Art Bulletin Boards to Instruct, Engage, and Advocate

I presented a workshop at my state's art ed conference over the weekend focused on bulletin boards. I love my bulletin boards. They come in so handy when I want to create displays to help introduce new concepts or review with my students, to advocate my program, and to get students and staff interested in our art room happenings. My presentation has almost every bulletin board I've created since I started teaching and some practical tips. Check it out, and let me know if you have any questions!

Art Bulletin boards to Instruct, Engage, & Advocate from Katie Morris

Easy is Boring

I've decided that my bulletin boards fall into the following categories: informative, interactive, and inspiring. Lots of the ideas in the "inspiring" category come from signs or sayings that I see on Pinterest and convert to a bulletin board, like "Easy is Boring. Challenge Yourself."

The message of the bulletin board is really important to me! I made the "challenge yourself" portion out of brightly colored copy paper taped together on the back so that I could hang it in my classroom after the bulletin board came down. This bulletin board came together quickly. The most time-consuming part was covering the back with butcher paper, which is why I almost never do it! (I've painted the bulletin board so I don't have to cover it!) I painted the "easy is boring" text directly onto the paper with black tempera and then stapled the "challenge yourself" portion that I had assembled and painted separately. 

I really thought about just leaving the bulletin board with "easy is boring" for a while and then adding the challenge yourself part. If I had two board in the hallway, I would have made the first one say "easy is boring" and the second, "challenge yourself" like billboards sometimes do!

Dali's Mustache Bulletin Board

 I kept overthinking an idea for a Youth Art Month bulletin board at my intermediate school. I had decided to have students write questions where the answers were things they learned about art, but I didn't have any class time to devote to it and the only volunteer question I got was "what are the colors on the color wheel?" I decided to keep it really simple and play off of the current mustache fad. My 6th grade students, in particular, are really into mustaches, wearing shirts and jewelry with giant mustaches on them. So, how do you tie mustaches into art class? With an artist who was almost as famous for his mustache as he was for his paintings- Salvador Dali!

To the side of the giant mustache and "I mustache you a question", I put a little collection of Dali's mustaches collected online and a sign asking if anyone can identify him. I added a picture of "The Persistence of Memory" as an additional clue. I only wish I had realized I used the word "famous" twice and changed one of them. Nobody has told me they figured out the artist yet but it's only been a couple days so I'm hoping someone will remember!

P.S. I can't publish this post without a shout out to a fun Art Ed blog, Dali's Moustache!

New Bulletin Board Displays

I needed to change out my bulletin boards but didn't really have any student work ready to go up. I know that my primary students have been learning about different presidents with Presidents Day a couple weeks away, so I dug through all the posters in my room and selected a few with presidential themes. On the left is "George Washington (Lansdowne Portrait)" by Gilbert Stuart, the middle is "George Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze, and on the right we have "Abraham Lincoln, February 5, 1865" by Alexander Gardner.

I added some facts about each president, snippets about Presidents Day, something about each artist, and pointed out a few of the inaccuracies in the painting. I liked to hear the students as they walked by- "Abraham Lincoln! He's my favorite president!"

At my intermediate school, I selected prints with a common theme- Man vs. Nature. I had wanted to compare John Steuart Curry's "Tornado Over Kansas" with Hiroshige's "Great Bridge, Sudden Shower at Atake" and Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" since we focused on East Asian cultures last fall. I added a "Stop. Look. Think." sign with questions about the artwork. If I saw the students more often, we would have done this as a writing activity.

Happy Little Landscape Paintings

I still think PBS's Bob Ross Remix is the best video on YouTube. If you haven't watched it yet, do it now. I'll wait. You won't be sorry.

The video is so positive and fun! It is just full of positive statements including:

"I believe, I believe, every day's a good day when you paint"

"We don't make mistakes. We just make happy accidents."

"Believe that you can do it, 'cause you can do it."

