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.

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.

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 =)

Yep, there ya go.  (I figured out how to actually embed it this time!  Ironic that when my movie was about using technology in education, I couldn’t get it to embed to save my life.  Ha ha ha.)

Oh and I had to make a pretend blog for a pretend class… here it is if you want to see =)

Anyway, so you may have noticed that I never finished the October Medium of the Month… it was completely stressing me out, and not as much fun as I expected, so no more.  I’m sorry!  I always have these big plans for weekly posts, and then end up hating them unexpectedly.

I DO have an exciting announcement… my friend Karyn & I decided to apply for a local craft fair and need to have our applications in asap.  I decided to use this as my push to FINALLY open up my etsy shop!!  I have been making things for it like crazy this week and am excited to share what I have come up with =)

Hope you’re having a wonderful weekend!

This is the first page, before I put the covers onnn

And then I put a camera on the cover to make it a little more interesting (the class I’m teaching is Digital Photography.)

It’s RIVETING.  Haha.

Omg just a few more days until Spring Break =)  I need it.  And I’m going to Chicago for the St. Patrick’s Day festivitiesss  !!

I can’t remember what the assignment was exactly, I just remember that I wanted to play around and experiment with color and light.  Sooo.. what do you think?

Oh and also, today I made my sample stamp and I had a lot of fun with it.  I think the students will too, as long as they’re careful with those tools… we’ll see.  Anyway I’ll post pictures tomorrow =)  it really made me miss my printmaking class.

The idea of an altered book can be a little sensitive, and it was funny when one of the students asked if she could read the book she was given to alter.  “But… the pages already have stuff on them!!”  I started to explain to her that she could paint over all the words if she wanted to, and make the book her own.  And then another student asked me if the book was a novel, and could he read it?  It’s definitely a strange concept to grasp, and I hope these kids don’t go to the library or anything and start wrecking books.  Oh geez.

All I have done so far is hollow it out (which took forEVER) and paint the covers and the pages.  I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet, but I painted all the pages black (almost) and I think I want to use just white paint on the pages and do a black & white study.  I think it would be cool because of the bright covers, and then maybe I would fill up the hollowed part with three dimensional colored objects?  Or 3D white objects?  I’m not sure yet.

Any ideas??

What are your thoughts on altered books?