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?