 My 3rd grade students think it's pretty cool, too! They loved watching the video as the jumping off point for some landscape paintings. After all, one of the lines in the song is "This is your world, you're the creator. Find freedom on this canvas." After watching the video and pointing out how Bob Ross was very positive and talked about "happy little clouds" and "happy little trees", the students discussed how Art could make us feel happy. The students were asked to think of a landscape that would make them feel happy because they would soon be painting it!

The schedule was really funky in August and the beginning of September. My Tuesday classes ended up having 3 class periods to paint, Friday classes had 2, and Monday classes only had 1. After the remix, the Tuesday and Friday classes also got to watch a short YouTube clip of Bob Ross' technique for painting clouds. My student teacher or I demonstrated painting a simple sky and the best Ross cloud technique we could muster using tempera paint, then the students painted their clouds. The next thing we asked them to do on the first day was to paint their ground and other big shapes. The details, and more demonstrations on things like plants and adding texture came in the 2nd class period.

I've been so obsessed with inspired by the remix that I decided this project would make a good bulletin board display. Let me tell you, I've had more comments on this bulletin board than any other I've ever put together! Teachers seriously stopped in the Art room when they weren't even dropping off a class to tell me they liked it or share a memory of watching the Joy of Painting on PBS. 

I like creating QR codes to put on my project description signs. I don't think anybody ever scans them, partly because I don't think a lot of people know what they are. I decided to add a little explanation this year. Underneath my QR code, it says "Wondering about the weird black and white squares? Scan them with a free QR code reader on your "smart" device to be directed to the website." Hopefully the explanation will be helpful.

Check out a few of the students' happy little landscapes. I am very behind on posting artwork to Artsonia this year so these are all I have photographed for now.

Right Brain Bulletin Board

This is my latest bulletin board! I was trying to think of an idea on the way to school last week when "spend some time in your right mind" popped in my head, so I ran with it! I was really inspired by the Mercedes Benz Right Brain/Left Brain ads that came out a couple of years ago. Looking at their visuals helped me develop my plan.

Source: fuelyourcreativity.com via Katie on Pinterest

 I do wish I had finalized my plan a little earlier because I was really rushing to get this done before Open House last Thursday. Forgive me for not using the same form of each word. :)

 In the middle of my brain, I wrote a little description of each side's job. I think our brains are pretty cool.

 This also reminded me of some of the smART quotes I recently ordered from The smARTteacher! I used some PTO money to invest in both sets. One set has general words of wisdom from artists, and the other has quotes about art and creativity.

Here's the smART quote that is the most applicable to this post. (Shout out to Painting with Brains!)

 I can't wait to start hanging these around my classroom, I'm just waiting on a new bulletin board to show up!

The Earth Without Art is Just "Eh"

This was going to be my Earth Day bulletin board. We had a visiting author/illustrator (more about that later) in April so the timing worked out that I decorated for that instead. Anyway, I'm sure you've all see "The Earth Without Art is Just 'Eh'" somewhere recently. I think I pinned an image of it last fall so I could remember the right wording for a bulletin board. Some of the kids don't get it until I read it to them. They don't know that "eh" means so-so, just ok.

Can you believe I actually covered my bulletin board background? I only did it because I got two designs out of one covering. The light blue was the background for the author visit and I took down the other decorations before the sunlight faded the paper around them. I even have a fancy schmancy coordinating leaf border.

Earth was made by tracing a gigantic (slightly lopsided) hula hoop I borrowed from our PE teacher on 2 pieces of pieced together poster board. I looked at a satellite image of Earth and painted the water (negative space) around the continents first. I tore newspaper and overlapped the pieces to form the shape of the continents then painted over with green, letting the print show through. It didn't look quite right so I added some cloud cover.

I like to make my own letters when I can. I like the look better than die-cut letters and it's usually faster for me than counting how many copies I need of each letter. It would have looked cool to paint directly onto the butcher paper background, but by painting my letters on paper, cutting, and laminating them, I'll be able to use them again and again without losing quality.

