Marc Chagall: stained glass windows

I promise that I'll update this blog more often. Its Spring here in So Cal, and it feels good to be out in the sunshine instead of sitting in front of a computer screen!

As I've said before, this blog might venture a little off track in terms of modern art. This year, we've focused on lots of fundamentals, so what we've been creating in the classroom is a little different from what we've done in the past.

But back to some fabulous modern art in the form of stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. Chagall was a wonderfully whimsical artist who was a born in Russia. Being Jewish, many of his paintings reflect a religious overtone. Chagall is most known for his vibrant use of color, as well as the stained glass windows at the Metz Cathedral in France. He was entranced by the way the light reflected through the stained glass, and how it was constantly changing. This was a project he took on while he was in his 70's!

I wanted to create a paper project that had the similar effect of stained glass. Taking cues from that old elementary school project of melting crayons between wax paper, this project involves torn colored tissue paper and matte medium.

• Consider setting up three work stations: one to sort through the tissue paper and lay out design, another to glue down design with matte medium and a third to iron the designs.
• Before class, I went ahead and cut the wax paper to mimic the shape of a rounded window. Each student
  
• Instruct your students to create a design using torn pieces of colored tissue paper. I bought the big pack of tissue paper that contained a huge variety of colors. Also a wide, shallow rubbermaid bin to contain all of the torn pieces of tissue paper you are bound collect. Discourage the use of scissors because you want the overall feel to be a whimsical, organic one. Some children will freak out by this, enjoying the control scissors can bring. They need to loosen up! Also, inject some thin pieces of black construction paper because they will mimic the look of the lead in a authentic stained glass.
  
• I experimented with what I would use to adhere the tissue paper to the wax paper, since we aren't working with sticky wax. Glue would be a little too sticky and goopy, so I decided to use some watered down Matte Medium. You know me and my Matte Medium! I think decoupage glue would work just fine.
  
• After the students have laid out their tissue paper in a satisfactory design, allow them to lightly coat it with the Matte Medium. Yes, the tissue paper will move around some, it might rip too, just remind the students of the potential for creative greatness in moments like these!
• Once they've finished coating their design with Matte Medium, it's time to sandwich it with another piece of wax paper. Then its off to the ironing station.
• Please have one of the classroom helpers help your students with the ironing of their stained glass window pane. We used it on the lowest setting.
• Before your eyes, the heat will melt the Matte Medium and it will dry your tissue paper design.
• While I was preparing for this project, I cut several "frames" out of black construction paper. The students can then sandwich their project in between two of the frames, glue it together with stick glue and then use scissors to cut any excess wax paper. This way they will get a nice, neat and round stained glass window.

Enjoy!

The artwork above was created by a fourth grader.

Jim Dine: Watercolor Resist Hearts

Hello, fellow art lovers! A few months have passed. I had a great summer doing absolutely nothing! And now, in the thick of the Fall semester, I've been slammed with schoolwork and projects to keep up with. My art classes have changed somewhat, although I still have quite a few projects I'd like to share. I'm now teaching about the Renaissance era, specifically the great masters.

Can I get a snooze button?

No seriously, after you've studied the Modern Art masters and all the fabulous, visionary, amazing art these artists created, the "Mona Lisa" seems a little plain. However, I understand the importance of learning foundational subjects. And without Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", we might not have gotten a Picasso "Weeping Woman". So there you have it, this is where I am right now.

I was inspired by this project over at Art Projects for Kids a few months ago. So the students and I delved into studying the artist Jim Dine. He was an artist that found a icon--the heart-- and then explored it for many years, in several different incarnations and mediums. We artists are funny like that. This project requires watercolors, oil pastels and rubber cement.

• Hand out a 9 X 12 sheet of watercolor paper. You are going to need something sturdier than drawing paper as you will be creating a watercolor resist painting and it needs to hold up.
  
• Encourage students to draw a pattern using hearts. They can be repetitive shapes, overlapping, formed in a grid pattern. You may even want to create several heart templates, for those students who need some help with their drawing skills. The templates will provide them with the confidence to lay their design down.
• As usual, encourage students to be neat about their sketches, making sure not to shade with the graphite.
• They should then color with their oil pastels. There is a rule in Mrs. Pearmama's art class: thou shall press down hard when using oil pastels. None of this feather light coloring in my classroom! These are oil pastels, not cheap crayons! Encourage your students to blend their oil pastels and create interesting patterns with their colors.
  
