Time Out/Time In

I took some time out, or maybe it was time IN. After months of planning and mountains of paperwork, I said goodbye to my students this fall and headed to China to add a child to our family. It was and continues to be an incredible adventure. Peaks and valleys. Luckily, my bag is weighty with tissues and treats, bandaids and bananas and the perfect portable paint and sketch kit put together by my wonderful mother.

visit Mom's site for pen and ink painting
 tips and techniques.

A second only to Hermione's bottomless bag!

My fave hoodie left behind somewhere in Guangzou

A Canal view in Suzhou

Colonial remnants in a Nanjing Garden

A Match Made in Heaven

"Oh, ick...." was the general comment from my 7th and 8th grade students upon learning that the subject of this painting by Leonardo DaVinci, Ginevra De Benci, was, at age 16, betrothed to a middle aged man. They had a similar response to viewing Michelangelo's David in its... entirety. 

Some aspects of our study of the high Italian Renaissance had my young teens squirming in their seats. However, the assignment to create a "match made in heaven" - or more accurately, on earth, by pairing the 17 year old David with 16 year old Ginevra, resulted in some fun art!

The drawing lessons included instruction on standard proportion as measured in head lengths, The Vetruvian Man, of course, as well as some gradual tone shading exercises. We also watched a few video clips from the fabulous BBC production, "Michelangelo the Divine." The students loved it - full of violence, blood and naked Renaissance cupids!

For the images pictured here I gave the students a photocopy of Ginevra and David's heads. They glued them on grey, buff or pink construction paper and proceeded to give them hair extensions, make up, glasses and so on. Then they decided on a contemporary activity and setting. The rest is history - love at first sight!

Accountability in Art: The Great Totem Spoon Test

Because NO CHILD should be LEFT BEHIND and  EVERY CHILD CAN LEARN and it is important to HOLD TEACHERS ACCOUNTABLE  for STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT and because ASSESSING COMMON STANDARDS AND BENCHMARKS is key to good instruction and clearly will BOOST PERFORMANCE so that we educators reach our nationally mandated goal of 100% PROFICIENCY IN READING AND MATH BY 2014 I ended the last term with a RIGOROUS exam during which STUDENTS DEMONSTRATED MASTERY of KEY CONCEPTS AND SKILLS by successfully eating ice cream using their totem spoon. I will admit that one head did roll, luckily not mine, and it was quickly reattached with super glue. I used this dramatic, TEACHABLE MOMENT to reinforce the importance of SCORING WELL and using slip, sometimes referred to as "clay snot" in room 301, when attaching clay pieces.

Beanie Babies?

Remember Beanie Babies? Once a collector's hopeful investment, their value has taken a nose dive right along with the value of the houses they clutter. I cleaned out a basement closet last week, filled a couple of bags and carted them off to school. (Don't tell my daughter, or teenage son, for that matter!) Don't have kids? Didn't join the beanie baby craze? No problem, pick them up at garage sales for about a quarter; fill a garbage bag with them at that price.

Why? Well, they are still incredibly cute, even my 8th grade boys loved this project, but more to the art point, they make great still-life material. They generally provide simple lines for the beginning artist to render and they display a variety of textures from their glossy eyes to their fuzzy fur. Teach contour line, form versus shape, shadow and highlights, and even color value. The drawings shown here were done with artist's dry pastel on plain old 11x18 construction paper.

Furthermore, the ability to pose these chubby critters, provides an excellent teaching opportunity to show students how to draw, for instance, the slumpy, little puppy, they SEE with their eyes, rather than the image of DOG which they hold in their mind.

Snow Gloves

Sideways snow,  I run from car to school blinded by stinging ice pellets. I'm greeted by the red blinking message alert: my student teacher sits awaiting rescue, car trapped in a ditch on her first day, poor thing. A rough start to a new term. It's January in Michigan. We burrow deeper into our parkas trying to avoid the pain of winter.

My family is gloveless this week  Lesson plans trump comfort. Cold hands a small sacrifice for an art project. I'm teaching the basics. Line defines shape, shading reveals form....we're drawing gloves. Learning to see. 

Outside it's a whiteout, cars crawl by in the snowy dark, red tail lights barely visible. Inside, my students, one eye closed against depth perception, are ants crawling along the contour of gloves, finding the mountains, valleys and cliffs of the outside line. It is a slow journey. We are trying to whiteout their mental picture of a glove: four fingers and a thumb. Although they can not actually 'see' all the fingers, they are smart. They know they're there. Not trusting my method, those extra fingers sometimes appear anyway. Amputation solves the problem.

