Four Books to Add to Your Art Studio

I love to use books as the inspiration for my lessons so I thought I would share a couple books that I love to use in my Art Studio. I thought this would be some good timing because February is I Love To Read Month.

Escargot by Dashka Slater, Pictures by Sydney Hanson

I read the book Escargot to my students as we were learning about snails.  It's not really an 'Art Book' per say but it was a lot of fun and my littlest Artist loved to listen to this book when we were creating and playing with snails. Click here to see the lesson I used this book with. 

Windblown by Edward Manceau

This is an EXCELLENT book to teach composition.  I used this as inspiration for lessons on stop-motion animation. As well as simply composition with shapes. For the stop-motion animation student had to use the same shapes to create several different compositions in their animation. The book was a perfect match for the lesson.

They All Saw a Cat, by Brendan Wenzel

I talked about this book in an early post because I used the book an inspiration for my Art To Remember lesson earlier this year. This book is all about perception, how the same object/person can be seen so many different ways because of the perception of the viewer. I think you could use this book in 100 different ways.

You Belong Here, By M. H. Clark, and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault 

Again, another book celebrated in an earlier post. I adore this book!! It's beautiful in word and in images. It was also some great inspiration for a graphite collagraph. 

All the books mentioned above are available to you in the playlist below. Please feel free to use them, however, I could never stress enough how wonderful it is to sit down with kids and read a story with a book in your hand. They love it, and I think they feel loved when you are giving them your time, your voice and your attention. 

Graphite Collagraph

The Art Ed Now is a week away and I'm excited once again be part of this amazing event. This year I'm presenting on how to create and teach a Graphite Collagraph.  Art Ed Now is always one of my favorite ways to get Professional Development. It's quick, easy, and high quality. There is no travel needed. The best part of this conference is that you have access to the sessions after the day... in something they call an 'after pass'. This allows you to revisit the sessions as many times as you need or more importantly WHEN you need the information. Let me tell you, it's a ton of information so having access after is important. Hope to 'see' many of my Art Education friends at the conference. 

Many things came together for me at the same time to inspire the Graphite Collagraph. First, my music teacher coworker asked if I could work with her on the 4th-grade upcoming performance. I was excited to say yes when she showed me what book she was using for her inspiration. You Belong Here, by M. H. Clark, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault was the book selected. The book is lovely, such beautiful poetry. The thing that got me so excited however was Isabelle Arsenault illustrations. WOW!! Her work speaks to me. I wanted to create something in her style and I felt that graphite is the perfect medium. 

If you were one of the first 1500 people signed up for the AOE conference you received a graphite kits from Derwent. This kit was perfect because it has both the graphite sticks as well as pencils. I used both in this collagraph. 

For the collagraph, I used a heavyweight drawing paper. I drew my design and cut with both scissors and an Exacto knife. I did some negative and some positive shapes in my composition as shown below.

I taped the collagraph to the table and then taped a lightweight paper over the collagraph. I used the side of the graphite sticks by rubbing across the paper adjusting the pressure to the area I was working on. This gave me an outline of the images created.

After the outline of the collagraph rubbing is complete, I remove the lightweight paper. I placed the paper with the outlined rubbing on top of a variety of rubbing plates.  I tried a bunch, all pictured below. I used some heavy duty clay texture plates from Fiskars, some lightweight plastic stencils from WalMart, and a cardboard stencil pack from Target.  I have linked all of these options but I don't know how long the links will be good. Any texture plates could be used I would imagine. This might be a fun place to experiment. 

The final result was so interesting.  I think I could use this same collagraph again and again and have a somewhat different result every time.  This whole lesson and more explanation will be explained at the Art Ed Now conference on the 3rd. I also show some different ways to approach this lesson using watercolor colored pencils and exploring some different materials when creating the collagraph. 

They All Saw A Cat- Two Way to Create

I'm catching up with a couple of things from this school year that I just haven't had the opportunity to celebrate. These cats were created earlier this year by the 2nd and 3rd graders.  We did them for our Art to Remember Fundraiser. They turned out wonderful and was a hit with our parents who purchased the products. 

