DoDo Bird lesson

In a recent post on Facebook, some art teachers were looking for a DoDo bird lesson that was done by many of the elementary art teachers in my district. I actually taught the lesson my first year teaching when I taught elementary. I typed up a basic lesson plan in an effort to help the art teachers who were requesting it and started emailing it. The emailing has gotten out of control so in an effort to save myself some time, I am posting the lesson here for others to access. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Enjoy!!

Art Club: Stop Motion Videos

This year, art club received a grant from the Olentangy Education Foundation and received 10 iPad mini's. This was the third year that I submitted a grant application and was waiting for the rejection letter to arrive in the mail. I followed the directions for submitting the application perfectly this year and requested less than what I had in the past and it FINALLY paid off. I was so excited to receive the congratulations letter and quickly started planning for art club. 

7th Grade 3D- Henry Moore Sculpture

So last year, I tried this project with my class and it was a disaster. A few kids got it but most of the projects were a hot mess. I told the kids to just start carving and to think about the overall shape they were leaving behind. They had to focus on the positive space, not the negative space that they were removing, even though those holes were going to be important. What I ended up with was lines and smiley faces carved into the foam...not exactly what I was looking for and not exactly focusing on the positive space.

After a lot of thought, I came up with a solution to the problem of freely carving. This is going to sound nuts but we scribbled! We took a sheet of paper that was long enough to wrap around the block of foam and scribbled...big loopy scribbles like this:

7th Grade 3-D: Sugar Skulls

My 7th grade 3-D class completed this project just before Dia de los Muertos. Every 6 weeks, I do one clay project with them and one project that is another material, usually plaster. I had been waning to do a Sugar Skull project for a few years and it just happened to work out well this time. We started by reading this article and this article about Sugar Skulls and Day of the Dead.
Next, the kids looked at examples of sugar skulls and used 
some designs to create 4 different symmetrical designs.

What's Happening in the Art Room?

Well I was trying to think of something new and cool to post about today but everything that we are doing in my classes right now are things I have done before. So I thought I would fill you in on what we are doing and share a few things that I have done earlier this year.
My 7th grade 3-D class is currently working on the Rodin Hands project that you can read about here.

ALICE drill

It makes me sad thinking about our lockdown drills. What has this world come to that we must practice what to do in the event of an active shooter? I was in middle school when Columbine happened and since then, more and more incidents have happened. I feel like there is always something in the news about people going into schools/colleges/movie theaters and shooting innocent, unarmed victims. I won't get into my stance on guns because that has nothing to do with my blog. So back to ALICE. In the past, we have always been taught to lock our doors, turn off the lights, hide in the corner and WAIT. Wait for what? Wait for the shooter to go away? Wait for the shooter to kill other innocent students in another room? Wait for the shooter to come in to my room and find us all there like sitting ducks. That's exactly what you are in that situation...sitting ducks. Helpless. You have no control, no opportunity to protect yourself, NOTHING! Last school year, our district adopted the ALICE system of lockdown. ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. Evidence shows that when you make an effort to deter the shooter by either throwing things at them, barricading the door so it's harder to get in (this happened at Virginia Tech and the rooms that the shooter couldn't easily get into were passed up for easier rooms) and getting OUT! My classroom is very fortunate to have a door to the outside so if something were to ever happen, my students and I would be out that door if the situation was safe for us to do so.

screen printing-100 Ms. Lloyd-2

I am giving myself one point for finally figuring out how to make the screens and making 7 today and one point for making myself a pretty awesome t-shirt that I am pumped to wear to school tomorrow.

Screen Printing...many failures that eventually led to SUCCESS!

Well let's just say it's a good thing I started my attempts at screen printing early. I decided this year that my middle school art club kids would screen print their own t-shirts. I LOVED printmaking in college but never did screen printing. I took a workshop once with a fellow art teacher but did not actually make the screens, we just got to pull the print in the end. This was also 5 years ago. So when I decided to take on this project, I never anticipated all of the problems I would encounter. I watched my share of YouTube videos on what to do and felt pretty confident going in. After creating my design, I decided I couldn't just create a stencil and needed to buy emulsion to burn my image into the screen. 

Need new ideas!

Do you ever find yourself frantically looking for new ideas, pinning your heart out with the intentions of trying new projects only to end up doing the same things you have done in the past? I feel like I am stuck in a rut right now. I really want to do new things but either I can't get it figured out in time or the kids beg me to do the projects they have seen in the past. It makes me feel good that the kids love the tried and true projects but I get bored teaching the same thing all the time. I also feel like some of my newer project ideas are less successful than those that I have done for awhile. How do you handle this? What do you do? Any suggestions to help inspire me?

A promise to start posting again!

