I think that teaching compassion and kindness is one of the most important and most difficult things to do. I mean, you can remind the kids to be kind, considerate and thoughtful until you're blue in the face but until you actually show 'em how and let them know the positive effects, it's almost impossible. Recently, the kids in my room were talking about an apartment fire that had happened the night before. Thankfully no one was hurt but many of my students were aware of the incident because it happened in their complex. One of our families was effected and lost much due to the fire. While the kids were talking about it, I thought it would be a good time to do a compassionate fundraiser with the kids. I try to do one every year where artwork is "sold" to parents at a price they chose to give and the money going toward a specific cause. One year, we did the Empty Bowls thing and raised close to $2000 for a local homeless shelter. Another year, we sold our animal clay sculptures with the proceeds going toward a local humane society. These have always been a success however...there was always a disconnect. The children never visited the humane society or the shelter. They never actually witnessed the positive effects of their efforts nor did they have a connection to the shelter or the humane society.
And that's when I got the idea for my third and fourth grade students to help the family effected by the fire. They have both a connection with the family and the apartment. When I brought the idea up to the kids, you could have heard a pin drop. They were so excited that they might be able to use their art to help a family, that they knew, in need.
The idea for these houses was not my own. You might recall the Houses for Haiti effort from several years ago. We used the same concept. I chopped up scrap painted papers into 2" X 2" squares. The kids were to pick any two squares, one for the house, the other for the roof. Rotating one square to a diamond, folding in half and cutting along the line, they had a triangle roof. From there, they were allowed to use scrap papers, glue, Sharpie markers and paint to decorate their houses. They had free range and were told they could make as many as they liked in the 15 minutes we had remaining in the class period. Most kids created one but I had several that were in it to win it and were busting 'em out factory style. "I want to make a bunch to raise a bunch of money," I was informed by one fourth grade girl.
Once complete, I hot glued a 2" X 2" piece of card stock to the back of the house as well as a magnet. For some reason, I have a trove of magnets in that pit I call a storage closet. Which means this craft was free to make, yay!
I created a little tag to go along with the houses. We put them up for "sale" in the teacher's lounge with a suggest price of $1 after much price bickering by the kids. I left my signs, the houses and a box for money in the lounge that I checked at the end of everyday. I don't think a single person paid a dollar based on how much money we raised.
The houses were just irresistible!
The artist behind this house is usually one of my first-finishers...but not this time. He was dedicated to crafting a detailed and unique house that was sure to sell.
I love the stained glass look of this one.
To know the impact their art made, I left this in the lounge so that the teachers could write notes to the kids. This meant so much to the young artists.
Have I told you lately how much I love the people I work with? Talk about kind and considerate!
In addition to this effort, my school also hosted a spirit night at a local restaurant to raise funds. Our magnets raised just over $150 for the family. Oh! And I also shared an image of this project on Facebook and received a half dozen letters in the mail with money for magnets as well! If you are interested in purchasing a magnet, just leave a message in the comments and I'll be sure to get in touch with you. Thank you!
Hey there, buddies! I hope y'all are doing swimmingly. Here in lovely Tennessee, we're in that moody in-between summer/fall phase which makes is impossible to dress without being horribly under/over prepared. Don't believe me? Lemme paint y'all a visual: Today it was 80% rain/80% sunny/99.2% cloudy/chance of sweating your butt off in the sunshine/chance of freezing your butt off in the shade. It's no wonder my sinuses are causing brain swelling. Tho with a brain the size of mine, a lil swelling never hurt nuthin. There's plenty of real estate between these ears o' mine. During one of those moody fall days this weekend, I had the wonderful, super-duper, uber-exciting opportunity to teach a workshop at Nashville's Frist Center for Visual Arts!
That's right, this crazy art teacherin' lady got to teach adult-sized artists my fave craft: needle felting! Our creations were inspired by the Postcards of the Wiener Werstatte which translates to the Vienna Workshop. The Workshop began in the early 1900s and was a means of turning your life into a "total work of art" (sounds fab, right?). Meaning they sold everything you could ever desire as a lovely artistic creation so that your life simply permeated art. The best seller at the time? Postcards! And that's the basis of this incredible exhibit.
My buddy Rosemary Brunton, associate educator for community engagement at the Frist, lead us through the exhibit, filling us in on the history and allowing us time to explore and sketch. When we returned to the studios, this incredible group of art teachers, fiber-arts lovers and workshop-junkies (you know who you are!) were busting with ideas for their needle felted postcards.
That's right, we created needle felted postcards! AND mailed them (more on that shortly). We created these little 4" X 6" masterpieces to tiptoe into the fine art of needle felting. It allowed the participants to watch me give a short demo and explore the medium in anyway they wanted. It was a fun and quick-ish intro for the crew. If you wanna catch a snippet of what they learned, you can check out these videos I filmed a while back that will walk you through the needle felting basics and supplies.
Supplies purchased from Amazon:
* Clover needle felting tool
* Replacement needles, fine
* Roving, variety pack of colors
* Cushion. I prefer the Clover brand bristle brush but you could use foam in a pinch
* Fabric to needle felt on. YOU CAN NEEDLE FELT ON ANYTHING. Seriously. Jersey, acrylic felt, wool felt, wool, cashmere, you name it. Shoot, sometimes even your flesh but that's usually after a glass or three of wine. Which I don't recommend.
Stabby-stabby-stabby. It's seriously a stress reliever!
Exploring on an inexpensive material like acrylic felt or muslin will allow you to really explore the medium without getting hung up on doing it "just right".
These participants did a fine job of really trying out their new craft. I love this spiral!
