Jack O Lantern Collage

     I had to go present a student's artwork at the Board of Education today.  That's always fun. I get to stand up infront of all the other art teachers, principals, parents, and council members and showcase one of my student's projects.  Sometimes it's difficult to choose one out of the several hundred kids art but this one was fairly easy.  One of my special needs classes made jack o lantern torn paper collages.  First we made rubbings with crayons on textured surfaces.  Next, we used water color paint to make a crayon resist painting.  The next time they came to me I broke the bad news to them.  They now had to tear their crayon resist into little pieces, lol.  Now that I think about it, they really didn't seem that upset about it, hmmm.  After that we glued the pieces into a jack o lantern shape and added a background.  This one was easily the most well put together.  The student really did a meticulous job gluing each piece down.

     Unfortunately, my student couldn't be there to present his art work with me, but it went ok.  I didn't fall down or forget what I wanted to say.  One more thing to scratch off my list, lol.

Here Come the Clowns!

     We're still getting ready for Math Strategies Night next week and as I stated before it's a circus theme.  Today I had my students begin painting the clowns that will be put up all over the school.  I just drew a few quick clowns on some bulletin board paper and let the kids paint them.  They loved working on them.  I've never seen them so focused and on task, lol.  I was actually able to sit at my desk for a couple of minutes before an argument broke out.  See if you can spot the Jersey Clown in that group, lol. 

     I'm going to get started on my next circus mural tomorrow.  Anyone have any ideas?

My Daughter's Portrait

This is another portrait I did of my daughter, Madison.  She's about 2 1/2 in this picture.  I'm not really happy with it.  It looks like her, but I had problems getting her hair looking natural.  The lighting was very extreme and while it looked good in the photgraph, it didn't work as well translated to the drawing.  She looks too washed out.  I tried to match the photo as much as possible but that was probably a mistake.  Sometimes it's ok to change things here and there for artistic reasons.

I may go back and rework it some more.  It just doesn't work like the Fairy Princess portrait from my previous blog.  I'll repost after I've retooled it a bit and we can do a side by side comparison.



All in a Day's Work

     Today, I started working on the decorations for Math Strategies Night.  The theme is the circus and it was up to me to create posters, banners, and bulletin boards to fill up the gymnasium where the event will take place.  Last year, I had the kids draw and paint clowns.  We had a couple hundred of them when it was over and just posted them all over.  I made the opening to the gym look like the entrance of a circus tent.  For some reason, at that time, it didn't dawn on me to use anything other than clowns.  Circus = clowns to me.  This year, I decided to use all the things a circus has to offer for inspiration.  We still have clowns, but we are also making elephants, trapeze artists, lions, etc. 

     This is the first thing I started.  It's larger than it looks, a little over 6 feet.  I plan to do a few more of these type of scenes and also do a few with the faces cut out so the kids can get their pictures taken as the characters.  

     I'll keep you updated with what my students and I come up with over the next couple of weeks.

Keeping up my motivation!

     It's been tough the last few years keeping up with my art work.  During college, I built up a pretty big portfolio of art work.  It mostly consisted of landscapes and figure drawings with a few abstracts.  I was always more interested in drawing people than landscapes although my landscapes seemed to get more attention.  When I started teaching art, I had less and less time to do my own artwork.  Slowly but surely my motivation began to diminish.  I seemed to get my artisitic creativety satisfied through helping my students create.
     A couple of years later, a friend gave me a couple of dozen nice frames and mats.  I used them to frame up nearly my entire portfolio and sold everything.  I made a few thousand dollars and believe me that was great, but I felt a little empty.  My portfolio was now empty.  And to make things worse, my skill had lost its edge.  I hadn't really made and serious art for a few years and found myself struggling to make anything on the level I did before. 
     My daughter was born around this time and I found myself sketching her a lot. 

Ignore my reflection.

     I kept doing sketches of her as she grew.   She was 2 when she really went trick or treating for the first time.  She was a fairy princess.  Sorry my sketch was just a headshot but you can still see her crown.



Again, sorry about my reflection.

     I started getting positive comments from friends and coworkers about my sketches of her and began to get requests from people wanting similar drawings done of their friends and loved ones.  I even started doing drawings of family pets.  Next thing I knew, I had a nice little side business.

     I finally got my motivation to do art work back again and it was thanks to my daughter.



Storybook Art Comes to Life

     I decided to start a blog as a way to reflect on my day of teaching elementary art.  One of my duties at my school as the art teacher is to help decorate for plays and other school related events.  We had a book reading event recently and it fell to me to come up with a way to bring the stories to life.  I was given a list of books that would be read and drew up some sketches of ideas.  One of my first thoughts was to paint a back drop that could be hung up with many of the book's characters.  That didn't work out so I just painted the characters seperate and glued them to cardboard, cut them out and made them able to stand up.

     You may recognize some of the characters from "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Olivia".

     There were a few more from other books but I didn't get pictures of them.  I may go back and get a nice group shot of them all and post it later.  Over all the event was pretty successful.  It was at our local mall and we had tons of kids come for story time.  We set the characters around our designated area.  They were a big hit.  The kids got a kick out of seeing the story characters as the stories were being read.  A lot of them had their pictures taken standing next to the cut outs.

     It was my first time at this kind of event and it was fun.  My wife and 2 year old daughter came by and listened to some stories and got a few books.
     Now that this event is over it's time to focus on the 53 things I have to do to get ready for Reading Fun Night, Math Strategies Night, The Christmas Play, The Fall Art Reception, and who knows what else that I've forgotten, lol.