Monday, March 10, 2014

Big Art Day and other happenings


 Thursday was Big Art Day in Texas.
Big Art Day is an art happening to raise awareness of art education and art as a creative force in our communities on a BIG statewide scale. It is an attempt by the Texas Art Education Association (TAEA) to engage all art educators, their students and communities in a single day art event.
In our classroom we used Skype to connect with another art room! 
We shared our class pets who had been "decorated" for Big Art Day!
Bunbun got some rainbow chalk highlights!






In other classes, we finished our clay hearts,

this one says," I'll love you till Earth is Venus." The artist who made it LOVES science! I asked him what his Valentine meant and he said,  " If the atmospheric conditions continued to add more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere the conditions of Earth would become like Venus...but it will never happen." 











We added ribbon and students took them home

Kinder is using watercolor pencils to draw the Van Gogh sunflowers and design a frame with gold paint pens on black paper!


3rd grade made camouflage 3D chameleons using oil pastels! They did so good, that you can hardly see them!!













Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Winter Rain Watercolor Resist

Am I the only one who is ready for this Winter to be over? Spring Break is right around the corner and we still have freezing temperatures here!! This week we have been looking at the ugly, freezing, dark skies and rain. We wanted to turn it into something beautiful!
Begin with a white crayon and draw the horizon line.
there should be a big emphasis on drawing OVALS instead of circles. Students figured out that you can see the white crayon BETTER when the paper in on their stool UNDER the table! 
So I let them draw on their stools! Can you see the white crayon in the picture?

 Some students added a rainbow, lightning bolt or other details
Then I swiped the ENTIRE paper with a wet rag to begin the wet on wet watercolor

I used Sargent Liquid Watercolor Magic for this. I use it ALOT because of the vibrant colors. We used turquoise, Blue, and black

Ovals should be very small at the top of the horizon, but gradually get larger as they go down the page. Use a straight edge for the rain drops. The must TOUCH each puddle

First, paint some large blue "blobs" on your paper. 
Then paint around the blue with black and watch it blend with the blue and the wet paper!!



I have some siblings at my school working on a special project and they painted the background with the rain idea and it turned out great!

Here is a link to the kind of watercolors I use for EVERYTHING! There are different sizes if you want a smaller set. You can put them in muffin tins or ice cube trays on the tables. You can see the link " liquid watercolors" on the sidebar to see many other projects I have used these with