I'm so excited to share the newest addition to the art room: my Mary Blair-inspired It's a Small World Mural! As y'all know, I'm doing a big ole art room flip. I've been changing so many things up in my art room that each time the kiddos come, they spot something new. I got hooked on painting murals when I tackled this beast a month ago:
I had a bit of paint leftover after cranking out this mural that I started setting designs on another area of my art room. I've had my Art History Wall up for so long...and while I love it, it just never got used. Once my art room was rearranged because of my document cam, that area of my room was never used for instruction. So the Art History Wall just ended up being an abandoned and faded spot that just didn't make me happy anymore. Here's the before:
Full details on this wall here. Here I am tearing it down and prepping the new space:
It was bitter sweet taking this wall down. I loved the idea of it as a resource but feel like this new area (which will be used for extra art supplies and a fibers space) will be much happier with my new mural. I know it makes me super happy each morning to see it! I'm not COMPLETELY done yet...the clock is currently the only 3-D element to the wall but I do plan to add more. My dream is to have little doors that open and moving parts...but for now, I'm calling it kinda-sorta done. Done-ish. Done-lite.
Because the Art History Wall took up so much space, I had a large area of the room that was unusable for storage. I happened to find this bookcase in another room in my school and it fits PERFECTLY! I've had lots of questions on my IG about those containers with the painted faces...those are for my extra marker storage. They are cat litter containers that I painted faces on and store extra markers in by color. In fact, this entire bookcase is my "overflow" of supplies: markers, color pencils, oil pastels. It needs A LOT of work (more shelves added would be great) but I'm excited about the idea.
I also cannot wait to use this mural to teach shapes! All the geometric shapes with just a few organic. We can talk about Klee, Blair and so much more...I'm so loving this area. Can you tell? Am I goin' on and on about it enough for ya?
That clock was a thrift store score...in it's past life, it was a country-fied clock with a rooster painted on it. I'm thinkin' I did alright.
My love of Mary Blair has been goin' strong for a long time. I created this Mary Blair painted bag several years ago.
For that I stuck pretty closely to the original. For my art room, I was pretty loose. Painting on those cinder blocks is not easy...especially when you want to paint a straight line, ugh! Don't get me started! I didn't use tape, I just drew everything on the wall in a light color of chalk and just went to down. Everything had to get at least two coats (sometimes more) which was super fun (insert eye roll.)
Several years ago, I had the AMAZING experience of meeting Richard Sherman of the Sherman brothers. He and his brother wrote the theme to It's a Small World as well as the music for Mary Poppins and so many other Disney classics. It was such a joy to meet him, his sweet wife and hear all about his work at Disney.
I was so star struck!
I'll be sure to keep you posted on what else I add to my mural...as well as this new area of my art room.
I've already got my Friendly Loom up (needs a little warping) and plan to place all of our fibers supplies in the Mona Lisa cabinet on the left. The rack is one I found at the thrift store and I think it will be great for holding our yarn!
I've gotten a lot of questions on what kind of paint I used: Behr wall paint.
I've also been asked what my admin has to say about me painting my walls and how I went about getting permission. Permission?! What's that?! I just went at it...I live in the South, we ask for forgiveness, not permission. All kidding aside, they love it! Thank goodness. Thank you so much for letting me share!
Hey, kids! Last Thursday night, my school celebrated their second annual Fine Arts Extravaganza with a musical performance and an art show. Our winter art show is with the fundraiser Artome. This is our second art show with Artome and I CANNOT brag on them enough. I swear, I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just love how easy of an art show (and fundraiser) this is. You can check out last year's Artome art show here.
I shared quite a bit about this art show on my Instagram and I got a lot of questions. I thought I'd put them together in this post and hopefully help anyone out who is wondering about hosting an art show like this. Before I dive in, here's a short time lapse I made of the pre-show...that's right, this is the calm BEFORE the storm!
