Illustrated Letters

Our drawing students are basically professional type artists by now, having learned calligraphy, hand lettering, and now letter illustration!  For this project the objective was simple: Design and draw letters that represent you and your interests! I think the character of each student is pretty obvious with what they came up with!

This student is all boy!

Musical anyone?

Is anyone else mesmerized by these sea themed letters?

With the summer coming up, it's fair to assume Talitha is excited!

And I may be biased... but I'm a huge fan of this chica's hobbies!

It's always so fun to see the variety of students we have shine through. Until next time!

More Lines Everywhere!

I'm a little out of order, but wanted to make sure I posted out Valentines day art project when it was still around Valentines day!

Prior to doing our "Valen-lines" project, the students were introduced to "Line" as an element of art. They met my friend Larry the Line, who shared a little poem with them. (Larry may or may not have been my arm, wrist, and hand with googlie eyes... but with a little imagination he was a very talented snake! haha)
We learned about different types of lines found in art with the following poem:

Larry the line is a friend of mine,

He can make 3 lines for me! 

Ver-ti-cal

Diag-o-nal

And Hor-i-zon-tal

Any curve he can learn with a twist and a turn,

And when he's out of his tangle, 

He makes a great angle!

Any line he can make,

After all, he's a snake!

After making "lines" with their own arms, we looked at different pieces of artwork and identified the various lines we could see in them. A few examples of the artwork is shown below:

Georges Rouault "The Old King" and Pablo Picasso's "The Weeping Woman"

"Lily" by Alfonse Mucha and finally a really cool piece of line art that I could not track down the artist of! 

I introduced my K-1 class to my favorite childhood book that was torn and loved so much, I just had to buy myself my own classroom copy. The story "Purple, Green, and Yellow" by Robert Munsch. 

It's pretty much the cutest book to teach children not to color on the walls, floors, or themselves! In the spirit of such, the children practiced drawing various lines on their "hands".

It was pretty rainy and windy the day we had art, so it was the perfect day for our 2-3 graders to do our Crazy Line Hair paintings.

John, Amy, Summer, and David had to use a lot of focus when styling those do's!

Every kind of line we could possibly identify makes for some pretty crazy hair days!

Finally, our 4-5 grade classes focused on implying movement and volume with curved lines and value. 

Abby is clearly very focused ;) and Daniel was on a red streak that day!

The summer yellows and oranges used by Chayse and Alexa make me so warm and fuzzy inside.

So many cool effects caused by the simple element of Line!

Happy Valen-Lines Day!

LINE: one of my favorite elements of art! For the week before Valentine's Day we experimented with a few art techniques to create our elementary valentines. 

As a spin-off of one of one of the drawings of the famous Pablo Picasso, our K-1 class drew their own bouquets of flowers for the great day of love!

In doing so, we learned how to draw various flowers while implementing the various types of lines! It's amazing how a few lines can make something so beautiful!

Sweet little Ruth and Jessica drew the most colorful assortments!

Joe and Ancel prove that real men draw flowers! Kassie knocked them out of the park as well!

Grades 2-3 began working with a little printmaking! This was a technique I didn't learn until college, and I was so excited to teach them about it. Though true printmaking involves acid and copper plates, foam and scewers were the next best thing :)

Using at least three different types of lines, our students etched the valentines into foam...

A comparison of an engraved plate and the final print.

rolled printing ink across their foam "plate",

David rolling away!

and then pressed the plate onto paper. I love the color contrast and various line combinations the kids came up with!

Here, Lucas uses a rolling pin to transfer the image.

Here, Kaitlin shows off her work!   And we can't ignore the variety of Janeya, Eli, and Jaramiah's art!

You'll never catch Summer or Corinne without a smile! Great color contrast!

For our 4-5 class we used a process that the students were very wary of! This is a resist method. It can be done with various materials but for ours we used oil pastels and acrylic paint. First, the students drew Valentines, again using various contrasting lines. 

Then, they filled in the spaces around the lines with oil pastel. Finally, they covered the entire artwork in black acrylic paint. 

I think they thought I'd lost my marbles a little bit when I started drizzling paint on their valentines. Even so, they LOVED the result. After setting for an hour, we ran the art under warm water and gently rubbed the acrylic paint off the oil pastels, while the paint stayed mostly adhered to the watercolor paper. 

This process produces rough, aged lines that are very uniqued, and complementary to the curve feminine lines found on valentines.

Here is Daniel's beautiful valentine.

Damian's came out very rugged!

And Abby really rose to the occasion with curved lines everywhere!

Overall, I'd consider Valentine's Day art a success!

Henna Hands Line Drawings

To help master the element of art, line, we decided to study a little cultural implementation of it. In the Hindu, Islamic, and Indian culture "Mendhi", more commonly known to us as Henna, is used as a temporary art form used on the skin for times of celebration. Elaborate lines and symbols are drawn onto the flesh using a henna paste that is later washed off leaving a stain. There are so many symbols, and beautiful forms of craftsmanship that our students set out to duplicate.

On their own "hands" students planned, sketched, finalized, and inked their own designs that represented them. This is a great project for students who do not think they are good artists, because the math, measuring, and technical aspect is huge in the success of this form of art. Our students used their right brained creativity while implementing their left-brained mathematical technicality.

In art, there is room for success no matter what your strengths and weaknesses are!

I love the dark and light values of this mandala. Mandala's symbolize the universe and wholeness. Lovely work Alexis!

Emil used great accuracy of distance between his lines and patterns. He implements a peacock which represents pride and beauty, and a turtle that represents strength and longevity.

Another wonderful Mandala! Beautiful work Marie!

 Another beautiful mandala implementing flowers that symbolize joy and happiness and vines, symbolizing devotion and longevity. Great Job Annie!

Contour Line Drawing

The subject of Drawing seems pretty basic. You just learn how to convey an image on paper... Right?  WRONG! Within each aspect of drawing there seems to be 52 million layers of detail, techniques, and skills to follow- well, maybe that is an exaggeration- 51 million layers. To start our school year, we have been learning about the many different techniques to create stylistic, valued and 3-dimensional looking images. To start, we learned about contour line drawings. Of course, there are many styles of contour drawings, but for this project we focused on the contours of the hand.

The way a line curves and the space left between the lines can give an illusion of 3-dimensional form (as seen below!)

For this contour drawing our students chose to position one of their hands in front of them in a certain symbol or pose, and create a contour drawing using a pencil in the other.

Something I loved seeing was how different everyone's hand positions were, and how even though eight artists can use the same materials and do the same assignment, that their individual artistic styles still show through.

Rebekka S. spaced her delicate lines out quite a bit creating an overall light value, while simulating every bend and curve.

Rebekah R. used thicker, bold lines to bring new life and emphasis to an ever-familiar image of a hand.

Angelina K. expressed in her post-project reflection that if she were to do it again, she'd center her hand on the page. I however think that not having it centered brings a very interesting composition to the piece! And the way her lines change direction at the thumb knuckle- Stellar.

Light, dark, thick, thin, hang loose, live long and prosper or high five-our artists brought all they had to the table for this contour drawing!