As of last Wednesday, I’m officially done student teaching – so sad.  I’ll do a student teaching recap sometime soon!  There’s lots to say.  For now I’m working on finishing up the things I need to do to get my teaching license, applying for jobs, and substitute teaching.  Subbing is a lot of fun so far, but we’ll see if I still think so after working with middle school kids tomorrow.  They are the most intimidating age group by far… dun dun dunnn !!

Hope your weekend was wonderful!!  woooo =)

They are going to have a ton of freedom with this project, and the only requirements are that they have to do a series of four prints, they have to use medical illustration imagery, and that imagery should be a metaphor to something that they are going through, something about them, or something going on in their lives.  Other than that, they can go wild.

Here are my brainstorming phases… I decided to go with the image of a knee (the bones, muscles, etc.) because I am currently training to run in a mini-marathon and am having some serious knee problems as a result.

It’s less than a month away… oh geez.

This is the printout of the knee I decided to use, as well as a simplified image of me “running” (haha) and the block I used to carve into.

I printed out a bunch of things from the mini website so I could experiment with printing my image on top (a map of the course, merchandise, an image of all of the people lined up at the race.)

I decided that I wanted to use the knee for sure, so I transfered the image to my block and…

started carving!  This part is going to be especially fun with the kids (please please please no injuries.)

Then I went CRAZY and printed about a million times.  I used different colors, printed on different papers, printed on top of prints, did multiple color prints… I was on a roll.  This was probably my favorite part.

And after this came the hard part.  I had to narrow down which prints I wanted to use and figure out how I was going to put them together.  DECISIONS oh my.

To be continued…

The original image, and then a reinterpretation based on a chosen artistic style (they learned about impressionism, post-impressionism, and those crazy Fauves.)  Mine was focused on post-impressionism and specifically, pointilism.  Yeah.  PARTY.

Okay so here are a few that my kids came up with…

You really can’t deny that the treasure chest is bangin… it’s 3D & pops out from the page (wowza)

I love her second interpretation, and there is a TON of texture

This one is just, dead on.  He is so good at paying attention to detail, and he doesn’t try to rush through projects just to get them done like the other students tend to do.

I really wish this student had done more (he’s very talented) but he was too anxious to get started on the next project that he rushed through.  I included it because he is the only one who did a reinterpretation like this and I love the crazy cool colors.

Whatchya think?  If I did this project again I would emphasize depth and using more than one color for things like the background… there wasn’t a lot of value changes so I think I’d include a lesson on that before getting started.  Also, if the students had been more interested I would have had them do more interpretations and even get really crazy with them… but that might work better with a more advanced class (this is an introduction course.)

I only have three days left of student teaching!  Oh.  My.  I’m on spring break right now though so those days are delayed a little bit, thank goodness.  I have lots of posts planned about their work, my experiences, etc etc… and I will be starting my job search.  Like, yesterday.  Soo if you know of any art teacher position openings in Indiana or Chicago I’d love to hear about them!

Did any of you take art in high school, and what were your experiences like?  I’d love to hear them so I can find out what really stuck with you (and what will most likely stick with my students too!)

Have a great weekend =)

I went with a dinosaur image because it’s totally not my style, and I was just feeling something different.  I photocopied the image into a couple different sizes and then traced the little guy all around the page after dividing it with radial lines.

It got really tedious, really fast.  Little did I know it was only going to get worse from there…

After tracing out four large dinosaurs and four little ones, I drew a little accessory shape to fill in the blank areas and give it some opposition.  At first I was thinking of the shapes as leaves, but then as I drew them I realized they also looked like teeth or claws.  I kind of like that it can go either way =)  (One of my students who is a very precise perfectionist doesn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to clarify, haha.  I told him we are just very different types of artists.)

THEN I went back over all the shapes with Sharpie.

It took a while.  While I was doing this I was taking breaks and starting my tessellation background, but I will get more into that during Part II.

Once I finished tracing and re-tracing with Sharpie, I added some stippling to the dinos to add some value and then used colored pencil to brighten them up.  I think he’s cute =)  which is saying something, because I have been staring at him for hours and hours.

Hopefully I’ll have it all finished up this week!  I went with a darkdarkdark background to make the dinosaurs really pop, and still have the dilemma of how to color the leaf/teeth/claws… maybe a light yellow?  DECISIONS.

Well a couple of my late workers got their drawings in so I wanted to go ahead and share those too =)  They are two extremely talented girls so of course I need to show them off!

