bookmaking for a couple of summers.  Because of that experience, I had a few shortcuts for the papermaking part of this project.  1.) I have no papermaking deckels, so I use a setup of plastic strawberry basket turned upside down with plastic screening then window screening. 

As you can probably tell, this has been used SEVERAL times,
note the gross-looking paper pulp remnants.

 2.) See #1, so I use a cup with the bottom cut out (when said cup from Starbucks gets gross, I throw it away and do another early-morning Starbucks run the next day)

This, sadly, is not the grossest looking cup.  

 3.) I do have a nice set of felts, so that works out.  

Nice clean felts on top of a screen with some leftover pulp stuck to it.

4.) I have only one blender, so the students rotate through, a small group of 3-4 at a time while everyone else worked on their origami dragons.  
The first 4-5 times of this project just involve students making paper:  they chose paper from the scrap box, added water, Elmer's glue and some fine glitter if they wanted, blended in our thrift store blender, then poured it through the Starbucks cup held tightly over our screens in an ice cream tub,

GROSS!!! But you get the idea of the set-up we used.

then carefully flipped it onto a felt and pressed water out of it before finally moving it to a manilla paper to dry on the drying rack.
I gave them a little talk about how the Chinese were the first to make paper, nothing big or elaborate.  They kept asking "but what is this FOR?" and I just made them wait.
After everyone got to make some paper and our origami dragons were done, we started on our books.  Each student got two 4"x 4" pieces of chipboard (just some leftovers I had laying around) and two 5" x 5" pieces of black paper.  I showed them how to glue the black paper on the chipboard, wrapping it tightly around the edges.  They then glued two popsicle sticks on and wrote their names on both.  Then they received two strips of white paper, I think they were 3" x 18", and they accordian folded them and glued them together at the end to made one LONG piece of paper, and glued that to their two black pieces, making sure the popsicle sticks were at the bottom (this was difficult for some of my too-social-to-listen-to-the-teacher friends, so I had to check theirs before the glue set).

This book isn't opened all the way because I couldn't get it to fit
in the frame when I did, but you get the idea.

Once everything was together, I gave each table a handful of handmade paper and showed them how to cut diamonds to be their dragon's scales.  

Some of our beautiful paper after some diamonds were cut out.
I forgot to take pictures as we were actually making the paper.

We really didn't have quite enough handmade paper, so I threw in some leftover marbelized paper from last year's sixth graders (the simple shaving-cream-and-food-coloring marbelized paper).  Students cut and glued their dragon scales, and one day at the beginning of class I met them at the door with a 3" piece of wire and a faux pearl.  I gave them to them saying "pearl of wisdom and wire" [side note, a sixth grade boy who I DO love, but is a bit of a pill, IMMEDIATELY lost his and shouted "I lost my pearl of wisdom!!!" to which I had to say "Of course you did.  Now go find it." He said "Can't you just give me another one?" And I replied "That's all the wisdom you get for free.  Go. Find. It."  He was kind of sullen about it, but he found it!]  They put their pearl to the middle of their wire, twisted it, and then used old metal compasses to poke holes through the back cover of their book.  It is important that the peals stand up enough to wrap around the front of their books.
They continue adding scales to form the dragon's face, and put some on the back to form the tail.  

This student spaced their diamonds out rather than overlap.  It worked.
They also used more marbelized paper than handmade paper.  Still worked.

Then they use these little U shaped patterns I made to trace lips on metallic paper (I used red for one class, gold for another and brass/copper colored for the third).  They glue the lips on, inserted a length of gold ribbon between the black and white paper (like the fire the dragon was breathing) and then use the ribbon and the pearl to close/lock their books. Final step was adding the eye and nostril with scrap paper and a bit of glitter glue.

Closed/tied book.

 Success!  I do like how they turned out, but after we started them I found the example I made at the workshop with Keeli, and I wish I'd made their dragon mouths bigger.  Oh well, there's always next time!

Cool Cat, Meet Neutral Dog

I've written about our cool cats before, but this year I changed it up a bit, adding neutral dog!

