Marker Prints Forever!

During my time at the Frist Center, I helped with literally 1000s of printmaking activities. I do love printmaking, but with limited space, it's kind of challenging in the classroom, especially with rambunctious groups. 

Image from Cassie Stephens "Troubleshooting Printmaking"

Then Cassie Stephens made a post about marker prints that made printing accessible for every project.  She found the idea from art teacher Don Masse over at Shine Brite Zamorano.

Basically, you cut styrofoam into whatever shape you want and use a stylus or pencil to carve details. Same as regular printmaking so far. Then, instead of using ink or paint, you color on the styrofoam with washable markers.

After that, you get your paper wet. First, I tried spray bottles and it did not work at all. Then I tried rubbing the paper with a sponge and the results were great! I gave my kids brayers to roll over their styrofoam to get even pressure. They turn out beautiful, bright, and the kids can recreate this with stuff they have at home! Love marker prints, marker prints forever!

We did this with our Pop Art unit, so there is a lot of food. :P

Magritte's Birds

This is no original art project. We've all seen this lesson in elementary art before. For this lesson in 1st grade, I wanted to emphasize the elements of Magritte's bird paintings that are sometimes overlooked; the clouds and stars. Specifically, I wanted them to be realistic. 

We spent the first day drawing and paints two pieces of paper to collage; a day time picture and a night time picture. I gave them handouts of cloud types and constellations to reference. It also helps to make this lesson a little more STEAM-y. It's never too early to learn about stars! 

Clouds Handout Here

 Constellations Handout Here

Dr. Seuss Balloons

Students in the k-2nd art club created paper mache hot air balloons for Dr. Seuss day. It's funny how many kids were grossed out over the paper mache mix. ^_^

After they dried hard, we painted them with pastel colors like Dr. Seuss and displayed them in the lobby. Love these!

Stained Glass

2nd grade created these "stained glass" artworks for our Renaissance unit way back in.....November?? I am behind. 0_o

 These are page protectors cut down. We used colored Sharpies to add our patterns. Don't they look great on the windows? :)

Surreal Animals

Inspired by Dali's elephants, 4th grade created surreal animals from clay. They could be regular animals or mixed up animals, but they had to have long legs. 

Dali's Space Elephant Statue

These were a blast to make and the results are adorable! Googlely eyes make everything great, right? 

Art From Chaos on Twitter

For daily updates on what's happening in the art room at Guild Elementary, go follow us on Twitter! I will still post more pictures and details of our projects here, so check back regularly! :)

GES Art Twitter Page

Reading Across America

Our 3rd-5th grade art club members illustrated dictionary pages to display in the library during March. We used oil pastels, colored pencils, and markers to illustrate a single word on the page. Love these results and it was fun to display our art in a different place in the building. 

Spring Break Coding Camp!

Not art related, but those who know me know that my other passion is science. I am happy to announce that Camp STEM will once again be working with VolState Community College in Gallatin. We will be having a Coding Camp this spring break, March 28th-April 1st. I am excited to be teaching this camp and I would love to see a lot of Gallatin kids there! This camp is for students in 3rd-8th grade and registration is $125 for the week. Check out the registration page for more information and I hope to see you there!

Art Club String Art

Another lesson from Cassie Stephens, you can see what she did for dot day here.  We started by painting a cardboard square any way they like. I need some of that awesome neon paint that CS has in her room!

After the paint dried, we started stitching. We traced a coffee can lid then drew on 12 dots. Instead of using a template, we discussed how a clock was arranged and drew the dots the same way you label a clock. 

Then we used a bamboo skewer to get the holes started so that we could run a plastic need through them. 

I showed them 2 techniques: rotating squares and radiating lines. After that, it's just experimentation. I did something similar with my summer art camp at the Frist last year too. Always a successful lesson.