compass rose designs on metal

This lesson corresponded to a lot of my student's studies in math and social studies which was great. 

They are currently studying fractions and by designing our compasses by thinking in terms of 1/4's and 1/8's this really established a strong connection. 

We discussed the purpose of a compass and a compass rose, where and why they are used, and how far back in history they have been used. 

 

Students had to accurately show the viewer where the cardinal and intermediate directions on their compass were by pointing to the 8 directions. The use of the corresponding letters (NEWS) was optional. 

They also had to use a ruler and demonstrate purposely use of texture.

gumball machines - circles & ovals

I realized that my kinder students were having trouble drawing circles and ovals that were distinguishable from each other and that my first graders drew them so fast they couldn't tell the difference either. 

We did these gumball machines to try to drive in the difference between the two shapes. 

The frames had a circle-oval border. 

The gumball machines were supposed to have all circle gumballs inside. 

As simple a project it was the kids really enjoyed making these!

What happens when an art teacher gets married...!

(I realized I never followed up on my sneak peek into my wedding and apologetic blog absence from over a month ago. If you are interested in my self-promoting post read on - if not then I'll be back to posting art work tomorrow while I enjoy my 'hurricane' day off from school!)

Carrying on... well when THIS art teacher got married: 

we had a rainbow themed ceremony and a purple packed wedding overfilled with handmade items and labors of love (as my mom calls them). Everything from the flowers to the food to the invitations to cookies and desserts to streamer shakers to the quilted chuppah to our make up to the calligraphy to painted can lanterns to the rosemary & lavender sprigs on the napkins were courtesy of loved ones amazing efforts and made our day that much more special, so I have to brag!

The letters above were courtesy of my friend who flew in from Arizona!

I made our invitation suite. It was a long involved process but I do not regret a single minute of work I put into them.

Our programs were made from the painted table paper I saved from my classes last year!

Our ceremony had a rainbow theme. I walked in to an instrumental Rolling Stone's She's a Rainbow

and we walked out to Kermit's charming voice belting Rainbow Connection.

(and on Sunday evening a complete double rainbow went over Cape Cod, true story)

I dyed wood pieces and my mom painted the table numbers and I painted vines on the flower bases.

 

The vases are the ones I showed that I painted in my previous post.

 Bob proposed on a scrabble board- 

we now have our proposal on a board and these tile racks in our apartment. 

I painted these papers and my friend (who is a scientist by day and is practicing calligraphy at night) did all of this gorgeous calligraphy!

I made thank you cards for our vendors 

and the 'sea glass' jars below hung on the fence by the ceremony. 

I showed them in progress in my previous post as well. 

I made them from spaghetti sauce jars, glass paint baked in the oven, and a spray coat of the new frosted glass spray paint.

This stamp I had made from a design my friend did for our save the date was worth a million dollars- 

I used it for everything!

Fly away chuppah-- the winds were CRAZY! 

This chuppah is AMAZING. My close friend spent months collecting purple fabrics and crafting this. It even has an anchor embroidered in the corner. 

We had to improvise since it wouldn't stay on the pole!

 Rainbow streamer shakers! Well worth the glue gunning effort of putting them together.

Cookies made by my mother-in-law who is also an art teacher.

This frame was an engagement gift- it is the cutest art teacher frame--- 

the bottom says "drawn together".

Purple, purple, purple!

For the groomsmen:

 My bridesmaids:

and us:

To make you all feel better, this is what my poor Nana's living room looked like all summer:

 Professional photos are courtesy of Love and Perry.

And I am launching my own business of wedding 

and special event stationary and accoutrements that I will be posting about soon. 

Grapevine color studies

Second grade analogous color study with grapevines and now pumpkin vines too!

Oil pastel, crayon rubbing, and watercolor. 

Some final products for you following my post the other day.

Color - Positivity - Inspiration

I wanted to share some sources of inspiration I'm working with at the moment that you all might be interested in! All of these things promote hope, positivity, and celebrations for the world we live in and humanity, which I (and you might) really appreciate as we are being bombarded by never-ending negative campaign ads for still two more weeks.

First of all I finally looked through and read "Awesome Book of Thanks" by Dallas Clayton today.

It is pretty fantastic. I think I'm going to read it to everyone in the school next month and base a pre-thanksgiving lesson on it. The watercolor & drawn illustrations are great. (Mr. Masse at Zamorano I have a funny feeling you especially will dig them.)

Next-- I am lucky enough to have worked at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston for the past six years- there is a fantastic show there -Os Gemeos- who I have had my eye on for years. They are identical twins from Brazil who work together and are phenomenal examples of street art that is positive and FOR the public, I will elaborate on this in posts to come.

 

I went to an amazing gallery talk given by the curator of the show this past weekend and am taking my sixth graders on a field trip to see it in two weeks and I'm putting together a pre-visit powerpoint overfilled with info and context. I will share some of my insight with you as I get a little further along and collect my thoughts. BUT - just google their work for a second so you can get the colorful gist of it...

To go along with Os Gemeos- I came across Pikaland today and this really interesting post on a public artist in Detroit - the Heidelberg Project. Again, public art that is for promoting ART and positivity in the world.

 

Autumn leaves, stencils, and color study

I challenged my second graders to draw oak and maple leaves rather than simpler types of leaves- because I knew they could. :)

They complained and there were some tears- and some discussions about how things from nature have 'weird' shapes that will never right- but in the end they did an awesome job!

We turned their leaves into stencils to use for their final product. 

Then we moved on to foreground and background. 

THEN we moved on to analogous colors. 

(if you want more info on one of my analogous color teaching strategies click here,

if you want to see more of my past leaf and autumn color lessons click on the labels to the right)

 The two analogous color groupings we used were yellow/yellow-green/green and yellow/yellow-orange/orange. 

The leaves we sprinkled salt on for a little added effect. 

For the follow up to this lesson to drive in the analagous color study we are drawing grapevines

and painting with red-violet, violet, blue-violet. 

They aren't done yet but here it is in-progress: