Slow Film Speed, Low Light

Recently I was asked to photograph my school's talent show. After I correctly photographed each act I had fun playing with low film and shutter speeds. Here are my favorites:

Bizarre Art

I was looking through a children's art book called Unlikely Pairs: Fun with Famous Works of Art by Bob Raczka when I came across the painting below:

It is called "Captain Thomas Lee" and was painted in 1594 by Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger. He was a very popular artist in England, especially among the royals for whom he painted many portraits. While reading through the Wikipedia biography of Captain Thomas Lee I got the impression that the term B.A.M.F. could have been coined for him but this painting tells a much different story. Oh how fashion has changed.

2011 Art Fair!

It is Art Fair season once again! This year we had over 450 entries, which is the biggest show in the six years I've been doing this. This show is definitely a labor of love that I start collecting work for in August or September. This year I was blessed with a student aide who mounted and stapled labels to well over half of the drawings and paintings which saved me many late nights.

Below is a visual overview of the show:

This year I used 31 4'x8' display boards.

This is the biggest ceramics section we've had in three years.

The faculty section was a hit for the third year in a row.

I just have to say that we have the most awesome principal ever. Not only did she attend the Art Fair, she was excited to be there and made sure that she talked to every student and parent.

My own little art critic had a great time looking at the art and "oohing and awing".

She also had a great time running around like a wild child.

The Best In Show winners (and every one of them SO deserved it):

9th grade: Starry Night Interpretation

8th Grade: Autumn Night Silhouette

7th Grade: Wolf Howling at the Moon (this one was poster size!)

Ceramics: The Archie Pop Collection

As much as I love the Art Fair and look forward to it every year I am always glad when it is over because it signals that summer is near.

Continuous Line Drawing

I got the itch to do some continuous line drawing and after filling several pages in my sketchbook with drawings like the one below I decided to design a continuous line project for my Drawing 1 class.

I always do a short continuous line unit with my 7th graders but have never done anything like it with my 8th and 9th graders in Drawing 1. I started by choosing three basic images (a bike, the White House, and Abraham Lincoln) and having kids draw each image in pen (so they couldn't erase!) with three types of continuous line; the number one rule with each one, that I repeated over and over like a mantra, was 'don't lift your pen off the paper'.

1. Draw the object with your eyes closed

2. While focusing on a picture of the object, draw it without looking at your paper.
3. Draw the image, taking your time to look at both the picture provided and your paper.

After that exercise, which was really a lot of fun, I had the kids choose a portrait. I had pre-selected five men and five women who made important contributions to American history and culture (I guess I was in a patriotic mood that week). Each student had to draw the same portrait with continuous line four different ways: pen, fat tipped marker, holding four colored pencils at a time, and with a color stick (a super-fat colored pencil that does not have a wood casing).

Louis Armstrong

The final part of the project was to push the kids outside of their comfort zone even further and have them do a large portrait (18" x 24") in continuous line using their favorite material from the set of four drawings.

This one was done in pen. I love the rawness of this type of drawing.

One more example:

Mark Twain

I gave students the chance to refine their continuous line portrait after they had drawn it. I gave several examples of things they could do. I think this one turned out particularly nice because even though there are some colors and marker added it still has the frenetic look of a continuous line drawing.

One reason that I was excited to do this particular project was to push kids outside their comfort zones and to get them to try drawing in a completely different way than they ever had before. I had a few really resistant kids who really do not like leaving their level of comfort at all, but for the most part everyone seemed to be challenged and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I was happy with the results and saw several kids who were able to relax and not worry so much about the final product and enjoy the process a little bit more.

Texture Animal Results

Recently I posted about a visual texture project that I was going to try out on my 7th graders and the results are in! Overall, the kids did an amazing job. I was really proud of how hard they worked. There were too many good projects to post so I chose five favorites. Enjoy:

Crazy-Eyed Elephant

Liney-Lion

Ignatius Iguana

Swimming Sea Turtle

Zany Zebra

Happy Valentine's Day, Unless You're a Jerk

As soon as students started to arrive with balloons, flowers, and arm-fulls of candy I quickly decided to scrap my lesson plans in favor of making Valentines. I'm glad I did because spending 60 seconds explaining what I wanted them to do with the Valentines was almost too long for their sugar and lust-addled attention spans. While I saw many beautiful and creative Valentines throughout the day, as usual, the most entertaining were also some of the worst. Below is the oh-so charming Valentine that I received from one of my fabulous 9th graders:

In case you don't recognize the image, it's a muscular, veiny, flexing arm- eww.

There's really no response to that other than "is it Friday yet?".

Happy Valentines Day Print

Cara made up a bunch of cards with linocut printmaking to give out as Aven's Valentines day cards.