A week of completing projects...

What a whirlwind this week has been!

It has seen the end of semester one report cards, and will soon see the end of...

well, something...I think... :-)

Several student projects were finished this week, and there was some wonderful work created and put up on display. So without further ado, I am going to start with the most recent work, and then travel back in time...over the course of the last few weeks, for

ADVENTURES IN THE ART ROOM!

Here we are today, January 31, 2014. It is Chinese New Year, the year of the horse. So what do you think we do to celebrate the year of the horse?

We make Cherry Blossom Art! (What did you think I was going to say?!?)

The grade 1-2 classroom came in today and created some lovely work with pastel, sumi ink and tempera paint.

They created the background with a blend of three colours of chalk pastels, for which they chose their own colour pallets, though we tried to keep them closely related. After that was done, we dropped some sumo ink onto a spot at the bottom of the paper, and they used straws to blow it along. They had a great deal of fun with this, and commented that it "really does look like trees!" The finishing touch was when they got to dip their fingers into the pink paint and create fingertip "blossoms" on their cherry tree. It was a bit of a whirlwind to be able to get things finished, dry and up on the wall by the end of the day, but we did it!



Going back...to last week...

The grade 5-6 group were working on developing their understanding of analagous colour schemes and concentric circles. The results, I am sure you will agree, are vibrant and have a strong sense of movement within.

The students were developing skills with a compass to create concentric circles. We had created a centre point on a square piece of paper. some students drew their central circle close to that centre point, others chose to have it in a different area or a bit off to the side. See if you can tell which ones were closest to the centre! :-)

After the creation of the circles, students then chose and analogous colour scheme, and worked with 3-5 colours of pencil crayons and an intense colouring style to colour in their circles. Once they had been coloured in, they went over their original circles with a fine permanent marker. They looked great!

But we took it further and then cut the paper into four even squares, which we then played with by turning them in a few different directions and trying a few layouts. After some consultation with students and checking for opinions of other teachers, the two up-two down layout was established! They are now ready for viewing in our haollowed hallways!

      

And going back a bit further...


Further....

...Further....


Ok, Maybe not that far! :-)

The grade 9 class created some fairly intense work, starting with creating a tonal range of a single colour, starting with a centre of white and then working outwards from there, adding a bit more colour each time until they had filled the page with colour...

and then...

We printed over it!

The students carved a printing plate from styrfoam...yes, these were made with styrofoam printing plates, with each plate printed multiple times...oh, the time and patience...and here are a couple of the results...

The students all worked very hard and were quite intense on creating a quality finished piece...Having created this on an approximately 24x36 inch format, I am thinking...next time...maybe a bit smaller...What do you think?

Cheers!

Ms. Teh

Just a few pictures of some student work...

Well, I will probably be trying to do a few posts this week, seeing as I have a lot of catching up to do. :-)

My students have been working hard this past semester, and it has been quite the challenge to keep up with everything. We have been focusing quite a bit on developing printmaking skills, and I have some pictures to share.

These are some samples of work from my grade 5/6 class for the printmaking unit. We discussed a number of aspects of printmaking, one of which was the aspect of tiling in Islamic Art. In this discussion, we talked a bit about radial symmetry and how you can use one design repeated multiple times to create a single image. I gave them a choice of creating one single image, or an image that they could "tile". These two students decided to create their tiles. As it is winter and we were using blue ink, we decided to create a winter themed motif. For those of you who are interested in printmaking, all we used were foam trays for the carving, though we did use actual printers ink for this part of the project, rather than acrylic paints. I prefer the printers' inks because they have more body, and we had better results than with acrylics. 

I have finished with printmaking with the younger grades this year, but will be doing more with my older students in the coming months. I am quite excited to see what they will be able to come up with.

I will be posting more from my other students, just as soon as I am able to get all of the images properly oriented for publishing... :-)

Keep the creativity alive! 

It has been a while...

...and I am working on some goal setting for myself, which includes trying to blog at least once a month, if not more! There is just so much to do, and I am trying to keep up with all of the great things that are happening at my school.

First, an update...

Currently, I am on semester break, and working furiously to finish report card comments for my Sr. High students. It has been a whirlwind semester of Art, Fashion, Technology and C.A.L.M.

With as much fun as I had last semester, I am looking forward to a bit more focus on Art Education this semester. I have taken some time to plan activities for as many students as possible, from K-12, even though my formal teaching is scheduled for the grade 5-12 students. It is always wonderful to see what the students are able to do, and explore the differences between skills and abilities.

In a more concerted effort to develop this blog into a learning platform for myself and (hopefully) others, I will be focusing a bit more on projects that I am developing with my students. That being said, there will be more images of student work and some discussion of take aways from my practice. As I am still quite new to this, I ask for understanding and patience.

Looking forward to more learning..!