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. 

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) 

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.

8th Grade Painting- Pop Art Portraits

7th Grade 2D- Pointillism Collage

7th grade 2-D students studied the word of Seurat and his use of many colors of painted dots to create a work of art. They learned about pointillism and how the eye will blend various colors together. Students then drew a cartoon or comic book character using the grid method to enlarge and begin using hole punches to make the little dots. Students also discussed collage and learned that a collage has been around since the 10th century but didn't get it's name until Picasso and Braque coined the term in the beginning of the 20th century. Students would be creating a pointillism collage of their own by mixing different shades of dots. Craftsmanship is very important on this project or else they would end up with a gluey mess. The projects are not finished yet but here they are in progress...

Art club- ceiling tiles

When I started this project with art club, I had no idea it would take off the way it did. The kids are painting ceiling tiles for the classrooms. I wanted to get one for each classroom over the next few years but the teachers love them so much, we pretty much have to do one for each teacher within the next few weeks. Teachers were stopping me in the hallway and emailing me to ask if they could get one. I am glad something as simple as a painted ceiling tile can have such a positive effect on the atmosphere of the school and can make people so happy.
Here are the kids at work...

8th Grade Drawing- Self-Portrait

All of the middle school's in our district do an 8th grade portrait drawing. We all agree that it's important for the kids to understand how to draw portraits when they get to high school. Many of the schools do a Barbara Kruger inspired portrait with text. The images are often very compelling. This year, I wanted to incorporate text with the portrait but wanted to do something different. My school just finished Rachel's Challenge and I wanted to do something that would reinforce the messages from that presentation.
Here is what my kids have done so far...