art project

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!

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!

Collaborative Project

January 28, 2019

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.

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!

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!