Mail Art

I had participated in Artist Trading Card swaps through the mail before but never thought about swapping bigger artwork until I watched a video session on Mail Art at the 2020 Virtual KAEA Fall Conference. Since most of my high school classes are graphic design mixed with traditional media, it seemed like a great opportunity to touch on mixed media and text.

I was home with one of my kids in quarantine when this lesson was introduced so having a recorded demo embedded in the slides presentation worked great.

The rest of the images are my examples. They are all either 4x6 or 5x7 inches made on a tag board base.

I posted in the Kansas Art Teachers facebook group and found another school to swap with! Their art teacher and I also swapped so that was really fun. I would totally recommend doing a mail art project!

 

8th Grade Animal Collages

Last fall was a doozy. Groups of students in and out of quarantine. My two older kids in school were both quarantined at different times so I taught remotely more than once. I had a large 8th grade class for the size of my room which made social distancing impossible though we did our best with sneeze guards, assigned seats, sanitization of tables, and individual supply bags. Students did a lot of drawing because I was never able to get an order of watercolor in and my trays were given to the high school students. Finally at the end of the semester we did a collage project, which the students finished while I was once again teaching remotely!

I found that students needed more structured choices than in previous years so we went with the theme of animals since everyone loves animals! This is the slides presentation I made to introduce collage and show different styles.

The students had a lot of different papers to utilize in their projects. There were construction paper and painted paper scraps, magazines, and a big stack of scrapbook paper that was donated. The scrapbook paper had lots of texture and patterns so it was a nice addition.

I was so pleased with how the animal collages turned out, and though I didn't get to interact with the students a lot while they were finishing up, I'm sure they had to be proud of their work too!

Collaborative Color Wheel

I wanted to start off the year with some low pressure collaborative activities in my high school classes. One of the activities was a refresher or introduction to the color wheel. I went over the basic primary and secondary colors and told them that intermediate colors go in between. 

Students working on organizing colors on the collaborative color wheel.

I asked the students to cut swatches of color from magazines to organize onto a color wheel. I had a big circle cut out of mat board for the base which was donated last year but you could use cardboard, poster board, or any big piece of paper.
After the students had cut some swatches to start with we talked about organizing colors. I suggested they put the "true" colors in the middle of each wedge and the colors veering toward intermediates closer to the other combining color. The students decided to put the lighter values in the middle and the shades toward the outside.

Finished color wheel.

Positive take-aways were students analyzing the colors and starting to understand the variety that is out there beyond basic colors. Hopefully when we get to our painting boot camp next month and mix colors they will remember and be inspired. Plus, we now have a big, custom color wheel for reference! 

The students also had time to start some smaller value scales, which are pretty fun. I'm looking forward to getting them put up in the classroom.

2D Boot Camp: Collage and Monoprinting

After painting in my high school 2D Boot Camp, students also tried out collage and printmaking. For collage, I had each student make a small torn paper work. I was inspired to try out torn paper collage a couple years ago when I came across the work of Elizabeth St. Hilaire who is known for her "paper paintings". It was kind of a refreshing way to approach collage since it was so different than what I'd done before. I gave students the option of doing a collage on paper that was around 5x7 inches or doing something more involved on larger paper. Most of the small collages were completed in a couple days. Students had access to a tub of magazines, construction paper scraps, sheet music, and other found papers.

 For the next boot camp, I demonstrated a few mono printing techniques using the 5x5 inch student gelli plates I ordered. I had a box of texture tools, several different colors of acrylic craft paint, and a few stencils/masks I'd made. Some students created their own masks and got really cool results. I didn't require the students to make their own masks or stencils since the purpose of this was to just try out mono printing and get used to the process.

The antlers and fish were masks created by a student.

I like to show the positive and negative result of prints. This one was a peacock feather first used as a mask then the feather was removed and the ghost which shows the texture was printed on top of a solid color.

Students have been making two dimensional projects in the medium of their choice and we'll be starting 3D boot camp soon!

