6th Grade Self-Portraits (a learning experience)

This is only my 2nd year of teaching Art in public/charter schools, so I'm still experimenting with a lot of techniques and media. I've been wanting to try oil pastel batik with a class, and since my 6th grade classes are the only ones for which I have sink access (I use a science classroom), I thought this would be a good place to experiment. So glad I've been telling my kids all year that art is an experiment and a terrific forum through which to practice our problem-solving skills!

Demo: Aside from a few gray lines where
the ink hadn't dried completely on the
paper, it worked just fine...

My demo turned out exactly as planned. I created the line drawing with white chalk pastel, then filled the image with oil pastel, laying it down heavily and leaving the white chalk lines visible. I then painted black India ink over the entire image, waited for it to dry (about 25 min), and rinsed it in the sink in my office. It came out GREAT, and I was so excited to do this with my students.

So I went through the process with my 6th graders...they spent a lot of time on their under-drawings, pressing firmly, leaving chalk lines empty. They really did a fantastic job. Only when we inked the drawings and began washing them, the ink didn't come off like it did with my demo. I'm perplexed. The first few students who began rinsing their drawings were washing away the oil pastel, as well, in trying to get the ink off, and one ended up with a small hole. So...I put a pause on the project until we get back from Spring Break. My only solution for salvaging these (the kids have put SO much effort into them) is to turn them into scratch board drawings. One student has already started on this process, and while the result is a bit "dirtier" than we were going for, it's not such a bad solution. I think we'll be touching them up with more oil pastels, as well, particularly the eyes and other focal points.

Student self-portrait w/
scratchboard technique begun.

I report when we're done. (View the updated post here!) In the mean time, if this has happened to anyone else, I'm open to additional ideas. I've read that some people add dish soap to the ink (which I didn't do), so perhaps that's part of the problem? Also, some of the kids inked theirs in one class, then washed at the start of the next, a space of two days wait time. I thought that might be the problem, so I had a couple of students ink theirs while we had time to wait for them to dry (again, about 20-25 min), but that persistent ink wouldn't come off of theirs either. So we just decided to let them dry again and wait to try the scratchboard technique. Aside from drying time with the first set of student work, there's absolutely no difference in materials or technique from the demo I made and the students' work. Ah well...mistakes are the foundation for discovery. We'll work it out. :)

Self-Portraits Everywhere!

We're buried in self-portraits at school! I feel like SPs are an annual experiment, and I'm always trying to find new media and inspiration for these. I'm working on Lichtenstein self-portraits with 5th grade right now, and 4th graders are doing an identity project with their self-portraits. I'll post those at the end of the month when they're complete. I'm trying to muster up the strength to do a collage SP project with 3rd grade in April (just thinking about carting around all the materials is giving me a headache). And this year's K and 1st grade splatter self-portraits are here. 

For now, here are a few of this year's 2nd grade self-portraits. As I usually do with 2nd, we discussed van Gogh and viewed a few of his self-portraits. We also talked about impasto and his use of color in all of his work. As with last year's 2nd grade paintings, we used oil pastels and tempera cakes, but this time we just created background textures (impasto style) with lines and dots, sticking with one color scheme for the background: warm, cool, analogous, primary, secondary, or complementary. Last year's 1st and 2nd grade Expressionist self-portraits can be viewed here.

Warm/Cool Landscapes

(Photo note: Can't quite get the contrast
right, so the color's a little off.)

Second grade students recently completed warm and cool color landscapes in oil pastel on black construction paper. I've seen this project on several blogs, but I really like the tutorial on Kids and Glitter's blog. 

My students really loved this project, and it made them feel so successful. The basic premise is pretty simple: Students create a landscape drawing with very clearly separated sky and land elements (hills, mountains, etc.) Students place warm colors only in the sky and cool colors only in the land, or they can choose the reverse. (My students and I decided that when the cool colors are in the sky it looked like night time.)

In addition to the tips on Kids and Glitter, I gave my students a large (12x18) sheet of newsprint to put beneath their black paper. For some students, the ability to visualize the concentric circles in the sky is really difficult. They want to connect the lines at the edge of the paper and have difficulty imagining that each circle just keeps going as though the paper continued, as well. I helped students solve this problem by having them continue the circles on their newsprint (so they could see the complete circles), which really clarified this step for them. For many, once they used the newsprint to draw the complete circle a couple of times, they understood what was happening and were able to finish their drawing only on the construction paper.

The results are very dynamic (as long as students press firmly and don't leave a lot of black construction paper showing through the pastel). The other examples of this project that I've seen use black pastel to trace the lines in the drawing, but I gave students a choice. Most of them chose to leave the lines untraced for a softer look. Many also wanted to add snow caps to their mountains. Nice.

Printmaking Test

"Inked" plate ready to go...

I've just started a printmaking project with 2nd grade, using foam printing plates from School Specialty. With Spring Break just a day away, our minds are on the beach, so our theme is folk art beach houses. I stayed after a bit today to do a few test prints, and WOW, I'm so excited to share this process with the kids!

