art lesson

Art Lesson Faves & Fails-Part 2

June 10, 2019

In last week’s blog post, Lisa listed her best and worst art lessons of the year.

This week, it’s Janell’s turn.

Faves

Kindergarten

Country/City Pop-up

I’ve done this lesson before, but this time I added a country mouse/city mouse video. We talked about the differences between city and country neighborhoods, and foreground and background. The results were super creative and the kids found it enjoyable.

Second Grade

Kindness Banner with Smile Flowers.

I was playing with bingo daubers and created large flowers made of concentric parentheses shapes. I was trying to figure out how to describe it to the kids when I realized that the parenthesis shape is like a smile, thus the smile flower was born! Each second grade student made a large smile flower for the kindness banner that now hangs in the front lobby of the school.

Eighth Grade

Panther Animation

It’s hard to find lessons that eighth-graders can get excited about. I had success with this animation. I made a worksheet with eight frames of a panther in a run cycle. Using markers they transformed the panther frame by frame. I added all the frames to the Stop Motion App. The finished video is impressive and they had fun.

Fails

First Grade

Still Life Watercolor

In the past, this lesson has been a success, but this year it bombed. Each table got an arrangement of fake flowers and watercolor paints. Half of the class flew through it and finished early and others struggled and were frustrated. To top it all off, one student ran around the room and tipped over everyone’s water container ruining the paintings, ugghh!

Third Grade

Flint Corn

(What it should look like)

At the start of the school year, I was scrolling through Pinterest and found a Flint corn lesson. I showed them pictures of the multicolored corn and discussed its history and we talked about how important this dietary staple was for Native Americans. The lesson involved drawing the corn using black oil pastels and then painting with watercolors.This group of third-graders wasn’t shy in voicing their feelings of boredom. Because of their lack of interest, most of the corn looked smudged and messy. I thought the watercolor paint would make it look better, but it didn’t.

* Lisa and I will be publishing our blog bi-weekly for the next two months. Summer is a busy time of the year for Pop up Art School. In August, we’ll resume our weekly posts with even more tips and insight into what we learned on the road this summer.

What about you? What have been your faves and fails this school year? Leave a comment below or join us in 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 a profitable AND enjoyable side hustle, we are here to answer questions and support you!

Art Lesson Faves and Fails

June 2, 2019

I only have 10 more classes to teach and then I’m done for the summer! I’m already thinking about next year and evaluating which projects made my heart go pitter-patter and which ones need some improvement. Here are my faves and fails from the year.

Faves

Foil People Sculptures

My hands-down favorite were the foil people sculptures I did with my fifth grade class. There was such a great energy in the room when they were creating these. I collaborated with the classroom teacher and she had them write a descriptive paragraph about their person. For this year’s art fair I put all the 3-D art in one room and they were I displayed them prominently with their writing hung behind the sculpture. I made a video to show them how to make the body from a piece of aluminum foil.

Architecture

My second favorite was a first grade lesson about architecture, foreground, middleground and background. I started with slides of famous buildings and we discussed how architects consider the landscape around the building. I had 4 colors of card stock cut into 8×8 squares and folded in half. I showed them how to make tabs so the paper houses could stand up in their environment. One of my favorites has a dinosaur on top of a house! We made them in December, and a couple of them had a Christmas lights to their buildings—so darling!

To display these for the art fair, I created paper corner brackets that helps the L-shaped paper stay in an upright position.

I loved it so much that I did the same project with students in an afterschool enrichment class that I taught at another elementary school. Most of the kids in the class were in first and second grades. Someone in this class came up at the idea to put two pieces of paper together to make a double-wide landscape. I love it when the kids are more creative than me!

Modigliani & the Fang People

This is a lesson I developed for Pop up Art School. I showed 3rd grade slides of Amadeo Modigliani’s artwork. He is famous for elegant portraits of people with elongated faces and necks. Modigliani saw an exhibition of the ritual masks of the Fang people of western Africa. I showed Modigliani’s work alongside the masks. The comparison made it clear where he derived his signature style from.

Fails

Love Bugs

I wrote a blog post about this lesson, so you can read more about it here. I will teach this again, but I won’t be using the floral foam for printing!

Gadget Printed Hearts

The inspiration for this project came from a Pinterest post. When I think of this lesson, I think of the Pinterest meme “Nailed It!“ I loved the finished work that the other art teacher accomplished. The first step was to paint a large heart. I quickly realized that kindergarteners need scaffolding to make a heart shape. The original post suggests putting different color paints on each table and have the class rotate from table to table. Even though I had the help of the kindergarten aide, chaos ensued. Oh well, the kids had a blast and they learned a printing technique. It just didn’t turn out the way I had hoped.

Stay tuned! Next week, Janell will share her art class faves and fails.

We’d love to hear about your faves and fails from your art class, art workshops or library programs. Leave a comment below or join us in 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 a profitable AND enjoyable side hustle, we are here to answer questions and support you!

Simple 3D Anamorphic Drawing Tutorial

April 20, 2019

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

Leave a comment below or join us in 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 a profitable AND enjoyable side hustle, we are here to answer questions and support you!

What homeschools are looking for in an art class.

March 18, 2019

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?

STEAM Art Project for Elementary School

January 20, 2019

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 elementary 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

Leave a comment below or join us in our Facebook group Freelance Art Teachers in Libraries. The group is for sharing ideas about teaching art and other subjects in public libraries and after school enrichment classes. Whether you are a librarian looking for new ideas or a teacher seeking a profitable AND enjoyable side hustle, we are here to answer questions and support you!