Primary Collages

Here are some collages ranging from 1st-3rd grade from last semester. You can see that some kids are still in the "scribble stage" of collage, while others play with composition and illustration. It's pretty fun to see the progression. Now that I've been using the Artsonia app, I'm getting artwork photographed and published more quickly. I know this will make it easier to look back and see student growth in different media and concepts.

I can't remember the story here, but it looks like a blue guy with a sword in the middle.

1st grader making use of lots of different papers in this collage portrait.

Some students go minimalist, while others take the more is more approach, trying out cutting different shapes.

Eco Art

Last April the Art Walk in my hometown fell the same week as Earth Day. One of our Art Walk people decided to put out a call for Eco Art- Art made by recycling or repurposing. I love having an "assignment" and got a few ideas in my head right away.

The first two ideas were ducks! I have an interest in ducks as you may have noticed if you've been hanging around this old blog very long. I decided to make a torn magazine paper collage of a mallard based off a photo I took over spring break. It went pretty smoothly. I sketched the basic outline and proceeded to find colors to tear, arrange, and glue to the paper. I enjoyed trying out that style of collage. The mallard collage was donated for a fundraiser to help with future art walks. 

For my next duck, I focused on a drake wood duck coming out of the water. I started off using the same approach as the mallard- I sketched, I tore, I glued. I tried painting the background of my cardboard panel. It wasn't good. It was too flat. I had to make the hard decision and come up with a new plan. I like the look of corrugated cardboard and figured since the theme was "eco" art, there was no reason to try to hide the material. I used an exacto knife to cut around the duck and then started to peel the top layer of paper off. After I had removed the top layer, I painted over the corrugation to get my finished piece. The hardest part of this project was actually finding magazine papers to match the colors close enough. Wood ducks have a LOT of different colors and those colors aren't always easy to find.

The last project I created for the eco art challenge was a simple gouache painting on a small cereal box covered with gouache. I used Elmer's Art Paste for the papier mache process. I used to go with liquid starch but after reading about how the art paste goes a long way and will last quite a while I decided to give it a try. I still have a whole bunch in a sealed gallon ice cream carton waiting for my next project. After I had covered a few boxes with newspaper, I let them dry and then gave them a coat of white paint. On this box I decided to paint a picture inspired by a barn that I see on my drive to school. Of course I always end up making my colors brighter than they are in real life. I hadn't used gouache since college but I think I'll pull out those little tubes more often. I love how quickly it dries! This little painting sold after the art walk.

I hope you enjoyed this little peak at some of my artwork. Recycling has become a priority to me since becoming a parent and doing it through art is a fun solution!

Collection of Collages

I'm still sorting through TONS of photos from last semester even though teachers started back to school today, yes ALREADY! Here's a sample of collages that made me smile for one reason or another. These range from 1st-6th grade, with some made by students with special needs that really impressed me.

Using magazines but at least they changed them into something new!

 This student used awesome scraps from The Planets project a few years ago to make a solar system collage. The stars were circles emptied out of the hole punch.

I think this watch is supposed to be from Ben 10 or something like that. After I photographed the watch, it went around the student's wrist.

This is an example of a young student thinking "it's outside, there has to be a sun"... even if the scene is under water. :) 

I love the use of magazine text as clouds. Most students don't even consider using the writing but it adds a cool texture.

This student painted papers for collage after I talked about Eric Carle but decided to keep her swatches as is instead of cutting them into new shapes. They were rearranged to frame a butterfly drawing.

So while I'm thinking and talking about collage, here's my plan for my collage centers this year. I will not start off having magazines available. If I have students who finish a project without enough time to start something new at the end of class, I may let them flip through magazines and cut only swatches of color or texture, and maybe just eyes, noses, etc. that could make cool faces. I'll probably put the animal magazines away so that later AFTER the students have shown they can construct new images with magazines, I could trust them to use animals without cutting out tons of kittens, for example, and just gluing them randomly on a piece of paper. Hopefully it will help. I know it made a big difference this year when I put the magazines away!