Mad Scientist Creations for First Grade and Beyond!

A coupla weeks ago my first graders came into the art room full of questions about forms. They'd been learning about cylinders, spheres, cubes and the like in science and had a curious question: Can you make ANY shape into a form?  

I explained to 'em that yeah, you could. Geometric shapes become geometric forms. Circles become spheres, triangles become cones, pyramids or triangular prisms. Then our discussion turned to organic shapes and I just knew we'd be chatting forever. We were midway through this fun printing project and I knew if we kept talking, we'd never get them finished. 

"Tell you what. Our next art project will be all sorts of science experiementy. Sound good?!"  

Well, today my first graders wrapped up this project and it's been so much fun that I just had to share right away. I can't take much credit for this project at all as it was a montage of ideas from fab-o art teacherin' types. I've seen the beaker bottle project shared many times on pinterest. I decided to add the color-mixing/wet-on-wet painting portion to add more science to the mix. 

The bubble idea came from one of my all time favorite art teacherin' blogs. I always love everything that Natalie shares on her blog, she's the art teacher that I wanna be when I grow up! Make sure you visit her post to see the bubble videos she shared with her students...I know my kids loved viewing them!

Because this project took us a coupla days (I see these dudes for 30 minutes at a time so we work in baby steps) and involved so many introductions to science and technique, I created a lil how-to video for you. The instructional portion is in kid-friendly speak so you can feel free to share it with your students. Tell 'em Mrs. Stephens said hi. 

In case the sound of my voice is akin to nails on a chalk board, I thought I'd also jot down the daily steps of this here project!

Day #1: After chatting about shapes and forms, we drew them together! We looked at beakers and talked about measurements and added those lines and numbers to our beakers.

Day #2: We did a color mixing science experiment! 

After we got the experiment started, we set to painting our beaker bottles using the primary colors and the wet-on-wet method. 

 Day #3: We watched the bubble videos from Natalie's blog. I also blew bubbles and we looked at them and pointed out what we saw: that they were different sizes, sometimes they were connected, they overlapped, they were transparent and reflective. Using black paper, we started our chalked bubbles.

 Day #4: We finished off our bubbles and chatted about composition. After the beakers were cut out, the kids had to arrange them in a pleasing composition on their bubble paper before gluing them down. 

Day #5: We had a bubble printing party! It was so much fun, just check out this short clip:

To make the bubble printing paint use the following: aluminum pie pans, dish soap, water and paint. I add about two table spoons of soap to the pan with nearly a 1/4 cup of paint. Then stir in about 1-2 cups of water. There really isn't any exact science to it, I just dumped stuff in but for those of you that like measurements, there you go. Stir it around and it's ready! I had four students at each table with four different colors in each spot: red, blue, black and yellow. The kids were armed with a straw and a piece of construction paper (any thicker stock paper would work). 

I then told the kids our routine. When I hit my chime once, they place their paper in the corner of their table and blow into the pan in front of them. When I hit the chime again (10 seconds or so later), they were to "Smash Them Bubbles!" which quickly became our new chat. Then I would say, "Move to the right, move to the right, take your paper and your stray and move to the right, show me you're ready!". The kids would place their paper in the corner of their table again, bend down in front of their new pan and wait for the chime. It worked great! The next day, I spent about 10 minutes gluing their artwork to their new frames. They look fab, says moi!

Until next time, hope all y'all have a bubbly week!

In the Art Room: Super Hero Selfies

So I've been teaching for almost a million years and I'm not afraid to say that I don't love everything about teaching art. There are some things that got me all feelin' like this when I'm teaching...

 And got my students doing all this cuz they just...can't...

My two least fave thangie-muhgies are teaching figure drawing and perspective. In no particular order of distaste. I'm an equal opportunity dis-liker. 

So, what did I decide to do? Put both things together into one lesson. Because two negatives make a positive, right? Turns out they do in this case as the kids loved this Super Hero Selfie lesson!

This big fat hairy project involved color theory, wax resist, scratch-art paper making, perspective drawing, figure drawing and, finally, the creation of a super hero selfie. I decided to create a video for y'all to view on your own or share with your students. Because each phase of this project might take a class period, I broke this video up into bite sized pieces. So that you can easily find the individual lesson, I've added a header to the video. This way, if you are running a flipped classroom, you can simply have your students move on to the next clip!

 Just to break it down for you:

• Day One: The students used 12" X 18" pieces of paper, oil pastels and either warm or cool watercolor paint. I like to use 80 lbs white paper.
• Day Two: We made our scratch art paper! For this, I've found oil pastel works best. Also, when the students go to paint, use slightly diluted black tempera paint. I love Sax Versa Temp paint. We used 12" X 12" squares for this.
• Day Three: Wooden skewers and templates were used. I had a variety of those shapes you saw in the video for the kids to trace. Many kids struggled with the idea of having the windows go back into space. So we watched a couple of videos and practiced on dry erase boards until we got it.
• Day Four: We drew the kids in action in P.E.! Once we returned to the art room after about 10 minutes of gesture sketching, we used mannequins to create our own super hero pose. Lines were traced over with Sharpie.
• Day Five: We started finishing our super heroes, adding color with colored pencil and creating our compositions. This entailed cutting out the buildings and arranging them in a pleasing way with our hero. Early finishers wrote stories about their heroes!

Now with our snow days, my jury duty and holidays, we've really been on the struggle bus to finish these. Mostly because the kids have really gotten into it! They keep getting more elaborate with their heroes, adding side kicks, villains and costumes. 

I love that each phase of this project introduced them to something new.

Here's a peek after the their day. Homemade scratch paper isn't perfect as it sometimes comes off in flakes. But having made it as a kid, I wanted my students to have the same experience. 

