Pop Up Art School

art class

Simple 3D Anamorphic Drawing Tutorial

Want to know how to make a 3D drawing that appears to float? Of course you do! Today we are sharing a PDF drawing tutorial on anamorphic drawing. Your tween and teen students will love this project!

Anamorphic drawing is a 3D drawing using forced perspective. You can only see the correct image from a certain angle or when using a special mirror or lens.

There are two types of anamorphosis: mirror and perspective. Mirror anamorphosis requires a cylindrical mirror to view the image in its correct state.  Perspective anamorphosis requires the viewer to look at the image from a specific angle.

A well-known painting that uses perspective anamorphosis is Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, painted in 1533 during the Renaissance. The viewer must place their head near the lower right-hand corner of the painting, and look to the left, to see the skull in its correct proportions. Viewed from any other angle it looks like a skull that’s stretched and tipped on an angle. A link to The Ambassadors is listed in the resources below as well as contemporary examples of anamorphic art.

Download our FREE Anamorphic Floating Puzzle Cube PDF and follow the directions for a lesson that will be a hit with your students. Librarians can use the PDF as a passive project for teens.

Join our Facebook group Freelance Art Teachers in Libraries. The group is for sharing ideas about teaching art and other subjects in public libraries. Whether you are a librarian looking for new ideas or a teacher seeking an enjoyable side hustle, we are here to answer questions and support you!

DOWNLOAD YOUR PDF HERE:

Anamorphic freebie

 

Resources

The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-the-ambassadors

TRULY design is a visual communication studio founded in 2007 and directed by urban artists active in the graffiti scene since 1996

http://truly-design.com/

Check out their portfolio of anamorphic and optical illusion public art https://truly-design.myportfolio.com/street-art-3d-street-optical-illusion

Perspective anamorphic art by Felice Varini

http://www.partfaliaz.com/artists/projected-anamorphosis-by-felice-varini/

Anamorphic sculptures by Jonty Hurwitz

https://mymodernmet.com/anamorphic-sculptures-jonty-hurwitz/

Mirror anamorphosis by István Orosz

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/04/anamorphic-art-by-istvan-orosz.html

Successful Ways to Pack for Art Workshops on the Go

A mobile art school requires mobile art supplies. As the owners of Pop up Art School we don’t have the cost and headaches of a brick and mortar location, but we’ve had to master the art of packing for art lessons on the go. If you’ve ever camped or traveled with children you know that a forgotten item can ruin your day. 

Here’s a breakdown of our fails and 11 ways you can pack for a successful art class. 

Fails:

Rolling Cart

Recently, we tested ROYI cart. A three-foot stack of canvases made this cart unstable; it rocked back-and-forth almost pitching the canvases onto the ground. Plus, the plastic hook broke within two weeks!

Cheap tablecloths

DON’T buy dollar store tablecloths. They slide around the table and the kids like to rip holes in them. I don’t blame them, it’s fun. Do yourself a favor and buy flannel backed tablecloths. We get them for five dollars apiece and they last for years. 

No charger

It makes us look unprofessional if we ask the client for a charger. 

Rolled Paper

For workshops where we use 12×18 pieces of paper it takes up less room to roll the paper, but then you have to wrestle with it to get it flat. Better to carry it flat sandwiched in between two pieces of cardboard. 

Small Bottles of Glue

They get clogged and they are hard to refill, and it’s cheaper to buy a gallon of glue. 

Forgotten Supplies

If the brushes are left behind for a canvas painting workshop the workshop is going to bomb. Always use a checklist.

Location Mishaps

Google maps is only as good as the address that you enter. A few times we’ve gone to the wrong library. Some towns have more than one.

White Shirts

Our first official T-shirts with our logo were white. What were we thinking?! White is not a smart choice when working with messy art supplies.

Successes:

Room Set up Chart

After we book a workshop, we send a room set up chart. When we arrive the room is just the way we like it and it gives us more time to get the supplies out.

Supply List

For every workshop we print out the project supply list and cross it off as we pack.

 

New Cart

A sturdy box cart holds the paints and loose supplies much better. It’s wider at the bottom which makes it more stable.

 

Red T-shirts

The bright red offsets our logo nicely and the dark color helps hide splotches of paint. We spent more to get a feminine cut, but it’s worth it during the summer, when we teach 5 or 6 days a week.

Thumb drive

We keep our slideshows are on Google slides, but sometimes the Wi-Fi is unpredictable. Slideshows converted to PowerPoint on a thumb drive to the rescue!

 

Paint Crates

Packs away neatly and makes it easy for students to choose colors.

Stickers With Instagram Info

If we put stickers on canvases before the class students have the info when they leave. We post a photo of every piece of art made in our workshops on Instagram. The sticker makes it easier for them to find the post.