I've used markers to ink plates before, but I just got a set of Mr. Sketch watercolor markers. And after all the great things I've read about them, I couldn't wait to try them out. They work beautifully for inking foam plates! The trick is that you have to print on damp paper (NOT wet...see below). It took me a few attempts to figure out exactly how damp the paper should be to yield successful results. (Note: Lay printing plate flat and lay damp paper on top of plate, pressing gently all over without moving the paper.)

Here are a few photos showing my experiments with various degrees of wet/damp paper.

Print #1: On dry paper, just for comparison.

Print #1: I dipped the paper in the sink, let it drip
a bit, laid it on newspaper to soak up a bit of water,
then laid it on the plate. Didn't work so well.

Print #3: I laid dry paper on the inked plate, then
sprayed water on the paper. Again, not so good.

Print #4: Woohoo! Success!! I dipped the paper in
the sink, then pressed it between newspaper until it
no longer dripped. Then I laid the damp paper on
top of the inked plate, pressed gently to transer the
image, and lifted the print.

Note: I just checked the print, and as I've been typing the edges of some colors have bled just a tad. I'm thinking maybe I'll do one more test (tomorrow...time to go home!) with paper that is just a bit more dry. I think I'll bring in a couple of towels tomorrow and see if that helps. I'll add an update after the adjustments are made.

Endangered Species

This lesson was inspired by my fellow art teacher last year. I can't remember the web site from which he printed the animal photos (if I find it I'll post the link), but students chose an endangered animal to draw, working from the photos (simple lines, not a lot of detail...we talked a lot about simplifying).

After working out composition, students drew their chosen animal on a sheet of 12x18 colored construction paper. They then traced their lines in glue. The clear, dry glue allowed the construction paper color to show through as the line color. Students then used chalk pastels to add color to their drawing.

Love messy hands!

The big ideas of this project were color and composition. Simplifying the lines of the drawings was an excellent exercise for students, as well, since young artists often get "blocked" when faced with too much detail (where to begin??). So we broke the background information down into basic shapes and spaces. Also, too much detail and the glue lines run together creating puddles, so simplifying was of practical importance, as well. Another benefit was that simplification often led to abstraction, which brought the animal into greater focus.

Here are a few of the finished drawings:

The Dot (K and 1st)

Because I'm very linear myself as an artist, it's tricky for me sometimes to break free of lines and take students on a more abstract journey. I'm trying though! This project inspired by Peter H. Reynolds' The Dot was quite a departure for me, and I loved it. The kids really enjoyed it, too, because there absolutely was NO wrong way to do this. (Not that there's ever a wrong way to make art, but kids are tough on themselves, even the little ones.) It was wonderful to be able to help them turn a "mistake" into a beautiful part of their art. (Don't like that red dot? Add yellow! Make it bigger! Outline it with purple! Endless possibilities!)

I read The Dot to  students, then gave them oil pastels and a piece of drawing paper and turned them loose. The only direction I gave them was to fill their paper with dots...big ones, small ones...dots everywhere! The next week we painted. Again, anything went, though I did keep an eye out for muddy colors. As I always do when I paint from the cart, I had a parent volunteer, so an extra pair of adult eyes watching out for over-saturated paper or too-thick paint was very very helpful.

This was an excellent experiment in color and pure abstraction, and I adore the results. Here are a few more of our dots!

"This is the most fun ever!"

Those are definitely words you want to hear in the art room. This is the first time I've attempted to splatter paint with my students, and I'm so glad I gave it a go. It was so much fun! (for the kids AND for me!)
This started out as a basic self-portrait project. While talking about facial proportion, Kindergarten and 1st grade students drew themselves during a guided lesson. They then colored with crayon and cut out their self-portraits, and glued these to construction paper in a color of their choice. I encourage them to choose a contrasting color (so no pink if you colored your shirt pink, although it seems the young lady to the left slipped past me).

When these were done, they were cute, but they were missing something. I came across the book, I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!, by Karen Beaumont, with hilarious and illustrations by David Catrow, and decided that we simply MUST splatter our self-portraits!

I had parent volunteers (2 per class) come in to help out, with the painting being done in a centers set-up. We pulled three students at a time, with the others watching Harold and the Purple Crayon or Purple, Green, and Yellow on Tumblebooks (by Robert Munsch, another great story about a girl who colors herself). I put the artwork in boxes (which are now quite colorful and beautiful on the inside), demonstrated for students how to flick the paint, and encouraged them to aim for the edges of their paper (so their faces didn't completely disappear). The adults handled the brush, loading paint and rinsing between colors, which sped things up and kept the yellow from turning green.

I must say that we managed to keep the paint mostly contained (though a few kids ended up a tiny bit speckled), the students loved it, and so far no teachers have yelled at me. And the results are pretty darn cute, too.

I have about 175 kinders and 1st graders, so here are just a few: