Art Club in January.....

Starting in January, Art Club will be designing and building the set for MJMS's spring musical.....*drum roll*

 

Seussical!!!! As a life-time lover of Dr. Seuss I am THRILLED to be building and designing the set for this play with my middle school art-eests. The handful of Art Club kids I told are stoked just as much as I am. This will be a wonderful way or us to get more involved in our school by using our creativity and art skills. As of now I know we will be painting a backdrop as well as making several fish props. I would love to make the fluffy trees that you see in The Lorax but I don't need to get too ahead of myself. :)

These past few weeks have been absolutely slammed. Grading, makeup work, Christmas shopping, you name it,it has been wild here! I spent a GOOD all day yesterday cleaning out and reorganizing my classroom and also making my unit for this next upcoming semester. So far I have the first THREE months planned out! (I can hardly believe it....).

Laterz!!!
-Mrs. G

November Art Club Workshop-- Bookmaking

We had our November workshop today after school where we learned a simple pamphlet stitch from book making. I wish that I had a lot more accessories to give them to decorate their books. All the had was construction paper, markers and crayons. Some of the girls brought some cute things to add, but when I do this in the future I will make sure to have a variety of patterns, beads, stickers, etc. 

We dropped insanely with our numbers. During the melting crayon workshop we had WELL over 50+ kids and it was a nightmare trying to get all those paintings done. Today we had about 30 which was a great size, but I do hope more continue to join! 

The instruction image I gave to the kids. Verrry helpful.

And the stabbing the spine begins! I was so happy when I realized we could use the cracks of the cafeteria tables to give them room to stick holes in the spine. How helpful!!!

And more stabbing..... 

Some of the fun things the girls brought to decorate their books!

Olivia's final book.

Ellie's final book

A lot of the students finished several in the time of our meeting. This was overall a great lesson for Art Club. I definitely plan on doing more bookmaking lessons. The next time I do this, I will bring bigger paper so they can make much bigger books. I definitely need to be taking a lot more pictures, I feel like I get so overwhelmed during Art Club meetings. Maybe I should *try* letting some of my members take pictures for me? :)

Aaaaaaaaaaand to top off the end of a good day, a stop at Marble Slab Creamery. I've never been to one of these until today.. WHERE HAVE I BEEN ALL MY LIFE??? CHEESECAKE ICE CREAM, I mean COME ON. 

Laterz!

-Mrs. G

8th Grade Monster Update

So we are FINALLY starting to come to an end with this paper mache monster project. I have come to terms realizing that this *might* not have been a great project to do with classes that are on an A/B Day schedule. This project which usually takes 3 weeks has taken this class up to a month and a half to finish. And as for this 9 weeks, this is the only grade they have!!! And we only have 3 more weeks left till Christmas break! EEK!

So here are a few of the final products. Will be posting more when they are all finally complete. I can not get over how awesome some of them look. 

Love the green and blue colors on this happy dragon!

This little thing will have to have her foot hot glued on her. No biggie. 

Loving the small teeth. 

Laterz!

-Mrs. G

6th Grade Value Silhouettes

My 6th graders just completed their value paintings. We incorporated movement and the human figure for the focal point. This was great fun for all the athletes because they were able to put their favorite sport into their work. At first I was making them draw their own silhouette. After several attempts and a lot of heartache from the kids, I broke down and just cut out some stencils for them to trace. When I do this again, I will make sure to cut out more sports. I had a lot of sad softball and baseball players when they saw I didn't have a stencil for that sport. But then again can you please everyone?

The next thing they do is draw 6 layers of lines around the figure for their value scales. Some of them struggled because I said over and over and over again "Do NOT put the lines closer together unless you want to paint with a tiny paintbrush!!!" Finally they were able to paint and ended up doing a great job! I was quite limited with paint colors. I only had red, black, blue, green and orange. Next year I do this I will make SURE I have purple--- loooooove purple. 

Here are just a few to share! 

Quite proud of Marti for drawing her own silhouette here!!! 

The famous Air Jordan pose was quite the popular one!

Laterz!

-Mrs. G

November Art Club Workshop- Book Making

We had our monthly morning meeting in Art Club today where we discuss our monthly workshop. For the month of November, we will be doing book making. This is one of my favorite things is bookmaking. I took a college class over it and fell in LOVE. What is great is that there are soooo many things you can do when it comes to making your book unique and more "you".





Here is a picture of our instructions:

Here is the information for our workshop:

When: Wednesday, November 28th

What time: 3:00-4:30pm

What will I need to bring?: Everything will be provided for you to create our simple stitch book! Here are some wonderful optional things you can bring that will make your book look extra unique:
-scrapbook paper
-stickers
-stamps
-pictures

Where: MJMS cafeteria

See you after Thanksgiving!!!

-Mrs. G

More zentangles!

These are the landscapes my 8th graders did. They're smaller in size compared to some of their other projects.

Laterz!

-Mrs. G

Mondrian Window Decorating

So today was a boring morning with my first block. They are a day ahead of all their other classes so I gave them a free draw day so the other classes will all be on the same day. I found this awesome idea on Pinterest that I thought I would try with one of my windows in the classroom while they worked.

Using black electric tape and colored tissue paper, you decorate your window like Piet Mondrian. I've never been a Mondrian, or even a minimalist fan to be quite honest. So this was a fun way for me to display this type of work to the students. They thought it was really neat! And I do admit, I pretty much really like it too. :)






The finished product:

7th Grade Zentangle Initials

I've been doing some zentangle work with both my 7th grade and my 8th grade. We're doing a variety of subjects- this class in particular worked with their initials on colored paper. The outcome turned out really cool! I have discovered that Sharpies are ALWAYS a hit in the classroom no matter what age group! I have to pry them out of their hands to make sure they don't take them out of class with them! haha!

I also had my other classes do landscapes, more of those pictures to come later.

Laterz.

-Mrs. G

6th Grade Perspective Cities and Names

Perspective is always something I dread teaching because the kids either love it or they LOATHE it with every atom in their body. It is a fabulous technique to learn at the middle school age so it is vital to have a project over it. I decided to experiment this year with the 6th grade class. They really struggled with it, which in my opinion ended up being a good thing since they had to focus twice as hard on this project as they had to with the others.

Since I have 4 6th grade classes total, I decided to mix it up and have 2 of them make cityscapes and have the other 2 do their names. Both one point perspective. They LOVED the names, however, I am going to have to find a much better way to teach it. They had a very hard time understanding where the lines go and I felt like I was saying the exact same things over, and over, and over again.

Nevertheless, I am quite proud of all of them! They definitely had to step out of their comfort zones. And those most of these are not *perfect* I am still happy with each of them!

Laterz!

-Mrs. G