Here are some of the questions I got about out experience: Is this the only art show you do? No. We do a HUGE art show at the end of the year where every piece of artwork that every child has created is on display. I usually do two blog posts at the end of each school year highlighting both the 2-D and the 3-D portion of our art shows. You can check out archived art show blog posts by using the search bar on my blog and searching "art show".
What happens to the artwork that is not purchased? After the art show, it is removed from the frame and shipped back to me at no extra charge. In fact, there's no charge for this art show except for the cost of the frame. I'll get to that in a minute.
How much is the artwork, framed? That's up to you. Artome charges $19 for the framed artwork (and labor of framing and setting up the art show) and you simply up charge. I ask $25 and receive $6 per piece sold. Artome does not charge any additional fees. No charge for set up, shipping, paper, nothing. So, to me, the $19 is super reasonable.
So, how does this work? You start by contacting Artome either by email or phone. I'm a phone talker myself so I just give them a shout. I ALWAYS get someone immediately. Customer service is spot on. You start by setting up a date and time. About a week later, you'll receive your box of paper for the artwork to either be created or mounted on. The artwork is to be created on a 9" X 12" surface. The paper they send is about 12" X 18" with a space for you to add the child's name, title of artwork, teacher's name and school. Once all of the kiddo's artwork is created, Artome sends you a shipping label. Then you drop it in the mail at your local UPS about 2 weeks before your show. The day of the show, the crew arrives about 2 hours before show time to set up. YOU DO NOTHING! It's fabulous. In fact, the guys who set up my show, had it up in less than an hour!
Writing all of the names on the labels sounds like it would take for ever. What do you suggest? Last year, me and my parent volunteers collectively clocked 2 hours just writing out the names of my 350 students and the rest of the details on the forms. This year, I asked my school secretary if she could print me labels and she agreed. That shaved so much time off the process! I cannot recommend that enough!
If you don't create the artwork on the paper, how do you attach it to the paper provided? We used 3M spray glue. It is stinky but works great. I see you used chalk. Did that smear? How did you set it? My third graders used chalk and we had no issues with smearing! A mom volunteer sprayed it with hair spray and then we attached to the paper...no problems!
What if parents can't make it to the one night only art show? Can they still purchase? So, you get to decide when the art show ends. And, when it does, all of the artwork is packed up, framed, and shipped back to Artome. They do post-show sales for a couple of days after the fact. If you do have sales, they'll ship the framed work to you when they ship the unpurchased and unframed pieces.
What if more than one person wants to buy a piece of artwork? Like a grandparent or something? Artome can do a super high quality print of the original. Then they frame the print and it seriously looks just like the real thing!
What lessons did you do and how did you decide what to have the kids create? I actually did a repeat of my self portrait projects from last year! They were such a hit...I mean, parents love self portraits, right? You can find the complete lessons on all of our projects! First grade did Royal Self-Portraits, second grade did Super Hero Selfies, third grade created these Sandra Silberzweig-inspired Chalk Portraits and fourth grade did Romero Britto-inspired Selfies!
I think that answers about all of the questions I've gotten about this art show. I really love it and love this tradition of having a fine arts night. I do think next year, I'd like to add another element...but because we really go to extremes with our end of the year art show, it feel nice to have a beautiful art show that I'm not sweating bullets over.
I know at some art show that folks put together, they have places set up for kids and families to create. I'm intrigued by this idea...but with our musical program already taking place on the same night, I think adding that just might be too much. I'd love to hear from y'all if you do something in addition to sharing artwork at your school art shows.
I'd also love to hear if you've worked with Artome? What did you think? Such a great idea!
By the way, these are the chalk pieces...I think they look great, don't you? No smears. That also shows how carefully each piece is framed.
Thank you so much for letting me share my art show with y'all! It was such a fun night. We plan to use the funds raised to purchase clay and glaze for our spring projects. Y'all know how quickly 500 lbs of clay and a million bottles of glaze can add up!
Big thanks to Artome for making it a fun and EASY night for this super tired art teacher!