I can’t remember the words for the first image (maybe Fantasy & Reality?) but the second image is based on the words Friendly & Hostile.  I think it’s such a great interpretation (though a little dark!  These kids come up with some heavy stuff sometimes) and her representation of the water gun is PERFECT.  They are so so good.

Anyway I hope you all have had a good weekend.  This week is my last full week of student teaching, though I won’t finish until mid-April because I have to finish 2-3 days after a week of spring break.  I am really going to miss it… I can’t believe it’s almost over.

As you may have heard, the lovely Amy over at Lemon & Raspberry is releasing an eBook TODAY entitled “Tell Its Story” !!  It’s all about the culture of objects, the objects we decide to keep in our lives (and the stories behind those objects), and how to document those stories which are most meaningful to us.  I had the opportunity to take a sneak peak and I enjoyed it very much.  AND… I am going to tell you why.

First of all, she takes an academic approach to analyzing the objects we collect, why we keep them, as well as what sort of meaning is assigned those objects based on a variety of different factors.  I felt like I was taking part in a college discussion (which makes sense, since a large amount of her inspiration came from a class on Material Culture she took!) and not only that, but it’s an interesting and applicable discussion.

Now, as someone who is very attached to her belongings (read: a pack rat, amateur hoarder, etc… don’t judge) it made me look at my objects in a new way and think about their respective meanings.  But enough about all of that, I don’t want to give everything away!

My favorite part of Tell Its Story is the examples.  She showed several different examples of ways to tell the stories of our objects, and also gives tips on how to photograph them in the most appropriate and successful way.  Lots of information, let me tell ya.  And some REALLY great ideas.

Interested?  Well GUESS WHAT there is a discount especially for you guys!  Just click here and use the code NicoleIoma and you get 25% off the original price (that means instead of paying $12 you only pay $9.  woo!)

Go check it out, & I hope you’re having a great week =)

Then I decided to go with post-impressionism, with an emphasis on pointilism.  Since it is a paper sculpture, this means that I cut out about a million tiny circles.  I started by covering the background (notice how the circles slowly get bigger and bigger?? haha.)

Then I started on the seahorse and some seaweed..

So.  Many.  Circles.  This is only 4″x4″ though, so it’s not so bad.  I still have LOTS of seaweed to do, and then bubbles and a few other details… I’ll show you once it’s finished, as well as student examples.  I gave them lots of freedom in terms of subject matter, so it’s going to be interesting to see what they come up with.

Hope you’re having a good weekend!  =)

Life & Death

Risky & Safe

Old & New

Geometric & Organic

Natural & Man-Made

Order & Chaos

Order & Chaos (again)

Broken & Whole

These kids put in so much time and effort, it’s unbelievable.  I have a few more great ones that haven’t been turned in yet… which actually is a bit of a dilemma.  Some kids produce STELLAR work, but they take so long that they end up turning it in 2 weeks late.  I have struggled with taking points off for late work, even though it is clearly A+ work… but then kids will turn in C work and if I don’t take late points off for the good work then I can’t for the average work, you know?  It’s different, I guess, depending on how they use their class time.  I don’t know… what do you think?  I definitely do not like the grading aspect of teaching, that’s for sure.

Which one(s) do you like the best?! I think they’re all awesome.

My Intro to 2D class is going to start a paper sculpture project later this week, & I thought I’d share the example I made here.  I decided to make a seahorse and I put him in an underwater scene (seaweed, bubbles, starfish, and a school of fish all included!)

I painted paper with watercolors, then cut, folded & curled the paper to give it a more sculptural feel (as opposed to a flat paper collage.)  It was a fun process and I can’t wait to see what my students come up with – I’ll share some of their projects here in the next few weeks!  This took me about 2-3 hours to create, so there’s no telling how long the students will take to complete their project.  One of the big challenges of teaching art is the HUGE difference in how long students take to complete projects.. some finish in one day, some take weeks.  Oh.  My.

Hope you have a great week!  =)

Love pillowcases!  Isn’t that cute?!  If these weren’t $36, they would be mine.  I might take the idea and make something similar… it’s such a simple idea.  I’ll let you know if I do =)

This is an original papercut work of art, so pretty, right?  I have my eye on the note cards and the necklace and… basically the entire shop.  It’s all really beautiful.

Love letter cards… ♥  so pretty

Love letter necklace!

Aaaaand cute heart garland.

I also really love looking at the cards at the store too, some of them are so ridiculously cheesy.  And glittery.  And EXPENSIVE my goodness, when did greeting cards get so expensive?!