Portable Photo Studio

Our Instagram Photo Booth is inexpensive and easy to carry. It makes our photos look professional. 

Glue in Condiment Cups

Easy to pour and pack. Clogs are a thing of the past! 

 

 

Extras of Everything

Life happens, spills and perfectionistic students who want to redo their work.

Early Finishers

Sketch Artist Game is easy to carry and it’s always a hit. It comes in handy for early finishers.

If you’re taking the show on the road, we hope you’ll learn from our mistakes. What’s your favorite hack for packing art supplies? Have you had a packing fail? Tell us about it in the comments.

Tame the Glitter Beast

Art teachers hate glitter; there’s even a blog called Art Teachers Hate Glitter. Glitter is easy to hate on, it sticks to everything and no matter how well you clean you’ll find flecks of glitter mocking you for months afterwards.

Here’s another reason to loathe glitter; it’s a micro plastic that contributes to water pollution. Those little bits of plastic make their way into the ocean and into the bellies of fishes. Imagine trying to digest glitter! Companies like Bioglitter are now producing glitter made from plant derivatives. Biodegradable glitter has a softer texture compared to plastic glitter and is used for cosmetic, craft and educational purposes.

I did an art lesson with kindergarten and I knew it needed something else—something sparkly—yes glitter! The lesson introduced printmaking and radial symmetry. Kindergarten made snowflakes with cardboard dipped in white paint. When the snowflakes were complete, they looked dry and lifeless. But, there was no way I’d give the little people of kindergarten bottles of glue and sparkle rain. No way not in my art room!

I’m not a total glitter snob. When my kids were little, I allowed them to use glitter, and we called the errant flakes fairy dust. But, if you have 20 little ones sprinkling glitter, it will get nasty.

In my art supply stash, I have a large container of glitter with a variety of colors and types. I think it’s better to use it than tossing it in the landfill. Whether it’s plastic or natural, it will be messy.

Determined to conquer this menace, I experimented with making glue skins impregnated with glitter. I poured white glue onto plexiglass, in a thin layer. While it was wet, I sprinkled glitter on it to encase the glitter in the glue. I thought they would be pliable sheets of glitter that the kids could cut into shapes to glue on their snowflakes. When I peeled the glue skins off of the plexiglass they were flexible, so I cut them into squares.  While I was prepping for the lesson I realized that the glitter squares had turned brittle. Not what I was expecting, but the glitter pieces looked like ice shards which went with our wintry snowflakes.

My experiment didn’t eradicate the glitter mess, but the glue encased about 80% of the glitter and I contained it to the area where I poured the glue skins. Best of all, the printed snowflakes came to life by adding the glitter shards!

 

What homeschools are looking for in an art class.

To learn more about what it’s like to teach art when homeschooling and what a homeschool parent looks for in an art program, we reached out to Krysten Lynch Callina.

Krysten has homeschooled her two sons for nine years and she’s the moderator of the Massachusetts Homeschoolers Connection Facebook group which helps facilitate support and fellowship among Massachusetts homeschool parents.  

What is your favorite thing about homeschooling?

The opportunity for kids to learn at their own pace and with their own learning style, and the freedom parents have to find what works for their children.

When planning an art lesson what resources do you use?

Library books, Pinterest, formal classes, YouTube, DIY.org

When you plan art lessons, do you teach them at home, gather a group of homeschooled kids or sign up for a lesson?

We have done both

If you could ask an art teacher to help you with your art curriculum what kind of help would you ask for?

Higher level lessons beyond arts & crafts that is connected to other subjects (history, English, mathematics)

How much importance do you place on visual arts in your homeschool curriculum? Do you try to incorporate art with other subjects such as science, English or math?

Our children were very interested in aspects of art including portrait drawing and anime style drawing, so we tried to incorporate that as its own subject. However, we love museums, so we spent a lot of time at different museums discussing art through the ages and across cultures. My kids are very experiential / hands-on focused learners, so that is what worked for us.

Do you use your public library? What resources do you use the most?

We did more when my kids were smaller…for books, videos, books on tape, planned social activities.

What kinds of programming do you wish your library would offer?

I’m happy with their offerings.

I appreciate that she’s exposed her children to art museums. The act of looking at a piece of art only scratches the surface. There’s so much information there about world history, art history and cultural history. A painting or sculpture is a snapshot of the time and place in which someone created it.

Krysten has taught visual arts to her children through lessons at home and outside classes. I’m most interested in her response to what kind of help she would request from an art teacher:

“Higher level lessons beyond arts & crafts that is connected to other subjects (history, English, mathematics)”

If you’re like me, you’re a walking encyclopedia of art techniques, art mediums and art history. Art teachers bring  unique skills to the table that can be used to enrich subjects like math and English. Furthermore, our lessons appeal to hands-on learners who might otherwise struggle with rote learning.

