Thoughts?  I have good news about the inspiration behind the project, and that is that I finished the mini-marathon that I ran in May.  And I ran the whole thing.  I KNOW.  I couldn’t believe it either.  Since then I finished student teaching (so sad), substitute taught the remainder of the school year, and taught art all summer at a camp.  I have been searching endlessly for a job teaching art but haven’t found one yet so I am back to subbing and searching.  I now have teaching licenses in both Indiana & Illinois so hopefully something will pan out soon!

Oh and my friend Karyn has started a blog to document her first year teaching, go look!

Hope everyone is doing well =)

PERIDOT

I just added LOTS of new mini books, art, and prints to the shop… lots.

Go look! =)

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 =)

Now, that challenge is not in the behavior of the students (though generally, the kids who sign up for ceramics are not at all interested in art, and are more interested in obtaining an honors diploma.  And it goes without saying that teaching is more fun when the students are interested.)  My kids are great.  I am completely spoiled, and this high school has ruined me for all other high schools I’m sure.

The challenge is in that this is a brand new skill for these kids.  And these kids belong to a generation of efficiency and having things done for you.  And most importantly, I myself only learned this brand new skill a few days before I taught them.

Yeah.  I learned at the end of one week, and began teaching the following Monday.  Throughout this whole experience I have been keeping just one step ahead of the students.  And they have No.  Idea.  Whatsoever.

In fact, they’ll often say things like “Well it’s easy for you, you spent all of college doing this!” & “Well I’d be that good at it too if I’d been doing it for three years or whatever.”  Ha ha ha.  Please keep my secret.  They can never know… even though I am absolutely dying to tell them.

I’ve spent planning periods and time after school practicing and sometimes would whisper questions to my cooperating teacher so that the kids would not know I didn’t know the answer.  And I did it.  I now feel completely comfortable on the wheel (though I have a lot to learn) and my students have produced some high quality work.  I can spot a student across the room doing something wrong, and instantly know what they need to do to fix it despite having never seen the problem before.

One of my friends is teaching art history right now, and he told me he heard somewhere that you remember 20% of what you learn, and 90% of what you teach (or something like that.)  I remember so much more from my research now, knowing that I will have to present it to students and answer questions about it, than I did while doing actual coursework for my classes (where I just had to get through a paper or exam.)  I imagine that I am going to learn so much more from actually being a teacher than I did while studying to be a teacher, though I know I wouldn’t be able to get through it without that education.

So that’s what I have been spending half of my time doing at school these last few months.  I am so glad that I not only know how to throw pottery on the wheel now, but that I can teach others how to do it successfully.  I also know that I will be able to take on any other medium I am less familiar with and teach it if I am ever given the opportunity (I’m looking at you, jewelry.)

I’ll try and take some pictures of the finished pieces, and maybe even a few of my own =)

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.

This is the first display I set up in my classroom!  My kids did a project on Architecture & Color… which means they had a LOT to learn (this is their first art class.)  We covered color theory, basic photoshop & photography tips, drawing, AND painting just for one little project.  They probably have no idea how much they learned, but LOOK at how good they turned out:

What do you think?  I’m proud of them, especially since most of them are so scared of art and of getting a bad grade.  It’s nice to see them produce something they didn’t realize they could!

I’ll be posting a ton more so get ready to see some student work =)

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!  =)

I love this one of Chicago…

“In the beginning of most any artistic pursuit, specific themes and subject matter begin to pull at you in very personal ways. They begin to define what you, as a photographer, will shoot.” – Tom Storm

Wow wow wow.