As ants they forget about fingers. The landscape of a glove takes on a whole new geography. They begin to see the line, the line reveals the shape. The blob of a glove they've created seems disappointing at first. "I messed up" a common cry, looking at the odd shape on their paper, nothing like their idea of a glove. 

But now, half blind, I urge them onto the inner continent adding detail lines, texture and shading. Across the room someone utters a hushed, "wow" in awe as a glove pops from the white surface.

The blizzard is forgotten as we all consider this new reality of an ant's view. Somewhere down a dark snowy road my student teacher breathes a sigh of relief watching the tow truck lights approach. Tomorrow will be a great first day.

Painting Like Pollock: Abstract Expressionism

Parent conference days are quiet in the art room. By hour nine, after a mere ten visits, I was getting pretty antsy. On the up side, my room was cleaner than it had been in weeks and a solid month of lesson plans graced my desk. Three hours to go. I stood up and stretched.

I enjoy meeting parents. Earlier in the day I'd had a pleasant conversation with a parent who wondered if I'd had a chance, yet, to use the rolls of upholstery fabric remnants she'd donated from her work. Double whammy guilt! "Nope. Not yet," I shook my head and thanked her again for hauling all that stuff in. And, I reminded myself, I really needed to do something about all the 'donations' that were piling up, blocking a shared path to the computer printer.

Sighing, I headed for the printer room, determined to lug it all to my impossibly overstuffed storage space. As I grabbed the first long, cardboard tube from its place of honor atop the teetering pile near the printer, I was struck with inspiration, my upcoming unit was on abstract expressionism and the work of Jackson Pollock. Why not use all this fabric instead of poster board for the collaborative 'action paintings?' And why not use house paint instead of the expensive school acrylics?

Pushing thoughts of toxic fumes down into that rarely visited brain space housing theorems and postulates and other icky monsters, I flipped the 6 foot roll of fabric out along the top of a work table. Hiking up my ankle length, black dress I knelt down and dug around under the sink. I soon came up with a cracked, rubber spatula, a paint stirring stick and a few crusty brushes. An armload of old house paint cans, an apron for good measure and I was ready to try it out!

The next few hours flew past as I splattered and dripped, brushed and scraped, stopping a few times to hold a few conferences. Parents didn't seem to mind that I had to wash my hands before we could get started reviewing grades. When the announcement came concluding the evening's meetings I was sorry to put down the paint bucket but excited to share this next project with my students.

As I grabbed my coat and keys I realized with diminished guilt, that I'd only managed to move one roll of fabric from the tottering pile threatening to block the Gym teachers' access to the printer.

Visit www.funartlessonsgallery.blogspot.com to see all the students "Painting Like Pollock" art work.

On the Move: Drawing with Pastels

Tiny toys motivate. No matter how old the student, miniature, life-like objects fascinate. When my 7th and 8th graders enter the art room and see matchbox cars and planes, trucks and motorcycles set up at each table, they can't wait to get started.
We do a few color mixing exercises first, to get used to the pastels, to see how to mix and blend colors and to understand how to  change color value by blending in white or black and decide on warm or cool colors for the vehicle. Then I have them use a neutral grey  construction paper for their drawing to help emphasize the rich hues.
The only challenge with this lesson is keeping the kids from playing with the cars so that they don't disturb the still life set-ups between classes!

Fresh Air and Clay Leaf Bowls

Some of my students are still putting paper in the trash can and garbage in the recycling bin. Arrrrg! During clean-up I had to lecture again, on the difference between garbage and recyclables as I picked the paper products out of the trash, not my favorite task.

So, after my clean-up harague I enjoyed directing my students to run as fast as they could to the trees across the playing field, grab a big leaf and run back. "You have three minutes," I added sternly, then laughed as the kids looked at each other, then at me, secretly hopeful that I really meant it! A few braves ones said something like, "You're kidding, right?"  "Nope," I shook my head and stood back as they headed out the door amid whoops and hollers. Fresh air and freedom: three minutes of bliss for these middle school students.

I watched their progress from the doorway as I wrapped my bulky sweater more tightly about myself. Fall had arrived! The cold was motivation for my t-shirt clad students to run the several hundred yards there and back all the more quickly. They spilled back into the classroom excited by their finds and energized by the brisk autumn air. For the rest of the week they worked diligently creating beautiful ceramic bowls based on the leaves they collected. We completed the final steps today.

