Feather Wings Mural

The past few months my students have been making feathers for a group mural. This idea was inspired by my friend and celebrity in the art community, Cassie Stephens! Head on over to her blog and check out her magical art teacher'n treasures at Cassie Stephen's Blog!! Her original inspo was international street artist, Kelsey Montague. Her inspiring murals challenge people to ask the question "What Lifts you"

"What makes your heart Soar?"

My students are going to be writing about their passions and inspirations that "lifts" them! I want each student that comes to my art class to feel as though they are walking out with wings on their back, so they can bravely rise up to their dreams with courage and passion! I want them to feel confident in themselves and know that the sky is the limit! 

 First, students painted on watercolor paper with tempera paint using a value gradient of tints and shades using one color plus black on the left and white on the right. They had to blend the colors so thet the different shades did not look like stripes

One group did primary and secondary colors red, orange, yellow, green blue, and violet. The next group would paint intermediate colors, red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red=violet

Fourth and fifth graders used 9' by 24' paper and 3rd graders used smaller paper

 the next class, students then traced different shapes of feathers using white prisma color pencils

 and cut them out

then they decorated them with unique lines and designs with white prisma color pencils

 My wonderful and extremely talented student teacher, Naz Kaya Erdal and I layed them out on three large sheets of black butcher paper until the feathers looked symmetrical.

Once we finished the shape, we taped each feather down to the paper with painter's tape 

Then I hung that bad boy with TONS and tons and TONS of staples!! 

The next morning the kids were SO excited to find their feathers turned into GIANT wings!!!

I hope the parents who come to visit will snap a pic in front of the wings and post to #ArtisFly and #riseupandsoar hashtags for social media!

All School Minions Mural

This year our Theme is "Every Child is One in a Minion"

We started off the year with an all school minion mural! 

Next week our teachers will be making minions too!!

Here are the specials team displays and you can see our mural below.

Students from every grade level Pre-K-5th grade drew their minion self portrait on tag board paper the first week and colored with markers. The next week they added rhinestone bling, yarn hair, and decorations that represent each child's interests. 

Lego Group Whole School Mural

Every Year we try to do some sort of All School mural in the beginning of the year. This year we did a Lego theme. Each student made a lego self portrait. The fifth graders made giant Legos, and decorations for the background. Some of the teachers made one and the students have had so much fun looking for them. 

 I gave them all this template, but they could cut off the arms and legs to reposition them as they wished. They used markers, crayons, fabric and paper scraps to decorate them.

You can see the PE teacher with fabulous sparkly shirt, sparkly shoes, and there were some cool shiny pants but someone swiped them! YIKES!

I’m Back

Well I know I havn’t posted much this summer, but now that school has started, I have so many ideas and am excited to start up the blog once again!! I love seeing everyone’s room set ups! Here is my before picture, I hope to have the after pic by the end of the week! I did happen to hang my Fred Babb inspired mural! GET SMART MAKE ART!!
He has a poster book that I highly recommend buying for your classroom. Every page is a poster and they are very colorful and have great inspiring quotes like "Art can't hurt you." "Art is one of the few things left worth doing." “Time becomes meaningless in the face of creativity” "Good art is often too broad to fit through narrow minds." And the classic: "Good art won't match your sofa." They are my favorite and fit perfectly on a cabinet door. Here is the link to get the book
http://www.amazon.com/Go-Your-Studio-Make-Stuff/dp/0761113924/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345157693&sr=8-1&keywords=fred+babb+poster


YAY for SCHOOL STARTING!!!!

For my first week project I am going to have each student in the entire school draw themselves doing their favorite Olympic sport. It will be a GIANT Where’s Waldo display. Our theme this year is “Be a Champion Every Day” I will use the little wooden people to help with gesture drawing. They will draw with black markers and color with red, white, and blue crayons, pencils, and markers, and cut them out. I am having the principal make one and I will place him in a new spot every day! I am so excited.

 
My girls started school today…calm down, babies, I know you’re excited!!

They did have fun after school using my favorite Crayola Window Crystal Effects Markers!

Back to School Ideas!

Hello blogging world art teacher friends!!! For some of you, the summer is coming to the close and the fresh smell of empty rooms and blank planners is near!!! I am in need of some great beginning of school activities. I have posted below my all time favorite first week of school activity for you!!! It was easy to set up, mess free, and made a BEAUTIFUL display (great way to start out the year) I would LOVE now, for you to post YOUR beginning of the year activities for inspiration!!! I love reading all of your blogs and use so many of your fabulous ideas!!!
If your blog is not on my blog roll PLEASE comment or e-mail it to me so I can add you!! Ok, the lesson below is the one i was talking about. It didn’t publish earlier so here it is. I posted this last year but here it is again!
This was my first day of school project this year. It was a great way to learn their names and talk about how special and different everyone is! I did this with grades kinder through fifth and they ALL loved it! Since the students are learning the color wheel I thought it would introduce color relationships in a fun way. Each table had a different color . One color. Red table had red, blue tables had blue, yellow had yellow, and so on. Since they had markers, pencils, and crayons, it allowed for various shades and hues of the same color. The 4th and fifth graders could use 2 colors; one color and one analogus color to make the intermediate color transitions in the mural from one color to the next. For the border I put butcher paper on each table and let kinder and first draw and paint different kinds of lines with their lines and color lesson, then cut it into strips to use for border. I glued all the index cardstogether on a looooooong piece of butcher paper in color order to create the mural.

We talked first about drawing your face. Oval head, then ears in the middle, then hairline from one ear to the next, line for the part of the hair if its a girl, eyes where the ears are in the middle, then nose half way b/w eyes and chin, and lips half way b/w nose and chin. We looked at many different hairstyles and how to draw them from the hair line.