April 2

This week I would like to start by thanking Angela from Tumbleweed Portraits and Photography for coming into our classroom to teach us about the "Rule of Thirds" in composing art as well as photography. 

Angela is a very talented photographer. She takes all kinds of amazing photos. She specializes in weddings, newborns, and families. Angela also does amazing mini sessions for Valentine's Day as well as Easter. If you are interested in checking out her photos, check out both her Facebook page as well as her portfolio on her web page.

Tumbleweed Portraits and Photography Facebook Page

Tumbleweed Portraits and Photography Web Page

Now for a unique challenge in honour of our guest artist. There will be two assignments this week. In addition to our regular sketchbook assignment (to be revealed later) I have also asked you to take one simple photo that follows the "rule of thirds" that Angela taught you this week. You have two ways to submit this photo, you can bring it with you to class next week or you can email it to me at :

stonesinc@yahoo.com

Here is an example of Angela's work that shows you an example of the "Rule of thirds".

So let's talk about this week's winners of our "morphing" sketchbook assignment winners. 

Gryffindor's Winner

Time for a Change

Ravenclaw's Winner

Pepsi the Dog

And here is my "morphing" sketchbook assignment

My Sundae Hat

There will be a change in groups for this upcoming week. I had separated the group into 2 houses but have since changed my mind. We will now have 3 houses that will have a chance to win the sketchbook assignments of the week. Please Welcome Hufflepuff this upcoming week. There will be bit of a change up from the original two houses in order to accommodate the third house. The new house teams will be announced during our next class.

Now on to our sketchbook assignment for this week. I have asked the students to divide their sketchbook page into four equal squares. In each square I would like you to draw a cropped in detail version of something that you consider to be "Easter" related. Now I caution that you try not to draw something like Instagram ( I know you will be on Instagram this 4 day weekend) but unless you only Instagram during Easter then it doesn't show an Easter theme. You can chose the basics and draw a bunny, chick, eggs, etc. or you can draw something a little more original that you did for this Easter weekend.

Here is an example that was my inspiration for this sketchbook assignment:

However your sketchbook should be Easter themed!

I will be posting pics of some of the finished Pop! cans next week. Check back to see them soon.

March 19

I do apologize that I did not update the blog over Spring Break. So I will be posting two weeks on the blog but I prefer to post them separately. I will also post blog updates on my Facebook page as well. 

Our sketchbook assignment was to draw an object in the shape of the letter it starts with. Here are this week's winners as well as my sample.

Gryffindor's Winner

"R" for Rapunzel

"Z" is for Zebra

(but also "E" is for elephant, "B" is for buffalo, "R" is for rhino, and "A" is for Anteater)

My example for the students

"J" is for Jellyfish

I didn't have an official plan for class as we were suppose to have a guest artist come in and talk to the class. But there was a mix up and we rescheduled for April 2. So we just continued to work on our projects that were in progress.

So we got a few more "Pop" can's finished this week, and a few more students have started to work on their wire words. 

There was no regular class on March 26 as the school was on Spring Break. So back to class again on April 2 with our guest artist. 

Since the students had extra time with Spring Break week off I assigned a sketchbook assignment that was a little harder. This week's assignment is to "morph" two items together. Sounds hard, unless you think about the two items as simple shapes. If both items have similar shapes they will "morph" together a lot easier. Here are two examples I showed in class for this sketchbook assignment:

Mango & Gorilla

Cow & Strawberry

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

March 5 & 12

Somehow I missed typing up the blog last week so this week I will update both.

Last week was a quiet week since all the elementary artists were at the science fair, but we still had Art club to allow the junior high artists to get a little more caught up. However to be included in the weekly sketchbook challenge all sketchbooks needed to be handed in before Art club began. Here are this weeks winners for the potion bottle challenge:

Gryffindor's Winner

Memory Potion

Ravenclaw's Winner:

Sleeping Potion

And here is my example for the little artists. I made a mermaid potion. 

Next week's sketchbook assignment is to design an original monster. Think about all the pieces before you start to draw. Such as how many arms, eyes, legs. Or what your monster will be covered in, slime, scales, fur etc. Lastly you need to come up with a name for your monster as well.

For the rest of class we just worked on our current project painting on our cans. I hope that within a class or two that we can start wrapping up this project.

This week we started by learning how to draw a Minion from the Despicable Me movies.

All the minions drawn looked fabulous....I'm very impressed how they turned out.

This week's sketchbook assignment was very impressive. There was a lot of thought, effort and time put into all the monsters, which made it very hard to decide who the winner was.

Gryffindor's Winner (Abysslich)

Ravenclaw's Winner (Baby)

This week we have had 3 artists complete their cans and are ready to move on to the next project. So here it is:

Wire words wrapped in yarn

Wire words wrapped in fabric

We will be creating hashtags made out of wire and either fabric or yarn. If you are unfamiliar with hashtags they are a faster way to search for subjects on either Instagram or Twitter. Each artist will come up with an original hashtag that is either inspiring to them or artistic in theme. There is a catch, each hashtag must be a minimum of 4-6" tall. This will make it easier to see on the wall from a distance. 

Here is the start of my example:

My hashtag will say: #inspireothers

Next week (Thursday, March 19th) we will be welcoming a guest into our Art Club. So I'm not sure what all we will be doing this week but I can tell you that it's going to be amazing!!

Oh and this week's sketchbook assignment is to turn a letter of the alphabet into something that starts with that letter. I showed an example of "B is for Butterfly". Please do not write what it is on the page. The picture should tell us exactly what letter and item you chose. Get as creative as you can!