During clean-up this afternoon, I noticed that the floor was littered with dried leaves. "What'll we do with these?" a girl asked as she started to toss a few leaves into the garbage. "Here,"  I handed her a large box. On Monday we'll return our useful leaves to Mother Nature and start our week off with a little fresh air and freedom.

Art Prize Grand Rapids

Sunday evening we took our teen children and their friends to downtown Grand Rapids which, over the course of a few weeks, has been transformed by ArtPrize, a city-wide art contest conceived of and funded by a wealthy member of one of Grand Rapids' philanthropic families.
We started our trek near the 'Blue Bridge' over the Grand River, where the teens were delighted by  a top ten vote getter, "Nessie," a collaborative work in the 30's Art Moderne style, by a group of former classmates from Kendall College of Art and Design.

Teens lagging a block behind the grown ups, we wandered the central city blocks, like Sacajawea and her Crew, in search of art and artifacts. This event capitalized on the popularity of American Idol audience participation. Anyone over 18 was able to register to vote to select, in two rounds of voting, the ultimate winner of a quarter million dollar purse. There were no predetermined art categories or even much of a definition of what would qualify as ART. It was up to the public to decide. Art curators, historians, educators and critics would not be determining the value of what was on display here. One personal favorite? The maze of baled plastic recycleables set in a parking lot between glass fronted office buildings.

Following the first round of voting, each piece was labeled with thumbs up and down indicating the numbers of favorable and not so favorable votes. Surprisingly, on many pieces the vote count was in the tens of thousands. I found it difficult to believe such a large number of people had strolled past these sites in recent days. Downtown Grand Rapids is not Times Square, even on a Saturday Night.

Like bargain hunters at a flea market we left no alley unturned in our quest for art, despite a steadily increasing drizzle. Toward the end of the journey, rainy skies darkening the streets, we were cold, hungry and in need of the 'facilities.' We dove into the nearest open building, and found these 8 foot pencil drawings with acrylic painted backgrounds. What an impact. They weren't in the top ten, but they get my vote; looking at these hyper-real pieces it's impossible not to think about the real men and women who are serving as soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan. The teens? After coming full circle, back at the Blue Bridge, they went for "Nessie." The contest winner will be announced later today.

Art History through Games

Most teens will tell you there's nothing more boring than history...except maybe ART history. So, I'm experimenting with a little subversive teaching in the form of games as a way to sweeten the deal and get students engaged in looking at art.

Kids always love BINGO, especially when the prize involves vitamin S in the form of Bubble gum. I've used BINGO as an informal post assessment to check their learning, (and my teaching!) but I'm also interested in creating games that will form a more significant part of the initial instruction.

Last Friday I introduced a new game, Snapshot Memory. Teams had 60 seconds to memorize the details in a painting by Vermeer and then another 60 seconds to list what they remembered from the painting, including artist, title and date. The competitive spirit in the room really motivated students to focus intently on artwork!

After 5 or 6 rounds the students were able to describe the artist's style, time period, subject matter, several titles of paintings - and I never lectured! Later, much to my surprise, they were able to select  a (new to them) "Vermeer" from a line-up of paintings. Who says art history is boring!!!

Backward Portraits: A Fun Opening Lesson for Back-to-School

First day of school - I stood at the door to the art room greeting each student as they entered. Lots of big smiles, a few too shy to meet my eyes, high-fives from last year's 7th graders back for another dose of messy fun. Under his breath, as he walked in, head down, a new student, voicing what a good handful of others were thinking, "I hate art. I can't draw."

Always my first challenge - overcoming the fear and dread of performing so visually for all to see the shortcomings, failings, lack of this or that. Possibly the worst position in which to place a budding, young adult and the quickest route to behavior issues in the classroom.

A truth about teens - they are hair obsessed! For our opening project, part of a two week unit on portraiture, we drew "backwards" portaits in oil pastel and watercolor wash. An easy, no-fail drawing lesson focusing on the art elements of SHAPE and LINE.

After the Demo - Talk and laughter filled the room as kids began their drawings. "My head's a square!" "I've got a grape head."...Or the line in their hair, "It goes straight out in every direction." "I've got a spiral from my crown!"

The boy who walked in hating art? Not sure he loves it...yet, but as he walked out he called, "see ya tomorrow, Ms. Wilson." I glanced toward the doorway to see the back of his head... held a bit higher going out.

You can find several back-of-the head portrait lessons in a variety of media at Artsonia.
On Monday we'll begin a self-portrait project involving digital photographs and drawing, and we'll learn about the photo portraits of the 19th century pictorialist, Julia Margaret Cameron: Fantastic Photos