You can simply use roving in needle felting or you can combine it with yarn like the example on the right. I've only used wool yarn when needle felting but was told that even acrylic yarns would work.
I love the three dimensional quality of this piece!
And this one! This and the one above were created by my art teacher buddies whom I've dubbed my Pensacola Friends! These lovely art teacherin' ladies drove all the way from Pensacola to attend the workshop. They were so sweet and fun, I loved having them!
I can see this being a great exploration of the use of line and shape for older students. This piece is just so happy!
Once the postcards were complete, we wrote messages on card stock and hot glued them to the back. We popped them in the mail...but, sadly, Rosemary informed me today that they were returned to her. She was kind enough to stuff 'em all in envelopes and resend them. Lesson learned...but it was such a great idea, I thought!
Once our practice pieces were complete, we moved on to a larger format work of art. Some participants sketched their design in chalk as I often do. I love using chalk on fabric as it "erases" pretty easily (just look at any sleeve of any sweater of mine!).
Others just dove right in with the roving like this van Gogh's Sunflowers-inspired piece.
Did you know you can needle felt felt to felt? Did you know I can use the word felt in one sentence three times? How does that make you felt, er, feel? I love this piece...just wait til you see it complete!
I loved everyone's unique ideas and hearing about their inspiration. We had such a happy group that loved to share ideas, thoughts, awkward youtube videos (what WAS that hand-held needle-felting tool/vibrator thing?!).
I love the graphic nature of this piece.
And my Pensacola Friends were all about the texture! I love the idea of "yarn painting" with needle felting. I never thought of that!
Text-ure, baby! Love all the feels!
Didn't I tell y'all it was amazing?!
Did I mention that there were art teachers in the house?! This one needle felted pencils onto a pencil case that she hand embroidered. Oh! AND made that wet felted button. WHUUUUT?!
Alright, art history buffs, can you spot the artist-influence behind this tabby-cat piece? If you guessed Georges Rouault, you are correct! I love the stained glass quality of this piece.
Look how painterly this piece turned out?! I love it!
Seriously. I could not have spent my Saturday with a more fun (funner!) bunch. Thank y'all for making my workshop such a blast to teach. And special thanks to Rosemary and the Frist for allowing me to do so!
Hi, friends! I mightah told y'all that we're on a bit of a Rousseau-tiger-y kick at my school these days. If you follow me here, I've shared tons of photos of my young artists tiger-tastic work. Last week I shared the relief sculpture tiger pieces created by my fourth graders. I'll be certain to share all the deets on the other projects as well but for today, I thought I'd start with y'all the biggest hit: The First Grade Henri Rousseau Jungle Mural!
A lil back story: we have our school Open House after the first month of school. I try my hardest to have a work of art hung by each student for the occasion. The last couple of years, we've done Dot Day. This year, I decided to opt for a different theme: Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings. I chose this for a couple of reasons. I'm emphasizing that Art is an Adventure and that artists are too! Also, the tigers are our school mascot so it looks fab-o and school-spirit-esque to see them plastered on the walls of our school. Having an over-arching theme for all grade levels really helps me keep my learning targets in line (5 different art lessons is enough! You add 5 different themes/topics/cultures/etc. and my lil mind is blown). So, Rouseau-inspired tigers it was!
And first grade totally nailed it. To start, we began the school year by painting and texturing papers. The first grade was allowed to pick from a variety of warm colored pieces of construction paper. They added white, yellow and red to these papers in any way they decided. These were used as the basis for our tiger drawings. To better explain the process, I created a video! This video is in kid-friendly format so feel free to share in your art room with your students.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the video! I created this just for y'all...so please let me know what you like, what you'd like to see more of and if you'd like me to pretty please stop. By the way, sometimes my videos go up on my youtube channel before they debut here. If you subscribe to my channel, you'll be the first to view...lucky you!
In case you can't stand the sound of my voice, I've got snaps of the drawing steps. I drew with the children while they sat on the floor with their papers and oil pastels in front of them. We emphasized each element of art as we drew. This was a great way to introduce the elements of art by demonstrating them in our drawings!
When using oil pastels, I always emphasize that we are not to wipe the oil pastels as they'll smear. My fave oil pastel brands are Sakura but I do love Gallery's fluorescent oil pastels. That's what's used on the eyes and the nose. So bright and the viscosity is very smooth.
We used black last because it can be the most disastrous as far as smearing goes. The kids were really excited to use black as suddenly their drawings came together.
I love the sweet personality of each tiger! Once the drawing was done, we used our green painted papers to create leaves for our tigers. These were added either in front or behind our tigers.
From there, we added a tail and glued that to the back of our tigers.
We used some scrap paper to create the tails.
For the tail, we talked about line and the kids drew any kind of line they wanted. Then they created a parallel line to follow the first. Then zigzag stripes were added.
Once the tigers were complete, the mural was ready to be created. We spent one 30 minute class painting huge sheets of bulletin board paper green. The kids loved it! They called it a Painting Party and attacked those large sheets of paper with a ton of energy.
The following class, we dialed it way down and talked about pattern. I started an organic leafy design on each paper that was green and a star pattern on each paper that was blue. The kids were given small brushes and asked to create a pattern of the original design.
The next morning, I got to school about an hour before it started, got super jacked up on coffee and busted that mural out. I laid 12' sheets of paper on the floor, one for each class.
I started by gluing down the night sky papers with my high temp glue gun. Then the land papers were added. To finish, I went over each land form in either black or white paint.
HOWEVER, once the tigers were added, they completely vanished into the busy background! I was so sad! So I decided to outline each of the tigers in black paint. Again, this took no time because I had injected coffee straight into my eyeballs. Turns out you can run laps around the universe if you do that, who knew?!