When I get lazy, I don't trim as much around words that are less important.

Happy-Ish Youth Art Month

Happy Youth Art Month! I was passing back artwork when I finally got an idea for my K-3rd grade YAM bulletin board. (I had to run back to the work room to pull artwork back out of teacher mailboxes...) I painted Ramon from Peter H. Reynolds' Ish on a piece of poster board, as well as a sun. 

 The words are painted directly on the white butcher paper. I really wish the butcher paper was a bit more opaque. It bugs me that you can see where the layers overlap but hopefully with all the other stuff going on, nobody else notices. I think people walking by on Friday probably thought I just had a really shaky hand when I started painting. I was trying to match the writing from the book. :)

After I painted the message, I connected the end of the last word to Ramon's pencil. This reminds me that I need to make a little sign- Mrs.Morris YAM Book Recommendations or something that will explain Ish. Somebody said "Happy-ish? Like sort of happy?"

I hung students' Ish drawings around the bulletin board. A few weeks ago, K-2nd grade students listened to and discussed Ish then made Ish artwork. They drew directly with sharpie so that if they made a mistake, they had to make it great and couldn't erase! Everybody thoroughly enjoyed the one class period project. It would be great for the first week of school. The drawings below were made by Kindergarten and 1st grade students. Enjoy!

The story of Capture-Ish: "A caterpillar who is broken-hearted because his friend captured him and is taking him to a zoo." Great vocabulary for a Kinder!

Art History Snowmen Bulletin Board

This is the only snow we've seen in my part of Kansas since we got maybe an inch back in December. I'm not particularly a fan of being cold, but it would be nice to have one nice, pretty snow this winter!

If I had unlimited time with my students, I would have had the older kids research an artist or movement, then create a snowman (snowperson) inspired by the Art History they learned about. Because I only see my older students for 40 minutes, every other week, when they don't miss due to holidays, conferences, breaks, etc., I knew they would not have time to do the project the way I would want. So, I changed the idea from a student project into a bulletin board. I spent a bit of time brainstorming artists whose paintings gave me ideas for snow people. Some flopped, some turned out ok and made it onto the bulletin board.

I didn't talk to the students about the bulletin board, or even really encourage them to guess. I just thought it might spark interest. It would have been more successful as a learning tool if we had covered the artists who inspired the snowmen. I heard some students saying it was "cool" as I was hanging the bulletin board but I don't know if they ever had a chance to stop and read it. I did have several teachers trying to guess, so that was fun! One told me she saw an art reproduction puzzle at a toy store and it helped her figure out a snowman. Another said she should see if her daughter could put her experience in Art History classes to use to figure it out.

By the way, it's harder than you might think to design somewhat recognizable Art History snowmen! 

Some, I thought of right away. Like this guy, inspired by Magritte's The Son of Man (though the "Man" has a face in his painting). 

 The Mondrian snowman was an early idea as well.

 My Picasso snowman started to get a little tricky. Why? Cubism doesn't usually keep clearly defined edges of painted objects and I needed to be able to cut out my snowman. So this painting was my inspiration. I tried showing the nose from two different angles and incorporating patterns like in Picasso's painting.

My Keith Haring snowman was pretty easy. You can kind of tell from the photo that I used clear tape to hold the lines next to the snowman without being attached by paper.

 And this guy is inspired by Matisse's cut paper artwork. It was hard because I figured the snow should probably still be white! I tried to layer organic shapes but nobody really "got" this one.

I have little notes written to myself with ideas for next year. I may try it at my other school where we have Art twice as often and have more time for Art History.

Bulletin Board Ideas

My crayon bulletin board is featured over at Bulletin Board Ideas!  They also cleared up the authorship of the poem (Written by Shane DeRolf and later published in the children’s story The Crayon Box That Talked.)  I saw some other cool ideas for bulletin boards on their website.  I also saw one I recognized from Mrs.Picasso's Art Room- Check it out!