Good morning friends! I apologize that I haven't posted in FOREVER! Like seriously...it's been over a year since my last post. Life has been a little crazy. I started my own business, an art studio that taught wine and painting classes and then sold the studio this summer, got my 2nd masters and I am now going through a divorce. My dad is in the hospital with heart problems and my only two living grandparents were just diagnosed with cancer at the same time. Not to mention our kiln broke yesterday and our clay trap clogged and flooded our storage room. But throughout all of that craziness, I am relying on my students, my wonderfully incredible students to keep me going. They are my world and the school is the only place where I feel normal right now. We have art club going on right now and the kids are busting out some pretty awesome ceiling tiles. 
With all of that said, I vow to keep my blog updated this year. I want to start posting again because I love to share what I am doing. I know that some of my favorite projects came from ideas that others have shared with me. So hold me to it! This is the end of the 6 weeks so this week is crazy but next week, I am totally going to start posting again!

7th grade 2-D: Printmaking!!!

Can you believe we only have 8 days of school left? Where did this year go? Looking back on all of the projects that we completed, I am very pleased with the quality and quantity of work that my students produced. I truly believe that I have the most talented, wonderfully amazing students in the world! 
While looking back over all of the projects, I was shocked and a little upset with myself that we didn't do printmaking this year. While in college, I LOVED printmaking. I even did an independent study in it and my entire senior art exhibition was printmaking. We did printmaking in 7th grade last year but I wanted to kick it up a notch this year and make it a bit more challenging. I decided to try reduction printmaking! 
For this project, I took a picture of the students and used paint.net to posterize the photos into 3 colors (black, grey and white). Students shaded on the back and transferred all of their white areas onto the linoleum. We use easy carve linoleum at school and it's so easy for the kids. We haven't had any slips (or bad cuts) this year! Students used the gauge to carve away all of the areas of their print that would be left white. Since we were printing on white paper, we didn't need to print this part. All that would be left would be the grey and black areas. 
They chose a color and mixed it with some white to make a tint. Then students pulled a proof. A proof is a practice print so they can see what it would look like. If they were happy with their proof, they could pull 10 or more quality prints. The students discussed what made a quality print and here is their list...

• enough ink, no white spots
• linoleum carved away where it was meant to be carved away (no stray marks)
• Ink has an orange peel texture
• No finger prints
• No smudges (where the paper slipped on the plate) 

8th grade sculpture- Eric Carle Relief Tiles

The 8th grade sculpture class looked at the artwork of one of my favorite children's author/illustrator, Eric Carle. I love his playful use of color and texture. One of my favorite lessons when I taught elementary was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. For this clay project, students learned about relief. They had to create a tile using high relief, low relief and sunken relief. The subject matter was an Eric Carle animal (although some chose to use a different animal). Students also had to create a foreground, middle ground and background and incorporate texture. The finished tiles were glazed using lots of bright colors. Here are the results...

Sorry for my absence!

Hi friends! Long time, no see! I apologize for my absence! It's been a crazy six weeks here at Berkshire. Between testing, added duties, art shows, and new classes, it's been nuts around here. I am also in the process of opening my own art studio to teach kid's classes so between all of that, I haven't had a lot of free time. We had our district art show yesterday. It was a great show. We went to Orange High School and got to show off our work next to Orange Middle School. We got so many compliments and it was awesome to see some old friends, old students, and all of the amazing art everyone is creating. The Berkshire Art show is next Thursday, April 25 from 6-8 pm. It's going to be quite the event with artwork, musical performances, drama performances, food, face painting, throwing demonstrations, whew! That's exhausting just talking about it.
Here are some pictures from the district show.
I will have some pictures and new projects to share in the next few days as we finish up this 6 weeks and head into our last one of the year. Seriously, where did this year go?

Finished Romero Britto Sculptures

I think next time I teach this, I am going to make the kids choose a color scheme. Some of the students got a bit carried away with the paint. Overall, I am happy with the results!

Finished Pop Art Portraits

Here are some of the finished Pop Art Portraits. Next 6 weeks, we are going to work a little smaller and paint pets in the style of Slade Roberts. I am hoping that working a bit smaller will allow us more time to spend working with watercolors.

The cupcakes are finished!!

Overall, I am happy with how they turned out. When I do this project again, I am going to have the kids score and slip their base on to their cupcake top because they aren't sitting very well. I am also going to make everyone glaze because for the most part, the glazed cupcakes look a lot nicer. Here are some of the finished cupcakes!

7th grade 3D- Romero Britto Animal Sculpture

7th grade 3-D students finished up their clay cupcakes and were eager to begin their next project. We looked at the artwork of pop artist, Romero Britto. Britto is a painter and sculptor from Brazil who creates light-hearted, happy artwork using simple shapes, bright colors and lots of patterns. He took inspiration from Matisse and Picasso.

Packing tape sculptures...the finished product!

OMG I am so excited about how these turned out! Check it out for yourself!

8th Grade Painting- Pop Art Portraits

Art Club- Packing Tape Sculptures

 I'm sure many of you have seen the packing tape sculpture craze all over Pinterest. As soon as I saw it at the beginning of the school year, I knew it was something I had to try with my art club kids. We looked at the artwork of Mark Jenkins. Jenkins is an American artist who creates packing tape installations. The kids loved his work. It was so fun and unexpected.