Eye See You

We're getting ready to move. We've lived in this house a little over 6 years and there is a lot of stuff to go through. One item I came across that I was happy to find was a little 4" x 6" sketchbook I used when I was in my first year of college. I sketched in class during lectures which often helps me concentrate. For some reason I focused on eye-themed sketches. I don't really know why. They are either creepy, charming, or a little of both, but either way they're kind of interesting. A few examples:

Unic-eye-cle

Eyenosaur

Eye Sea You

Chalk Art Festival 2011

The chalk art festival, held annually at Gateway Mall, benefits the Utah Foster Care Foundation. One thing I love about the chalk art festival, that is really unique, is that you get to see artists in action. It's pretty uncommon to have this level of access to a working artist and it is always fascinating to watch them create.

Here are a few from the adult/ professional section that I really liked:

The suggested theme of the year was "foster parents are magic". While most artists come and do whatever they want some choose to do something within the theme. I know that the above drawing isn't exactly stellar (some of the faces are more than a little off) but I thought that the concept was really quite sweet. It reminded me of my friends Amber and Dustin who were at one time magical foster parents.

As an art teacher I always receive information about sign-ups a couple months before the festival and I always try to get students to sign up. This year I had some of last year's 9th graders participating for the 2nd year and some of this year's 9th graders participating for the first time:

These are my girls from last year. They did an amazing job on their "Up" drawing.

Unfortunately the girls who did this one had already left by the time I got there, but for a first attempt I thought it turned out really great. I also love that they thought to bring real shells to put on their beach. The girls on this team got together to practice every weekend for a month. Two of the girls on this team received awards for Outstanding Achievement In Art this year, so this just confirms my decision to award them one of the top honors in the school.

I had a great time at the festival and am so proud of my dedicated students!

The Wild Beasts

I am both happy and sad that this will be my last time posting about the work of my middle school students until September. Happy that the school year is over. Sad because I really will miss a lot of them- especially the 9th graders who are moving on to high school.

One of the last projects I assigned my painting class was a landscape painting in the style of the Fauvists using acrylic paint.

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. (Wikipedia)

Following is an example of a Fauvist painting:

Boats by Andre Derain, 1905

Below you will see a few examples of how my students interpreted what I taught them into their own Fauvist style painting:


I think they did an amazing job. I'm happy to have a break but am looking forward to a new school year full of talented little artists in just a few short months.

New Toy Design

A couple days ago I gave a filler assignment to kids who were already finished with the final project. The assignment was to design a new toy. Below is my favorite:

21st Century Army Knife

Complete With:

• Knife
• Can Opener
• Screw Driver
• Rusty Scissors
• Flame Thrower
• Cork Screw
• Pepper Spray
• Saw
• Miniature Fist
• Miniature Spear
• Grapple Hook

Then: Fold it up and place it in the child-proof bottle and it makes a perfect rattle!


I LOVE teaching middle school!

The Art of Parody

Let me start by saying that I love parody of all kinds, so assigning my Drawing 1 students to create a parody of a famous painting is one of my favorite times of the school year.

I choose 10 famous paintings and allow the students to choose their favorite to create a parody of. Some students also choose to combine two or more into one parody.

Below are a few of my favorites from this year:

The Old Guitarist by Picasso

The Spongey Guitarist

The Scream by Edvard Munch

DJ Scream

American Gothic by Grant Wood

Inner City Gothic

Bikini Bottom Gothic

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

Tangled Night

And the winner is . . .

In January my Drawing 1 students designed posters for the annual Utah Labor Commission "Take Safety Seriously" poster contest. A few weeks ago I received an e-mail that one one my students was a semi-finalist. Out of 1700 entries the judges narrowed it down to 37 posters with plans to narrow it even further to 12 posters that would appear in a 2012 calendar. Yesterday afternoon I finally got the news that my semi-finalist had received an honorable mention and will be featured in the calendar- yay! I was so excited that I immediately wrote it up for morning announcements and had Ian print a color picture of the poster so I could proudly display it in my hallway display case. The student will be receiving a cash prize and I will receive matching money along with the $300.00 promised to all schools participating to use for supplies. It doesn't get much more exciting than this (in middle school education, anyway).

And the winner is:

I had a feeling this one would go far.

Up and Coming Comic Artists

My Drawing classes just finished with one of my favorite units of the year: Comic Art. I love this unit because it gives students a lot of experience with project work. There are a lot of steps that require attention to detail and each step builds on the previous one, giving me the ability to use a hot education buzz-word- scaffolding. I also love this unit because I get to read dozens of hilarious comics created by middle school kids. The Sunday paper has nothing on these kids:

"The Adventures of Lulu"

Lulu's superpower is an extra-sensory ability to find cookies and cream ice cream, which she does effortlessly in the above comic strip.

"Lizard Man"

The creator of "Lizard Man" has a love/ hate relationship with me as a teacher. The day he wrote the above story must have been one of those "hate" days because he has depicted me as a bank robber who gets caught in the act by Lizard Man.

"Destructor"

I love what comes out of the minds of brilliant honor students who are model citizens. Even they need to be a little bit bad sometimes, even if it's just as a comic book character created in the Drawing class in which they have 102% and perfect attendance.

""Douglas Duck: The Alpha Terminator"

This is one of my favorites of the year because the main character, who happens to be evil, uses super farts to fly fast, enabling him to break into jewelry stores and steal priceless gems. It doesn't get any better than this.