I created this lesson last year and shared it with Art to Remember who has the entire lesson and all the downloads on their website (click here).

I started by reading a book called, They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel. It's a great book about perception. If you don't have this one, you should think about getting it.  It's beautiful, both in concept and in imagery.

I have taught this lesson many different ways. I have done a very structured version the Art to Remember lesson plan because I wanted the final project to be universally successful. In the past, however, I have taught my students in a more choice based way. This plays into the book a bit better because we can talk about perception a bit more. Both ways were successful and fun for the students.

For the Art to Remember projects, I used tempera cakes and construction paper crayons. These mediums made for a bold image on the ordered products. 

These cats were wonderful and I have heard the excitement from parents over and over.  I heard student exclaim, "This is my favorite Art Project I have ever made." Yes!! That is music to this Art Teachers ears!

Alphabet Soup

A few weeks ago I welcome my first guest blogger to MiniMatisse, Mark Rode. His Paper Dinosaur Sculptures are adoreable, be sure to check them out.  Today I'm honored to present you with an Art Teacher I have admired for years.  Lauralee Chambers has been an Art Educator for 25 years in Westchester, New York.  She teaches over 900 students, 6 sections a day at two different schools with a total of 36 sections in a 6 day cycle. Yep, you read that all right. This woman is a rockstar!  Lauralee not only teaches to the masses but also shares, shares, shares on her Instagram, @2art.chambers and on her Pinterest account, Lauralee Chambers.  This is how I recently saw Larualee's latest and greatest lesson, Alphabet Soup.  She was happy to share with us the process of this adoreable project right here on MiniMatisse.

Lauralee writes:

I have 6 sections of first grade and our classes are 45 minutes every 6 days. I begin this project by telling them that “I know first graders are alphabet experts” and ask them to recite the alphabet to me. I ask them if they know any alphabet books and I tell them that I have been collecting alphabet books for a very long time because I love letters! I share some books in my collection and show them my other assortment of letters objects that I have including my alphabet necklace. I also created a smart board document with many, many images of letters on things, with the last slide being a bowl of alphabet soup.


Day One:

Materials:

• 9x12 white drawing paper 90lb, or other for painting, with a pre-drawn pencil circle outline
• Oil Pastels
• Alphabet letter sheet visuals on tables to help them remember

Process:

After looking at many alphabet visuals and resources, teacher will demo how to draw letters of the alphabet in the circle (bowl) by pressing VERY HARD to put oil pastels down onto the paper. If not done thick enough, soup will cover their letters! I show students how to scatter their letters, rather than putting them in a line like they do for writing. They can go ANYWHERE, upside down, sideways, etc. Rotate the paper for each letter trying to keep them all large enough and thick enough. Colors should be repeated and if there is too much white space left after doing each letter of the alphabet, I have them hide their names in the bowl!

Day Two:

Materials:

Liquid watercolor: I mix up a batch of broth color using yellow and orange and pour into containers for each table to share. This will wash over the letters from last class. Going outside of the lines is fine because teacher will cut circles out so they stay round! This should not take long. Put these away on drying rack and start plaid background “tablecloths”.

• 12x18 white drawing paper with a larger circle, pre-drawn with sharpie. I traced these circles over to one side of the paper. (This is where they will glue down their soup in next class, as flat and centered as possible.)
• Water based markers
• Water containers
• paint brushes, I like size 10 or 12

The Process:

Add any needed letters, prep for painting, demo washing broth over letters quickly in long strokes. Put these away on drying rack and begin plaid backgrounds.

Each student has 12X18 with a sharpie circle. Gather them around to demo a plaid pattern of vertical and horizontal lines leaving spaces between lines as you wish. I ask them to choose 3 or 4 colors that work well together. Students will need directions on how to JUMP over the soup bowl and continue their line on the other side. A bit challenging for some, but the irregularities add charm! Once drawn, students take a paint brush dip, and wipe, in water and trace/drag over the marker lines. Some chose to trace only over the vertical lines, others did all. Lots of options.

