The Making of a Spooky Village and a Poem

Happy Halloween!

Here's a look at the Scary House Prints my students created last week in after school art class. I had each of them donate one print to me and we created a spooky village. I had a kiddo use the formative assessment "poem activity" I spoke about here to create a spooky poem about the halloween village.

"Halloween Houses
Trick-or-Treating
Scary Like a Bat.
Spooky Night!"

ENJOY!!

Positive-ly ME Collage

I'm currently taking a course at Plymouth State University on teaching art to high school students. It's been so awesome! One thing we've need to do was create a curriculum for an Intro to Art course (also called Visual Studies or Art 1). 

Here's an art idea that could be used for a variety of age levels to teach about Positive and Negative Space. It's my spin on a positive/negative space lesson I saw online. With my lesson, students think of a pose, an object, or a symbol that best represent them, sketches it as a silhouette, and fills in the negative space around the silhouette with images and text from magazines or personal photos that are unique to them (i.e. that tell the viewer who they are). It was fun to do and pretty quick. Here's my example:

I originally saw this project on TeacherPayTeachers, designed by Melissa Woodland. She designed it as a negative space social issue collage. What a great idea! I purchased her lesson and it is nicely thought out with great resources and skill-building activities included. Her lesson focuses on the art or Kara Walker, a contemporary silhouette artist who uses silhouettes to address social issues of race, slavery, and sexuality. Melissa Woodland's lesson has students watch a PBS video on Woodland and has a wonderful handout for students about the film. Woodland also includes a rubric for the lesson and three clear images of finished products to get you and your students started. This would be a wonderful project to link with history class and get students checking out the resources that the library offers (to collect newspaper and magazine articles as well as images related to their social issue).

On a personal note, I felt that Walker's art was a bit too edgy for me to be introducing to students, so I substituted local (to me) contemporary silhouette artist Randal Thurston. He is using silhouettes in his work and his work is thought-provoking and technically exquisite. He doesn't have images on his website, but you can google his images and contact him for more info about his work (I did and he sent me TONS of images of his work as well as info about the collections--wonderful!).

Another fabulous resource for silhouettes to get your students thinking can be found online at Art Inspired with a lesson written by Tricia Fuglestad, an art teacher at Dryden Elementary School is Illinois. She has her students create silhouettes of their bodies in front of a green screen and create posters reminiscent of iPad ads from awhile back. She links her lesson to the viral iRaq posters that appeared online and in Los Angeles. Seriously cool (and it links art with technology!).

So many possibilities! I hope you try this with your students--and if you do, email me some picts and I'll post them here. ENJOY!

My Bear Mask With Plaster Gauze

I'm going to Grad School at Plymouth State University in NH to become certified to teach art. I'm having a great time and learning so much!

This is meant to have the face be vertical,
but my background wasn't big enough! Sorry!

The class I'm taking this semester is Art Methods and Materials For Elementary Education and it is SO FUN! We get to make art! Oh yeah, and write lesson plans and research papers...BUT, MAKE ART!

As a mom of four and doing all sorts of other things over the years, I don't make time for my own art--I'm not sure what my own art even is after all this time. But, I've been enjoying making art for this class. The last project we did was create a mask using plaster gauze. I had done this about a million years ago when I was in high school, so I was excited to think about possibilities for my grown-up mask.

We were challenged to create a mask that represents us in some way and it needed to have some sort of extension of some kind (we could use Cellu-clay, plaster gauze, cardboard, etc. to make the extensions).

Ahhh...the possibilities! I started to think about what I would be known for at the end of my life and I thought, "Well, people would say I was a mom." Of course, this is among other things, but I take my mom job very seriously :-)

I thought about creating a totem pole on my mask of all of the totem animals of my children, husband, and I, but as I designed it, I didn't really like how it was going. Then I focused on me. My totem animal, right now, is the bear. So here I am wearing a bear mask over a human mask, because there's always a part of me that I keep private.

I love constellations, so I have Ursa Major and Minor in the night sky. I love silhouettes too, so on the left, under Ursa Minor, you'll see my four little cubs. My daughter's the last cub scurrying to catch up to her brothers. My oldest son is turning back and watching over his siblings (just like in real life). And, on the right, there's mom, under the constellation of Ursa Major.

I'm happy with the way the mask came out--I had wanted to incorporate twigs and beads and such, but I stopped here to rest for a bit and think. I really enjoyed making this project and I could see making a series of masks: a marriage mask, a Mrs. P-only mask, an artist mask...I think it would be interesting to see all of the masks I wear.

