Monster Mash Project

 Shape, Color, Size are all design elements to consider when creating a monster collage. Elementary and Middle School students were able to use their imaginations to come up with their own original monster.

Tessellations

Math becomes meaningful for art lovers, during tessellation projects.

I  introduce my students to tessellation project by showing them images of E.C. Escher's amazing work and letting them handle a pop up book of his pieces.  How is it done? They want to know. How does he make black geese fly one direction and white geese fly the other? How are tessellations made. I tell my students I will show them if they can try to figure out how to change the perimeter of a card without changing the area.  We do the math together to find the perimeter and area of a football field or an iphone. I hand them a card: 3"X5" or 3"X3" or 3"X2". They figure out the perimeter and diameter of their card themselves. Then I show them how I can draw a line that starts on one side and ends on the same side.  I cut along the line and then slide the card to the opposite side and tape it to the edge. (This works well with graph paper, for students of vision). Did I change the area? No. I didn't throw any part away, and I didn't add any piece from a different card. Did I change the perimeter? Well if the shortest distance between two lines is a  straight line and my line is now curvy or zig zag to get from one point to another, than I increased the distance, so yes.  I like to encourage my students draw and cut from corner to corner so that students can easily line the edge up to the opposite side without needing to grid card to line it up. The rainbow tessellation at the top is an example of what it looks like with only one shape cut. If you want something less boxy, you can cut a second shape from another straight side before sliding and taping it to it's opposite side.  Now you have a template.

The template can be placed anywhere on a piece of paper (we use 12"X18") and traced, and then slid (not flipped, not turned, but slid) so that the right side of the template fits into the left side of the drawn shape. This repeated pattern fills the page. Some of my visually impaired students use devices to see the edges better, but my blind students had to trace their template using wiki sticks which later served as tactile barriers for coloring with markers. A few students traced with a 20/20 pen and then I went over their lines with hot glue so they could feel their edges.

This is a piece done by a co-worker as I walked her through the process. The element of design we focus on is shape, and the focus principles of design are repetition/pattern and balance (crystallographic). The project is rich enough that there many ways to teach it, and that's important to someone like me, who never wants to live a boring day.

Monochromatic Mobiles

I have a goal to make my life as beautiful, uncomplicated, and perfectly balanced as a Alexander Calder mobile.

I taught my students about Calder and mobiles as a way to unite the shape and line themes we'd been learning in art class. I also wanted to add "monochrome" to their list of color theory vocabulary terms. Each student created shapes of various sizes from paper, cardboard, or whatever they wanted. Then they chose a color, which they could mix with either white to tint it, or black to shade it.

The younger students worked collaboratively, painting tints and shades of a chosen color on cards, and later gluing the cards to strings. Although the installation as a whole isn't monochromatic, I think they still learned how to create multiple values from one color by working on their part.

Art Projects for the Little Ones

My students this year have ages ranging from 5 to 20. They're all blind or visually impaired and many have multiple disabilities, so my creative exercise each day is figuring out how to teach each individual child something about art that they didn't know before. I try to keep similar units and themes, whether the classes are elementary, middle school, or high school level, just to help have visual reinforcement of those concepts in my room. Our first month back at school this year was shape month, and our second month is centered on line. This post centers on shape and line assignments for the youngest of my students.

Matisse Collage

This assignment gave me a chance to tell stories about the life of Henri Matisse and explain the concept of "painting with scissors."  Students were told to use geometric shapes in the background and organic shapes in the foreground. I love explaining things in pairs of opposites: geometric and organic, background and foreground. For the children who were able to use modified scissors, they were encouraged to create their own shapes, but I had piles of pre-cut shapes for the ones who aren't to that point.

Watercolor Resist Still Life

We used the design element of shape to talk about how to depict still life objects. This time the medium was oil pastel and watercolor. This student used circles to create a bowl of apples.

Stamping Animal Shapes
For this assignment we used repetition of shapes to create unity. It was fun passing sponges around and having students guess the animal shape of each.

Barnett Newman Line Painting

In case you hadn't heard, a Newman painting of a blue line, entitled Onement VI, sold for almost $44 million at a Sotheby's auction last year. That piece of news was a fun way to discuss the value of line and introduce minimalism to first and second graders.  Rubber bands stretched around paper and cardboard acted as stencils for students to create their own straight line paintings. It wasn't my favorite project, but it has potential so I may try it again one year with modifications.

Yarn Drawings
While the older students were doing their string art, by stretching it across boards or sewing it through holes, the younger students were using glue and yarn collage to create drawings.