Howdy, friends! I thought I'd share a lesson I recently did with my kiddos that I used during my evaluation. I THINK it was successful, as far as my eval goes, but I KNOW it was a hit with the kids. There are a lot of details to this lesson that I'm calling The 100 Color Challenge. So many details that I think it's best I 'splain it to you via video. Mostly cuz I'm too lazy to type up all dem word thingies. Here you go:
By the way, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT WALL BEHIND ME?! I mean, pretty sweet, right? If you follow me here, then you are familiar with the massive art room transformation I've been doing. I'll be certain to share more details soon! In the meantime, I'm so happy everyday that I have the privilege to teach in such a space. Okay, back to the lesson! I mention in the video that these students have just finished creating their paint tube sculptures. Here is what they did the previous art class:
They'll be painting their tubes next...but first, they had to come up with their own unique color, write out a recipe and give their color a name. BUT FIRST...they had to at least attempt the 100 Color Challenge!
Here's why this lesson is great to use during your evaluations: it provides a pre/post assessment; it is cross-curricular in that you can mention science, literacy, math and creative writing. It's highly engaging and FUN! Not to mention, the kids learn so stinkin' much.
Now...I only had a couple of kids finish the challenge....and I don't plan on returning to this lesson. I feel like it would start to get stale and redundant. BUT...I do foresee it being a great way to introduce multiple media. After all, its the 100 Color Challenge...so perhaps next up will be watercolor, color pencil, pencil with a value scale to wrap up the 100 squares.
Their papers are so stinkin' pretty.
As were their palettes!
I think this would be a GREAT teaching tool at the start of the year...or each time a new media was introduced. What a great reference sheet for the kids. I think this will have to be added to next year's sketchbooks.
My favorite part of this lesson was when the kids excitedly shared their color mixing recipes. This was a great opportunity for my principal to see the discovery and the interaction of my students.
I loved this lesson so much, I even sat down and worked on my own color mixing sheet!
I know I'm not the only one who has done this lesson...I'd love to hear from you and how you used this lesson in your art teacherin' world!
Oh my goodness, y'all! These wee pencils were just about the easiest two day sculpture project ever...and look how stinkin' cute they are! If you follow me on Instagram, then you know all of my kiddos are creating sculptures of art supplies. So far, we've made sculpture of crayons, scissors, glue sticks and big pink erasers. I'll be sure to share all of those with you, as well as how-to videos. But today, I thought I'd share these super cute pencils that my fourth graders made in just 2 one-hour art classes!
Here's a video I created to share the simple process!
Day One: Our inspiration for this project is the artist Lucy Sparrow. If you are not familiar with this British artist, she created an installation that looks just like a convenience store with everything available in the store created from felt. It's AMAZING! We watched a video all about her. I told the kids that we'd be creating our own Art Supply Store for the art show. They are super stoked.
From there, each kid got a TP tube, a piece of tagboard and a couple pieces of masking tape. After tracing a template for the cone of the pencil, the kids cut it out and rolled the cone. That proved to be the part that was the most difficult. When I found a couple kids who could roll cones, I put them on cone-patrol. After the cones were rolled and secured with tape, they were taped to the top of the tube.
Once the armature was complete, the kids were given about 5-6 pieces of plaster to completely cover their pencils. I really like Rigid Wrap. I did emphasize not adding too much water so the tube would not collapse under the weight of the water. Also, if the plaster gets twisted or "messed up", according to the kids, they have to unravel and smooth it out. The plaster wrap is not cheap so I really stress using only 5-6 pieces and not wasting any. Then we set these on styrofoam plates with our names on and allow to dry. If plaster wrap is not available, you could always use papier mache. We did that when we created these pencils and crayons a couple of years ago!
Day Two: The following art class, we watched this video that the kids LOVED. Learning how a pencil was made really struck a cord with them. From there, we painted our pencils using yellow, pink, light brown and black. Once they were finished painting the pencil, they set it aside to dry and began working on the ferrule.
The ferrule was created with metal tooling. I cut the tooling down to 1" X 7". The kids created their design and I hot glued it to the pencil. The kids were thrilled how cute, small and realistic their wee pencils looked! Now they are all about creating more art supply sculptures.