So what are you making lately? Are you inspired by the projects you teach your students?

Milton Glaser/Bob Dylan Inspired Self-Portraits

Back in college, I took a entire semester of "The History of Graphic Design." One of the designers and illustrators we learned about was Milton Glaser. He is probably best known as the creator of the iconic "I (Heart) NY" logo.

Another design of his that has always stayed with me is the illustration he did for Columbia Records showing a silhouette of Bob Dylan with his hair drawn in colorful strands. The color and movement in this piece is just so great. It says "creativity" to me and it really does look like Dylan!

Milton Glaser/Bob Dylan-Inspired Self Portraits

Supplies Needed: 

• A printout of the profile of the student (fill the entire 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper)
• Black piece of construction paper
• Stapler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• One 9" x 12" sheet of white construction paper
• Glue stick
• Black permanent marker (we used Sharpies)
• Various colored markers
• Scraps of colored paper for name, optional

Directions:

1. On the printout of the photo, use your pencil to draw a line outlining the body and the skin of the student (not the hair)--no inner details. Staple the printout to a sheet of black construction paper. Cut through both layers of paper along the pencil line (careful to not cut into the hair portion--you'll need that later).

2. Glue the black cutout of the head/body to the white piece of construction paper.

3. Cut out the hair from the printout. Discard the background. Place the hair onto the background and trace around it with the pencil. 

4. Use your pencil to divide the hair into locks. Refer to the printout of your hair to see the direction of how the hair flows. Once all of the hair area is divided up into "tubes" use a Sharpie to trace your pencil lines.

5. Add color to your hair using the markers.

6. Write your name on scrap bits of construction paper, cut out and glue to the bottom edge of the silhouette. 

Look at that funky, creative self-portrait!

Cloud Pictures and Book: "It Looked Like Spilt Milk"

Ah...the lazy days of summer are coming to an end, but you can still enjoy the lovely weather and make some great art inspired by blue skies and fluffy clouds!

I see a dragonfly!

A great book to get your creative juices flowing is "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" by Charles G. Shaw. This book is simple but inspiring! Don't give away the ending--have the children look at the shapes in the book and guess what they are and THEN discover that they've been looking at cloud shapes! I have read it to children in Kindergarten through grade 3 and everyone enjoys guessing what the shapes are and then creating their own cloud shapes.

This is a great activity to learn about art concepts such as contour drawing and positive and negative space. It is quick and a good project to have on hand for a last minute fun project. Combine this with a trip outside on a sunny day to do some real cloud-spotting and you have an awesome time!

Cloud Pictures

Supplies Needed:

• Blue construction paper
• Pencil with eraser
• Elmer's glue 
• Cotton balls (large, fluffy ones work better than the tiny ones)

Directions:

1. Draw the outline of a simple item onto a piece of paper. Some ideas include a car, flower, butterfly or dragonfly. The sky's the limit (pun intended!!). Remember to keep it simple--don't include any inside details or make any of the parts too small.

2. Fill in the interior of your shape with glue. Liquid white school glue will work better than a glue stick.

3. Attach cotton balls to fill in the shape you made.

You are done! I told you it was super-easy!!

Flower, tree?

Airplane, butterfly, stingray?

Winter Silhouette Landscapes

WOW! This is one of those projects where I think, "Yeah, this will be a good one to do with the kids," but then I do it and, WOW. I was so happy with the way these came out and the creativity my students showed when making these pieces.

Look at that sky! Beautiful!

My homeschool art class just finished up a two-week session on Chinese New Year and we had a class to go before starting African art. I wanted to do a winter-related project that taught them a skill (such as color-mixing) but also tied in some elements of art such as value, etc.

I found this project for a moon-lit landscape in the book, "Using Color in Your Art," by Sandi Henry. It's published by Williamson Books and I LOVE their art books for children.

I also tied in another favorite book of mine, "The Day the Babies Crawled Away," by Peggy Rathmann. It's a great book that has striking skies offset with detailed silhouettes. The story is about a boy who notices the babies in his neighborhood crawling away from a neighborhood celebration (unbeknownst to their parents). He follows the babies to keep an eye on them and the images are hilarious! Oh yeah, and it illustrates the whole "beautiful background/silhouette landscape-thing I'm trying to teach with this project!

This project teaches a whole bunch of concepts to children, here's the info:

We started by talking about landscapes and what that meant. Then we discussed how there can be different values (lights and darks) of colors. When a painter mixed white with a color, it gets lighter. The values that are made by mixing white with a color are called tints. When a painter mixes black with a color, it gets darker. The values that are made by mixing black with a color are called shades.