Many thanks to Krysten for sharing her thoughts and experience with us!

Do you homeschool your kids? Are you a librarian who serves homeschool families? Or, are you an art teacher who would like to provide art experiences for homeschooled kids? If so, leave us a comment.

5 Creative Ways to Make Money (for teachers)

Pop up Art School has been happily chugging along teaching 45 to 50 workshops a year, almost all at public libraries. It’s been a legit way to make an extra $1,000 a month, but our business model has the potential for more. Here’s how we’ve been expanding our offerings in 5 new ways.

  1. Downloadable lesson packet for libraries

It took us a few months to develop, write and design two STEAM lessons for librarians to teach in their libraries.

The packets include:

  • PowerPoint slideshows
  • PDFs
  • diagrams
  • promo materials
  • video instruction

We have a newfound respect for educators who sell products on TPT (teachers pay teachers!)

  1. Blogging

For five years, we’ve had a basic WordPress site that we’ve used as a landing page. Now, we’re publishing a new blog post every week. On the back-end, Janell has been working hard to redesign the landing page, and she built a shop using WP plug-ins, so that people can sign up online. The ability to register online is important because of the next two items.

  1. After-school Art Enrichment Classes

After listening to a podcast on Nick Loper’s’ Side Hustle Nation about May Najafabadi who teaches after school art and craft classes, we have been contacting local schools.

It hasn’t been as easy as she states, but it’s a real way to make more money per hour, depending on sign ups.

Here’s what we’ve found so far:

  • The art teacher doesn’t want competition.
  • An outside company manages the school district’s after-school programs.
  • My email or call disappeared into a black hole.

Those 3 reasons haven’t deterred us; we’ll keep emailing and letting people know what we offer.

So far, we’ve booked one school. Initially the director of the program told me he couldn’t bring in outside people because it would be competition for the art teacher. We were lucky to have two friends, who live in the district, contact the director and recommend us. It turns out, the art teacher is on leave and can’t offer an after-school class for a while.

Yay! A foot in the door. Sometimes, it comes down to whom you know and a healthy dose of persistence.

  1. Bookstores

Another route for after-school enrichment is independent book sellers.

It’s a win-win for both businesses; we get to use space in a brick and mortar location and the bookstore gets more foot traffic. My son used to take a chess class at a local bookstore, so I contacted the owner and we’ve got a session starting this week!

  1. Adult Art Instruction

At our library workshops, it’s clear that the adults want to create because there are always a few who stay to make the project.

To start, we surveyed the parents on our email list to discover their interests. Our first workshop was on wool felting a three-dimensional cactus and our upcoming adult workshop is glass mosaics which was everyone’s top choice in the survey.

Since we started the expansion of our business we’ve had a few opportunities fall in our laps.

  • Two private childcare centers emailed us to teach workshops.
  • A friend who runs Lego robotics summer camps wants us to come once a week to do a STEAM project.

Sometimes what you want doesn’t come from the direction you’ve been looking in. The important thing is to be open and persistent!

If you’re looking for fun and creative ways to make money join us in our Facebook group Freelance Art Teachers in Libraries or share your ideas below in the comments.

Library Card Art

Hi, Janell here. A fun fact about me. Along with teaching art to awesome kids I’m also an illustrator. (janellgenovese.com) I’ve had some super fun clients and have created illustrations for a variety of markets including books, magazines, toys, bedding, posters, etc.

One day while teaching at my local library I was approached by the director about doing an illustration for their new library card for children. I was thrilled! The library was one of my favorite places to go when I was a child. I can remember getting my new library card and feeling like I’d been given something special that was all mine. Now the kids in my town would get their new card with one of my illustrations on it!

When starting an illustration I like to make a list of words that help me set the mood for the visual. For the library card I wrote:

  • cozy  
  • adult reading to child  
  • imagination  
  • home
  • adventure/fun
  • books
  • safe  
  • for everyone

My specialty is drawing anthropomorphic animals. I chose Hedgehogs to be the characters in my illustration. If you look closely, the hedgehog family is reading one of my favorite children’s’ books, The Little Red Hen.

Here is the finished illustration.

I’m so proud to have my artwork on something as special as a library card.

 

Collaborative Project

Recently, the school where I teach had an International Night for students and families. I volunteered to put together a collaborative project to display. It brought to mind a project that Pop up Art School did with a public library that was celebrating diversity in their community.

For the library we created a custom workshop that resulted in a collaborative art piece that is still on display. The project was designed so that the kids would have something to take home. Each student made a “quilt” square on an 8 inch square of paper. On it they painted concentric circles with colors and shapes from a world flag that represented their family’s heritage. On a separate piece of paper they drew pictures that represented something from that country. It could be a favorite food, a popular sport, a holiday, etc. At the end of the workshop we cut the squares into four smaller squares and gave each student a square from their piece to take home.