Gesture drawing the kids in P.E. was a big hit. It really loosened up the kids and helped them have more interesting poses for their super heroes.

The wooden mannequins were also helpful. You can see this student's original drawing in pencil under her Sharpie'd lines. I love the sidekick!

Check out that pose! I can't take credit, this student draws a lot and is very talented. Not to mention, a big Star Wars fan!

Once together, the kids wrote stories that had funny and elaborate names for their heroes. 

And for once, perspective and figure drawing had me and my students all...

 What are some of your fave perspective and figure drawing lessons? Do you have some tips and tricks? I'd love to hear about 'em as I'm always in need of some help...aren't we all?

Also! Many of you have asked about my videos: how I make them, what equipment I use, etc. I'll be sharing that in a blog post this week so stay tuned! 

DIY: A Mondrian Coat

So I'm currently reading this great self-help book called Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin. It's all about forming habits to help you become the person you wanna be (which, in my case, means less lazy and more do-y with a splash of grown-up like.) But before she gets into the habit-forming department, she explains that you gotta know what kind of tendencies you have to aide in developing habits best suited for you. She's decided (and I totes agree) that there are four kinds of habit-y folks in the universe: Upholders (who uphold both their own obligations and those they've made to others), Obligers (who uphold obligations to others but not to themselves), Quesioners (those who question what is being asked of them and follow through if they find it legit) and Rebels (those who can't be held accountable for internal or external obligations because they don't like being told what to do). 

So. With EXACTLY one million obligations to others (presentations, papers, writing, you name it) and EXACTLY one million new habits I've promised myself I'd form (exercising, eating better, getting more sleep), guess who decided to throw all that out the window and make this here needle-felted Mondrian coat?! 

That's right. This rebel. 

 Hey. It's all good. Draper approves. 

Did I mention that I'm currently on a Mad Men marathon bender? The hubs watched it all when it first came out and I kinda fell off the wagon when the show slipped into the mid-60's (let's be real, I was only in it for the fifties fashions). But with our onslaught of snow days, I'm now polyester-shift-dresses deep which is totes perfect cuz this coat is all kinds of Mad Mod 1960's. AND it also allows me to get all Mad Men gif-happy in this here post! 

Yep. I've already gotten this look when I wore the coat out today. I'm rather used to it. Joannie, don't hate. 

But before we go any further, I suppose we should give a big fat hairy shout out to the man who inspired my coat: Piet Mondrian. Born in 1906, this Dutch dude began fiddling with this grid style of painting with primary colors after the World War I while living in Paris. 

In 1940, Mondrian moved to New York City where he really seems to explore his ideas of simple abstraction. It's interesting to me that a little over 20 years later, his artwork became a part of the mod movement with it's strong lines and bold colors. His work looks every bit of arts and crafts movement as it does mid-century mod.

I love this dress by Yves Saint Laurent. Has anyone watched the movie about YSL's life? I think I'll have to check it out after I'm done drooling over Don Draper, er, watching Mad Men. You can find patterns for this dress in etsy-land and ebay-ville for a pretty penny. It's been on my dress-makerin' list for a while. Tho the closest I've gotten is this...

I found the fabric online and busted out this bad boy last year when it was Snow Day Central in these parts. I love the fabric but the styling is not mod. I mean, I'm no Marge, 'kay?

I suppose a girl can dream. BTW, I need those shoes, Marge. NEED. 

So I think I told you on Wednesday when I shared with you my needle-felted paint-splatter coat that I snagged this coat at the thrift store with the intent of artsifying it. Knowing that I'll be at an art teacherin' convention in Chicago in March (and knowing that I'm freakishly cold-natured), I can only assume I'll spend 99% of my time coat swaddled. When I realized that, I decided I'd better set to work on some super cute coat-ness. Because, again, I'm a rebel. All obligations were kicked, shoved and bootie-bumped out the window for this top-priority.  

Now I will confess that after the paint splatter coat, which was super fun with it's no-fuss organic shapes, doing these redundant vertical and horizontal lines and shapes was a little dry. There might have been some grown-up grape flavored drinking to help pass the time. Which got me very close to making the back of the coat look like a Pollock. 

Yes, Peg. Apparently so. 

But it's done now. And like all pain-in-the-arse crafts, I often forget the unpleasantries when I'm left with something I'm proud of.

Here's something I found interesting along the needle-felting way: I've never really had the hots for Mondrian or these paintings of his. But since working on this coat, I love those works of art! I don't know if it's the primary color palette or the vintage/Mod look to the work but I'm totes a convert. The back of the coat is my fave. 

Because I've shared so many needle felting DIY projects with y'all, I didn't think you'd wanna see one million how-to step photos. So I took exactly ONE. Sorry, y'all! If you follow this link, you'll find oodles of details along with how-to videos.  I've created many thingies via needle felting that, if I wasn't so stinkin' lazy, I'd create a link-able list for y'all. However, if you google my name and needle felting and hit image search, you'll see it all a whole lot faster. 

Oh, did I mention that this glamous 1980's coat came with white buttons and shoulder pads? I swapped out the buttons for red vintage ones from my stash. The shoulder pads stayed because they make me feel like this...

BAM. Shoulders of a quarterback, y'all. Deal with it. 

When I put on my finished coat and showed it to el hubbo, I got the usual response...

And there you have it! A Mad-Mod-Mondrian coat that gets a big ole thumbs up. I can't wait to wear it 'round the Windy City doin' my best Pegg-the-Boss impersonation. Hope to see y'all there! Now, lemme get back to better-habit-forming (bwhahaha, ahem).