In the first part of this project, we are going to make the sky (or background) for our Winter Silhouette Landscapes.

Supplies Needed to make the SKY:

• 11" x 14" White Heavyweight Paper (I used bristol, but you could use posterboard)
• Pencil
• Blue tempera paint
• White tempera paint
• Disposable plate for a palette
• Paint brush or piece of sponge
• Water, paper towels & newspapers

Directions to make the SKY:

1. Using your finger, locate the center of the white piece of paper. Move your finger up about 2" and then over to the right about 2." This is where your moon will be. Use the pencil to make a little dot to mark the place.

2. Put some white and blue paint on the palette. Paint a 2" circle with white paint onto the dot you marked as the "moon" on your paper.

3. With your brush, get a dab of blue and mix it into the entire blob of white paint on your palette (not in your paper!). Use this brush or the sponge to paint this light blue paint in a ring around the moon on your paper.

4. Keep repeating the process (adding blue paint to make the paint on your palette darker and then painting a ring of color onto your paper) until the entire page is filled with rings of color. It's OK if some of the rings go off your paper. Just keep going and continue filling the page.

5. Let this dry. I brought a fan in to speed up the process since I wanted to send this project home today.

Supplies needed to make the SILHOUETTE-LANDSCAPE:

• 1 Piece of 9" x 12" black construction paper
• Bits of yellow construction paper, optional
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Glue stick

Directions to make the SILHOUETTE-LANDSCAPE:

1. I started by talking with the children about what they'd see if we went walking in their yard at night. We discussed not only what we'd see (houses, snowmen), but what we'd smell (trees, smoke from a chimney). Then I asked them what we'd hear (crunching snow, dogs barking, children playing). I also showed them the book by Peggy Rathmann and we discussed a few things we saw in there.

2. Draw a ground line on the black construction paper. Add a house, trees, etc. using the pencil making sure that the elements touch the ground and are large enough and simple enough to be recognized and easy enough to cut out with scissors.

3. Cut out the silhouette with scissors.

4. Glue the silhouette to the background/sky painting using a glue stick. The silhouette becomes the foreground of the picture. The moon makes a nice focal point.

5. Using bits of yellow construction paper and the glue stick, add a window or two to your house.

ENJOY the warm, inviting night-time winter landscapes!

This piece shows one of the babies from the book
getting into trouble by hanging upside from a tree limb!

Easy Silhouettes

I love the look of silhouettes! They can go with just about any decor: traditional, modern, eclectic--you name it! They are a great way of preserving your child's image at a certain point in time, and they are also a great example of positive and negative space. 

A silhouette of my oldest guy--so handsome!

Positive space is the space an object occupies (in this case, the head of the person whose silhouette is being done). Negative space is the area around the object. I chose white paper to highlight the negative space around my silhouettes. Although this craft is simple, it may be best for older children or a grownup to do the actual cutting of the silhouette so that facial features stay intact. This is an inexpensive craft that would be perfect for a gift (think grandparents).

Supplies Needed:

• Camera
• Ultra fine point marker
• Small, sharp scissors (I used embroidery scissors)
• Black acrylic paint (I used flat paint in "lamp black")
• Paint brush
• 3 1/2" x 5" rectangle white paper (I used scrap booking card stock)
• 5" x 7" rectangle colored paper, your choice of color (I used scrap booking card stock)
• Black 5" x 7" frame (I bought mine at the dollar store)
• Glue stick

Directions:

1. Take a profile picture of the person whose silhouette you will be creating. Make sure they are looking straight ahead and that their hair is neat (girls with long hair can pull it to the side or have it fall down their backs).

2. Print out the picture onto plain white paper. Use the fine point marker to outline the features of the subject. Add a gradually sloping neckline. You may need to draw in the bottom edge of their hair if it went beyond the picture. I try to keep the bottom edge of the silhouette simple and neat, but I do have a little fun when I'm drawing in the ends of the hair. Just don't go too crazy--remember, you'll have to cut it all out!

3. Use a small, sharp pair of scissors to cut out the image.

4. Paint the cutout with a coat of black acrylic paint and let it dry for several hours or overnight. 

5. Glue the cutout to the white paper. Glue the white paper to the larger, colored, piece of card stock. Insert into the frame and you are done! These are so fast you may find that you'll want to do a whole series of silhouettes! ENJOY!