Mrs.Williams Art Room

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted on this blog. To all of my followers I do apologize for my absence. Life happens and my hands are juggling many things, but, in 2015 we start new. More blogging  and more great lessons to share.  I would like to start by sharing  a great fundraiser  I started at my school. We had a family painting night and each guest was given tools, canvas, paint and a few instructions on how to paint a picture on canvas. Adults were charged $15 and kids were $10. All  proceeds purchased clay for the art room.  We had a blast and I wanted to share a few photos of those who participated.    I demonstrated how to draw a whimsical owl. Everyone was open to paint whatever they wanted, I did not want to limit their creativity. Everyone did a great job.    Gloria had such a great time that she has decided to take up painting at home. It is very therapeutic.    I was so excited to see our principal M

  Art Club was great this year. I was able to hold two sessions. The first session started in November with 3rd-5th grade students. We worked on a few community projects, took a field trip to the art museum and made some great art. My second session began in April with 6-8th grade students. I really enjoyed having those kids in art club. We also took a field trip to the Art Museum and worked on a painting project inspired by owls. We used acrylic on canvas and boy were they a huge hit. We displayed them at this years art show and had a few bidders. I am so proud of my art club. I can't wait for next year.              

I have been inspired to paint this week. Thankfully Michaels had a great sale in canvas. I am in the process of working on three paintings one is about finished while the other two are a work in progress.

Middle school clay project focusing on types of relif sculptures.  In class we discussed low and high relief  and looked at a few examples. Below are a few student pieces some  glazed and fired. Wolf howling at the moon Cupcake Spray can on brick wall Night time Super-Bat Man Flag Bird on a branch

Fourth grade just started a new painting project called Neon Robots. We started out with a demonstration on how to draw 3D shapes. After a few sketches we started drawing on a 12x18 sheet of white paper and filled our robots with neon paint. The kids loved it. I've included my example but I will post the student examples when they are finished.  Note: Purchase a good quality neon paint the kind that I used is very thin and takes two coatings for a smooth look. My example is painted with one coat.

I love Zentangles! While on break I tried a cool leaf design using Zentangle designs inside the leaf pattern. I traced about 7-9 leaf stencils and used a few Zentangle designs in the center of each one. I used a sharpie marker for the outline. Later, I used watercolor for the background and focused on cool colors. I would like to try this lesson out in the future. I can see fourth grade on up doing something like this.

This is a six grade unit on portraits. We learned to draw proportionate portraits, paint portraits and lastly used construction paper to create portraits. I like using units that focuses on using more than one form of media. This helps those students who may struggle with drawing but are great at building with paper or students who struggle with painting but are great at drawing. They all get to excel in at least one form of media. Below are a few of the finished paper portraits.

Lines and patterns and frogs, oh my! This is a simple drawing and painting assignment that I did with my 7/8th grade students. We started out discussing elements of art and principles of design. We focused on lines and patterns. Our subject was the frog. To help with the drawing portion I created a handout with pictures of frogs on them. Sorry, I don't have my handout on this computer but will try to add it to a later post. When it came to painting, I asked that they use bright colors and focus on placement of colors. They did a great job.