Put on the drying rack. Don’t forget names on the back!

Day Three:

Materials:

• Soft black vine charcoal broken into small pieces
• Off white paper or tag board, cut to the size of a folded napkin
• Glue sticks
• Plastic metal imitation spoons
• Glue gun for teacher use
• Plastic alphabet beads, stickers (optional)-- The beads the photos are from Roylco

Process:

Everything comes together. Students glue their already cut out soup circle into the center of the larger circle and then glue down their napkin paper. Teacher demos the placement of shading. Students apply charcoal to the bottom and one side of the napkin and run along that line with a finger to soften or blur. Also apply charcoal around side and bottom half of the sharpie circle and smear with finger. Teacher will glue on spoons with hot glue.

Before the shadow is added:

After the shadow is added: 

Lauralee writes: The focus of this lesson combines literacy and letter formation/identification with an understanding of mixed media, using more than one art material in a lesson to create something that looks like real life objects.

This lesson is truely a treasure! I adore the end result. I want to thank Lauralee Chambers for sharing and celebrating on her Instagram so often.  A special thank you for being a guest blogger for MiniMatisse. It was so great to learn the process.  For more on the happenings of Chambers classroom visit her Instagram or email her at, lauraleechambers@hotmail.com

March Madness Final Results

About a month ago I posted about our specialist team working collaboratively to create brackets for March Madness (see previous post).  This was a blast for both the teachers and the students.  We know it was a lot of fun for the kids but didn't know how much until yesterday when we had the 'final match-ups'.  Stink'n awesome I tell you... really, a lot of fun. 

So in the morning, we announce the final two in each bracket (phy ed, media, art, and music).  All specialist had their classes vote in all categories throughout the day and when the final winners were announced... we could hear cheering in the hallways.  That is how we knew it was a success!!  Let me share the final winners for all the specialist areas. 

In art class, the students were voting for 'Art from Around the World'.  The Golden Alligator won by a landslide.

The music results were surprising (well, at least for me).  I have been listening to YMCA for the past month out of my students mouths (YMZA from some of the kindergarteners :) ).  I was pleasantly shocked (not shocked) when We Speak No Americano won by FAR!!

The closest match up was skateboarding vs. rock climbing. Our Phy Ed team has an amazing skateboarding unit so I was sure that it was going to win, but rock climbing held it's own.

In media there was a final two of a very funny book, Where Are My Books, by Debbie Ridpath Ohi and a more serious book Finding Winnie, by Lindsay Mattick which ended up winning.  Students really got to learn about 8 amazing books in the past month due to the March Madness activity.

This is going to be a repeat for sure next year.  It was a great activity, hit a lot of learning targets, and really was a lot of fun for our students.  I love when you can make learning fun and the kids don't have a clue that we are teaching them.   Hoo Ray for sneaky teachers! 

Book Review- The Day the Crayons Quit

When I moved to the middle school I was sure I would never teach elementary again... WRONG!  Here I am preparing for the new year at Hassan Elementary.  All of the books that I have collected over the years, I gave a way to the other art teachers of my district.  Bad choice.  Oh well... I guess I start the collection again.  I have bought a couple of books for the classroom this year.  The Day the Crayons Quit, was one of them.  Cute book.  The drawings were so innocent.  Being a lover of student art, I was impressed with how 'kid' the book looked.  It's a book written from the crayons persecutive.  I could see this being used in the classroom for a great collaborative project between language arts and visual arts.  Maybe 4th or 5th grades are going to take an art object and write a letter from it's perspective.  It could be illustrated in the same manner as the book.  It's a bit wordy for our K's.  I can see them spinning around as I read though the clever notes from each crayon.  I think I will use this book for my upper levels... They might giggle when I pull out a children's book to have it read to them, but even when I did this with my middle schoolers, in the act of reading the book, the class is silent, they are engaged.  Books are powerful!

Is there lessons out there that you have tried in conjunction with this book?  I would love to hear about them.