Just like the cool cats lesson, we started out with a direct demonstration drawing (where the students drew what I drew).  First day, we drew and colored our cats (we didn't get all our coloring done).  The next time, we drew and colored our dogs--doing lots of review about cool and neutral colors as we worked.

Love LOVE this one!

The third time they came to art, we reviewed WARM colors and got large paper (18 x 24") for our warm backgrounds.  I had to use the super-big paper because we drew our cats and dogs on 12 x 18".  It took two class periods to color our warm backgrounds and collage on our animals, and even then several weren't all the way colored.  I have one class who's a little behind, and I'm thinking of having them use BOTH warm colors of paper collaged on AND markers, because SHEW! that was a lot of coloring!

I just love the expressive-ness of them:

And bonus they're so large no mat is required for my upcoming displays--they'll fit in the frames as is!

Origami Dragon How-To

As promised, here is the "how to" post.  I have students paint Chinese letters (characters?) all over 12 x 18 paper:

This one isn't finished, and for ease of returning work,
I have each class use different colors.

We use bamboo brushes and ceramic brush rests that we've made when we do this.  It's important that they write their names SIX TIMES on the back (spread out three times evenly along the top, three times on the bottom). Each page is cut to 6 x 6":

I then teach them a super-easy origami fold:

Fold in half, painting side out.

Fold in half the other direction, painting side still out.

Open up and fold corners to the middle.

All corners folded in.

Now, fold the tips back just until it meets the edge of the paper.

They spend most of one class period folding, and then they glue them, tips-to-tips and back-to-back, making the dragon body:

The length of the body is dependent on how many papers they have.

Next, they use 9 x 12 construction paper to make the dragon's head, and scraps (same color + black and white) to make the details.  Their dragon should have: the head of a camel, horns of a deer, ears of a cow and eyes of a rabbit.  Some add things like eyebrows and teeth.

Confession: this is last year's yellow group.
This year's isn't up yet.  I'll get to it. . . eventually!

Some classes (like my red class this year) get super competitive and try to make the biggest dragons.  And some classes (hello, blue class!) do the absolute minimum despite my prodding.

That's One Big Dragon!

This is one BIG origami dragon.  Look at that monster!  I haven't ever done an official post on the origami dragons, and I will [soon], but I just got this one up and wanted to show it off.
Another view, even though it doesn't all fit in frame:

And the beautiful thing is it was made [mostly] by ONE STUDENT.  Yep, that's right.  That dream student: she's interesting, funny, (though pretty quiet) and comes to art with her head full of ideas.  I love her.  And I'm so sad that this is my last year with her as she moves on to middle school next year.  This happy art teacher will be shedding some tears at the end of this year.  Another awesome thing about the class she's in: there's another student (a boy) who's super into art as well, and they really push each other in a totally cool sort of way.  His dragon body is really long too, but he let a bunch of other boys attach their dragon heads (and small bodies) to his and so it was a little more difficult to hang.  But I'm sure I'll post pictures of that one with my how-to-make-an-origami-dragon post.
One last picture of her dragon:

The wings were totally her idea and she designed and made them all on her own.

One Overwhelmed Art Teacher

Ugggghhhhh, hello February.  Hello, a week of snow days.  Hello, lots-of-stuff-going-on-at-home.  It's just an overwhelming time of year for this art teacher.  SO much to hang, hallway displays to change out and they're HARD ones.  Peacocks and origami dragons and kinetic Stella sculptures.   Central office display is coming up for me, and our school-wide art show is six (or is it eight?) weeks away. Not to mention getting my stuff together for a presentation at my spring state conference in three weeks.  It's all so OVERWHELMING.
But then I take a step back and realize I feel this way every year at this time, and somehow it all always gets done.  I just haven't done it with a regressing-potty-training three year old and pumping 3x a day at work before. . . 
How much longer until May again???

Spinning Stella

I have been super excited to do this project for more than a year.  As always, it started at a conference, where I saw an art teacher talk about the minimalist work of Frank Stella. Have to say, I'm not usually a big fan of his work, but I did learn a lot, and I do like the circles with the white line in between colors.  The art teacher I saw had the students paint circles and add more circles popping out.  I decided to combine her lesson with this one from Dick Blick. It's a painting! It's a sculpture!  It moves!  Art + Science! Looooovvvvvveeeee them!!!

I started saving cardboard circles from frozen pizza the minute I saw the original lesson presented at conference (send out an email to the staff and you'll be AMAZED at how many you'll get.  I did call Mr. Happy Art Teacher called around to some pizza parlors for me, but they don't use cardboard circles anymore, so that's why I went the saving-from-frozen-pizza route).  I gave them the little intro (see more about that part here) and then had them painting our pizza circles white.  They looked at a simple scrolling power point of Frank Stella's circles while they traced circles onto their cardboard.  I told them not to make more than five circles with smaller circles inside (although a few "didn't hear" that direction).  They then got a little review on intermediate/tertiary colors and mixed their own.

Handy-dandy FREE paint pallet from the school cafeteria.
Apple shipping crates cut in half--I use them every day.
We use them once and trash them, but they could probably
be used a couple of times.

The painting did take a while, and I ended up having to give them white and small brushes for the many students who forgot to leave the sliver of white between their colors.

When they finished their pizza circle, I gave them a bit of leftover mat board and had them draw two more circles in the same fashion, and paint them intermediate colors.  When they finished and everything was dry, they cut out their two circles on the mat board.

Now the real fun begins! Carefully using old compasses (think the metal pointy kind) students put holes in the middle of their cut out circles and two holes where the wanted to put them on their larger circle.  I pre- hot glued pony beads to one end of three inch sections of the thinnest dowels I could buy (they're so thin I was able to cut them to three inch lengths with scissors).  

I then demonstrated several many, many, many times the order in which to put their kinetic sculpture together:

Pre-glued bead on bottom, then pizza circle, then spool, then cut out mat board,
finally a bead on top.

I saved spools for this project from my own sewing at home, and also sent out another email and got many that way.  I did tell students to choose two different sized spools (a small and regular sized, for example).  In the Dick Blick lesson, they tell you to order a specific size, but I just used what I had available to me. After they had them together, they brought them to me to hot glue the top bead.  After the glue dried/cooled, students used scissors to cut the top bit of dowel off.

This one doesn't have the bead glued yet, but you can see the
dowel bit that will need to be trimmed.

The next time they came to art I showed them how to add the cord to make them spin (see the linked Dick Blick lesson for directions).  There was a bit of "play" at this point to get them to work, and some work better than others.  It became apparent that it's very important for me to make sure I hot glue them pretty flush, with not much wiggle room, or they don't turn well. 

Still need to add the cord, but I really like the colors on this one.

It just worked out perfectly that they'd reviewed simple machines in their science part of their classes.  A-MAZE-ING!!!!

Kindergarten Tackles the Still Life

This is a lesson I came up with when I got frustrated about kindergarten painting and not rinsing their brushes.  I've done it for several years, and it's always successful.  The first day I show them how to fold their papers into thirds by demonstrating "shut the door, shut the door" while folding the edge in to the third mark.  For some reason, saying "shut the door, shut the door" helps them to only fold to the third mark INSTEAD of folding it in half.  We then paint them all together, one primary color at a time:

Names are pre-written on the back.

The next time they come to art, they get a paper with a built-in pocket (I just cut a slit near the middle of a 12 x 18 paper, then glue a 6 x 9 piece over that).  I then talk with them about their homes, and have them draw a bowl on their counter (with the slit as the opening for their bowls) or their table.  They use crayon for this:

I really encourage lots of details, and really make them work at it:

The third time they come to art, they get their bowl drawings back and their primary paintings back.  Using crayon, they draw fruit on their painting, cut it out and put it in their bowls:

I took these as they were working, so they don't have much fruit in them yet!

They take them home once they've added fruit, and I tell them it's a game they can play with their families.  We practice saying things like "May I have two red fruits?"  "Mom, would you like a blue fruit or a yellow fruit?"  This way they're practicing math skills and color recognition.  So much fun!