Feb 26

This week we started our warm up drawings with the "squiggle". Students enrolled in our last session loved the squiggle and requested that we do it again. So we squiggle on our papers for 10-30 seconds then try to find something in the squiggles. Our students found anything from a bunny rabbit to Winnie the Pooh. It's a great way to be creative and to "think outside the box". Which seems to be our class motto at times. After this we looked at our latest sketchbook assignments, being our Google "Doodles" as they are called. Google has employees (or Doodlers as they are called) create these doodles, but they do accept submissions of ideas. I will be submitting not only this weeks winner but also a few others I believe that Google may like. Here are some of them:

Ski themed

Monsters Under the Bed

Bird Paradise

St. Patrick's Day

Down the Drain

This week we named our 2 groups in our classroom. Our group names this session will be Harry Potter themed; Team Gryffindor & Team Ravenclaw. 

The rest of class was spent working on our current projects. Still waiting for 3 more Candy Collage pieces to come in, please finish those up ASAP. Once all are complete I will post a photo of the whole collage.

This week's sketchbook assignment is to design a "potion bottle". Please have a theme for your bottle. As an example: If you are making a love potion the bottle should be red and covered in hearts, or if you are making a death potion the bottle should be black covered in skulls. Be creative and show me what kind of potion you would love to have.

I know that next week will be quiet as some of the younger grades will be at the Science Fair but there will still be class to allow other kids to catch up a little more. If you would like to have your potion bottle in the weekly challenge please hand it in to me either Wednesday in the kindergarten room or Thursday after school as you are heading to the Science Fair. And good luck to all participants in the fair.

 I will let you know our new sketchbook assignment on Friday if you stop in to see me at lunch time. 

Feb 19th

This week our warm up included some basic drawing techniques I learned in college. We drew a live model in 30 second increments. We started with basic "get the sketch" on the page, then moved to using a pen (no erasing), and lastly we used our opposite hand (just to get the brain flowing).

Then went back to working on our projects. We still have a few working on the candy collage, and a few that have started to paint their pop cans. Some of us that are starting to get behind in the projects might end up skipping a project in order to keep up. Half of the little artists seem to be forging ahead and a few are falling behind. But I don't want you guys to rush a project just to get it done. If you miss a project that's ok. Just work on the ones that have meaning to you. Better to connect with a project than just  do it to get it done.

Our sketchbook assignment this week is to design a Google "doodle", or a Google search page. They change them quite often and each has a theme. So here are a few examples:

I look forward to seeing what themes you can come up with.

Just as a sneak peek: we will be naming our new groups this week. What do you think we should call them? Last semester the groups were Big Hero 6 & the Fab 5 (both Disney related).

February 12th

Our warm up drawings this week included drawing 2 well known licensed characters. I don't normally allow the use of licensed character but since we are working on painting licensed characters I thought continue with this theme.

Winnie the Pooh

Baymax (From Big Hero 6)

We then moved on to work on our second project, for those students that have completed their portion of the "Candy Collage". I announced to the kids that now that you have designed your character onto a pop can in your sketchbook......lets paint them next. This requires the kids to prep the can by sanding it and painting it white. They then need to design the other 3 sides to complete the full 360 around the can. This is where a good composition can help or hinder the project. Any changes to the design need to be done now before painting. 

Here is my sketchbook design as well as the start of my can. The character figurine is Captain America but it's number 41 where my design is actually number 67.

Captain America (#67)

Captain America (#41)

 Let the sketchbook competition begin....(the students have become very competitive over the bragging rights of winning each week, the candy doesn't even enter the competition anymore...lol)

This week's sketchbook assignments were won by Ashley with her Barf & Belch design from "How to Train Your Dragon", and Emily with her design of Cogsworth from Beauty & The Beast.

Now to get to this week's sketchbook assignment:

The challenge is to create items only using the word of the item. So start out with the basic outline of the item, then fill the whole space with the letters of the item. Then erase the lines between each letter so the word makes up the item. Here are some examples I showed on the board which are not allowed to be used in your sketchbook. So no guitars, wings, tiara, banana, donuts, or cell phones. Let's see how creative you can be! 

January 29

Our warm up drawing exercise this week was to learn how to draw eyes. Here is what we learned:

I pinned this picture onto our Pinterest board for Art Club. You can find the pin here:

Art Club Board - Drawing Eyes

We then continued to work on the candy collage. By the end of class 5 pieces of the collage are complete. By the look of the rest of the artists we should be able to wrap up our first group project by our next class.

Our sketchbook assignment this week is to design a well known character into a pop can. I know this sounds a little weird but just hang in there. Here is where the original idea came from:

Art Club Board - Re-purpose soda cans

But the different twist came from the kids. They keep asking if they can make projects with well known characters such as Mickey Mouse or Batman. So this project the kids got to pick their own character but it had to start out as a "Pop Figurine" from the funko.com website. Each student picked a character that had not been already chosen so there will not be any duplicates. This is an example of a "Pop figurine" as well as the character I will be designing:

Pop! Marvel: Captain America

Now to turn it into a pop can design. I look forward to seeing your creations. Oh and you can't draw outside the pop can lines.

Here is the Pop can outline that I gave to each of the students to trace into their sketchbooks:

I know we were missing a few students because of the basketball game, so please come to see me in the kindergarten room at lunch time on Monday as we do not have Art Club this week due to Teacher's Convention. This way I can give you the can outline and pick a character for you to draw. I have the list of characters that have already been chosen. See you all on February 12th.