Towers and Turrets

We talked about architecture this week and how so many buildings around the world are not necessarily angular and your typical sky scraper. We looked at photos of St Basil in Moscow and talked about domes, towers and turrets. We decided to make our own little city with beautiful towers we designed ourselves.

Analogous Paintings

Analogous color scheme is using a primary color and two shades on each side of the color wheel. In this case, we used blue, blue-green and blue-purple. This concept in painting can create a very easy and smooth looking and calming effect on the viewer. With a few directions, the students were guided through some simple directions and came up with their own creations. They turned out very beautiful!

Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) is a holiday celebrated in Mexico and around the world. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It sounded a little creepy to the students, but unlike our Halloween, the skulls are decorated bright and lively. They had a BLAST!

God's Eye

The Huichol call their God's eyes Sikuli, which means "the power to see and understand things unknown." When a child is born, the central eye is woven by the father, then one eye is added for every year of the child's life until the child reaches the age of five. Original Huichol Crosses are extremely rare to come by. We followed the ancient tradition and made our own. I have fond memories of this simple craft, growing up. It was great to share this with the students and do our own embellishments with beads and feathers.

Tim Burton Coasters

Tim Burton is awesome. It was fun to pay homage to his creations by having the students pick three favorite characters from "Nightmare before Christmas." We drew them on paper first and then cut them out and glued them to 4X4 tiles and coated them in a high gloss resin. We also prepped the tiles with a felt base so they will be fully functioning coasters!

Halloween Skulls

This Halloween project was so much fun. I think the kids LOVE the multi media, involving painting and sculpting. We used model magic to sculpt a skull and then painted a frame to then glue on the skull. They turned out amazing.

Bead and wire Dragonflies

This dragonfly bead and wire piece was AWESOME!! I think the students weren't prepared for the patience needed to bead the wings, but as they constructed each section, they got more and more excited. They did such a good job and are so great with multi media!

Eric Carle

Eric Carle is a beloved writer and illustrator. He has a unique technique where he prepares tissue paper painted with implied texture and then, when he wants to design a character, her cuts out various parts of the animal or insect and glues them together. We chose either a character from his books or created a new one from our imagination. This is a very advanced lesson because it is drawn, cut out, traced and then cut out again. Good job everyone!

Monet's Water Lilies

Monet painted dozens of ponds with lilies. We looked at many of them and created our own. We used a technique that creates that heavy impressionist like strokes from artist chalk and white acrylic paint. See for yourself how these young artists mimicked Monet style. They are very beautiful!

Modigliani Sculptures

Wow! These kids worked hard last week. We talked about Modigliani and how he elongated his noses and heads in his sculptures. They created their own maquettes with paper, tape and then wire and more tape. They then covered the maquette in clay and created facial features. They did this all in an hour and they turned out very cool. See for yourself!

Aluminum Foil Etchings

First of all, I'd like to apologize about posting a 'copper foil' project and then delivering an aluminum foil project. It has been years since I did this art lesson and had no idea art stores stopped selling copper foil. We still had a fabulous lesson. The students were intrigued with drawing on the aluminum and then washing over it with indian ink. We the let it dry a touch and then buffed it out. They turned out very cool. The students drew from an array of succulent plants.

Watercolor and Indian Ink Creations

This week we had a blast with watercolor paints. We essentially swiped our papers with two colors of paint and played around with what each student like as a color combination. We then took indian ink and and dropped a little 'blob' onto the papers. The students then blew through a straw to direct the ink where ever they desired. Check out the outcome!!

Aboriginal Clay Medallions

Last week we created some really cool aboriginal inspired clay medallions. The students first pounded out some 'air drying' clay and decided on a gemstone for the center. We then carefully placed glass beads in a repeated pattern using shape and color. We then poked holes in the top and slid a hemp string through it and added feathers. They turned out so great. Check them out!

Summer Art Camp

Here are a few of the projects we did at our summer art camp!