Monday Motivations - 11 March - Eve McDonnell

For more information on Eve McDonnell, click on the link and head over to irish-art.com



A few works by Eve McDonnell

Did you ever notice....

How one little rearrangement idea can completely destroy your organization in 14 minutes or less?

This set of storage drawers just came out of our library and I laid claim to them immediately.  

 

 Which meant I needed to move this, arrange that, push this out of the way, and stack up some scrap boxes...

 Here they sit, but after years of little use, they are a bit off-kilter....

Let's see if someone can fix that for me.....

Wednesday works - Seuss inspired landscapes - 3rd grade

 Dr Seuss's Birthday found us with one 3rd grade class a bit ahead of the rest so I took it as an opportunity to slip in this little landscape lesson using the wonderful artworks found in many of the books the students read that day.
 

Monday Motivations - 4 March 2013 - A different look at Dr. Seuss

 

If you haven't flipped through this book, please search it out at your local library.  It is really fantastic.

Friday Photos - 1 March - Dr Seuss edition!

Wednesday Works - Jim Dine Hearts with 4th grade

With Valentine's Day approaching, I asked my 4th grade class what kind of project they might be interested in working on next.   I received a few answers at once, "hearts!"  "Painting!"  "Something messy"

To go along with our goal of 5 new lessons in each grade level, I took their requests and did a little research into Jim Dine, an American Artist, at times associated with the Pop-Art movement but only because of his focus on everyday items. 

We looked at his group of paintings and prints that had a heart for a main focus.   Without making the artworks be "valentines" as such, I introduced several steps of layering different materials to try and create some depth in these little works.  

Our first step was colored paper.   Students could choose to work on their heart feature as a positive or negative space element.

 Either filling in the background areas around the heart....

 

Or working with the heart as a positive space.

The goal here was not so much in the colors they chose, but in the texture they were trying to create as a base layer.

For an additional element before painting began, students were instructed to use crayons, colored pencils, and both washable and permanent markers to bring out different parts of their project.   They weren't sure what would happen when we painted over marker or colored pencils, but they do know about wax-resist using crayons and paint from a previous lesson. 

Then the painting.   My kids and I are really happy with using the tempera cake paints this year.  That is definitely something we will be using again next year.

After these have a chance to dry, we'll look at them one more time to see if we need to pull out some detail with colored pencils or markers but I am very happy with the results so far!  

Monday Motivations - 25 Feb 2013 - Ella Robinson

Ella Robinson Gallery site