After the workshop, we took the cut squares, shuffled them and assembled them, so that each circle was comprised of four different artist’s work. The circles were mounted on poster board and made a colorful paper quilt for the library to display! We called it the Diversity Circle Quilt.

For my school I decided to have grades two through five make the quilt squares. There are 74 students in those four grades, so I knew that I had to make the quilt squares smaller than the original 8 inches. Otherwise, I would have a mammoth paper quilt that would be hard to hang. I used 4 inch squares instead which made it a manageable size.

First, students filled out a worksheet that asked them about their family’s heritage. Next, they identified the colors and shapes on the world flag associated with the country and painted their concentric circles. My favorite part was the variety of things they drew to represent their country: shamrocks, bowls of rice and beans, the Eiffel Tower, maple leaves, stars, slices of pizza, dogs, hockey sticks and cuckoo clocks!

The finished collaborative project measures 32″ x 36″ and I changed the name to World Flag Circle Quilt. The finished piece visually represents the many countries that Americans have immigrated from and how we weave our lives together under one flag.

STEAM Art Project

Student balancing a circus performer on a pencil. Get the Free PDF download form Pop Up Art School.

Balancing Circus Performers can be used in a variety of settings and as a complement to lessons in art and science. Use them in your classroom or library to spark discussions about balance, bilateral symmetry and center of gravity.

Start by balancing a completed performer on your finger. Have the kids guess how it’s able to balance and sway on your finger without falling off. You can let one or two kids touch it gently so they can feel the weight of the pennies hidden inside.

Here’s how to make one:

  • Cut carefully around both copies of the performer.
  • Color both sides with markers.
  • Lay one figure face down. Tape a penny onto each hand.
  • Put the second cut out figure on top, so the pennies are hidden.
  • Tape around the sandwiched copies so you don’t have any buckling or big gaps.
  • Test how well your figure balances.

Our favorite part of this project, is when the kids experiment with where they can balance the circus performer. Before you know it, all of them will have a balancing circus performers on their noses!

 
Free Circus Performers PDF

Five Dollar Challenge

Here’s the story of a Valentine’s Day project that didn’t quite come together in the end. The creative process isn’t a straight path that always leads to beautiful results. Keep that in mind as I walk you through my attempt.

I challenged myself to come up with a project for a class of 25 students with only $5. Dollar store–here I come! I wanted to make something that’s not too crafty, so that I could touch on the standards that art teachers need to cover. Nothing says crafty like heart doilies, but I bought them anyway along with black paint and red paint and some florist foam.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with florist foam for awhile. I thought it could work well for printmaking. The store had big blocks of foam so I cut them into 25 pieces with a bread knife. First, I drew designs in the foam with a pencil but it didn’t print well.Then I tried pressing into the foam with the eraser end of the pencil. I painted the foam and used it as a printing block.The result is a polka dot pattern. I liked the results and I figured out how to do printmaking with florist foam! It also touches on a few art teaching standards: printmaking, patterns, positive & negative. Success… but wait, what to do with the heart doily?

First, I drew on it with crayons and painted over it with watered down red paint, But I didn’t like the results. However, it made a nice negative image of the doily on the paper I put behind it to protect the table. Maybe I can do something with that? …Nope! I tried but it just didn’t come together. That gave me the idea to paint and cut out a red heart to put behind the doily for a pop of color. I wrote I ❤ U using two fingerprints to make the heart.

Overall … eh. I’m happy with the printmaking results, but the doily part needs more work.

Stay tuned, the next blog post will show how I resolved the project.

Sketch Artist Game

Sketch Blog

It’s a teacher’s worst nightmare; the early finisher. You need to give them something to do and you need something fast. Sketch Artist to the rescue! Everything you need for this game fits in a manila envelope, so it’s easy to take it along to workshops. This game has never failed us and we’ve used it with children as young as 6 and as old as 18.

Here’s how it works:

2-3 people play the game, one person is the “witness” and the others are the Sketch Artist(s). The witness has an envelope with a picture of a “suspect”. Without revealing the picture the witness must describe the suspect in great detail. The sketch artist draws what the witness describes. Once the “witness” thinks the drawing is finished they show the photo and everyone sees if it is close. After that they can switch roles and get another envelope.

Something about the game allows the players not to get too hung up on how “good” their drawing is. Because let’s face it, it’s hard to draw someone from a verbal description. Everyone shares a little giggle when the picture of the suspect is revealed. The game teaches observational and verbal skills for the witness, listening and drawing skills for the sketch artist.