• The students then painted a light watercolor wash over their drawing. At first, they are very reluctant to paint directly over their freshly created oil pastel drawing. But then they discover that the oil pastels resist the watercolor.
• Have all students take a turn by the hair dryer to dry their watercolor washes.
  
• Once they're dry, hand out small bowls of rubber cement. I have a favorite brand, but imagine my surprise when I opened up the 16 oz. can to find that they don't provide a brush attached to the lid like the smaller cans do. That said, you will need to designate a few cheaps brushes that you don't mind throwing away after this project.
• Have your students brush on the clear rubber cement over their drawing, making sure not to leave behind any clumps. Teach them to use flowing strokes.
  
• The rubber cement dries fairly quickly and is slightly stinky. Make sure you have fans blowing and/or windows and doors to your classroom open.
• Lastly, students are to paint another watercolor wash in a contrasting color over the entire paper once again.
• There you have it, a watercolor resist painting a'la Pop artist Jim Dine.

The artwork above was created by a third grader.

Louise Nevelson: Found Object Sculpture

I am a big fan of American sculptor Louise Nevelson. She appeals to my love of symmetry and found object sculpture. She is well known for assembling "crates" grouped together to form a new creation, then painted in a uniform color to unite the objects.

"When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."--Nevelson

As is my custom, I've been mulling over a Nevelson project for quite sometime now. I found an interesting take on the project here, but I had my own ideas to take the project to another level, to appeal to my older students.

I have six children, so broken toys, mismatched legos, naked dolls and bits of junk abound. So what I did was, with my kids, go through all of their toy bins. We pulled out stuff they no longer played with, multiples, etc. etc. This was a good way to clean up their stuff, so I totally killed two birds with one stone.

And now I had a collection of things for our sculpture. I wish I had a pic of the sculpture that was created with a doll head that I sawed in two, but it came out completely blurry and the student took it home. Boo hoo. It turned out fab, though. And the doll heads cut in half were big ticket items the day we spent assembling sculptures, to be sure.

Heads up: This was a project that I had to extend into two class sessions. There is too much to do in one class period, even with classroom helpers.

• Acquire some sturdy cardboard as the base for your sculpture. I used the backing from all of my Canson Value Artist pads because I had so many laying around. They worked out perfectly. Of course you can used regular old cardboard and cut it down to the size you wanted to work with. We worked with a 9 X 12 piece.
• Arrange your classroom so you have three working stations: one to assemble, one to glue with hot glue gun and the third for painting. This will make life easier for you because there are always students who rush through their work, and others who are very meticulous.
  
• The fun part: after showing students examples of Nevelson's work, they got to dig into my found object/toy graveyard piles and pick out objects they wanted to work with. Break up the squabbles over the coveted doll heads and airplane parts.
• Encourage students to explore different arrangements just as Nevelson did.
• Then its off to the hot glue gun table. Yes, it might be a little time consuming and I usually melt off half of my fingertips, the end result is much neater and more sturdy compared to basic white glue.
• This is the point where I end the first part of the project. Now I get to lug home all of these sculptures. Yay!
• To prepare for day #2, you will need some white primer. Any primer will do. Students will need to paint a coat of primer over their sculptures so that the paint will adhere to the toys/buttons/dominos/matchbox cars, etc. I also mixed up my own shade of charcoal gray. I believe matte looks best.
  
• On day #2, let students go to town priming their sculptures. The challenge is to get into all the little nooks and crannies of the toys. Primer dries fairly quickly, but if you want to speed along the process, break out with the hair dryer.
• After the primer coat is dry, they need to paint using the charcoal grey color. I choose this color so it would look similar to Nevelson's pieces. Several of the students asked why they couldn't use blue or red...so feel free to use whatever color you want. Use the hair dryer again.
  
• IMHO, the charcoal grey made the sculptures look very dynamic.
  
• At our open house at the end of the semester, these sculptures were one of the most eye-catching displays.
  

The sculpture above was created by a third grader. As you can see, he couldn't quite get the paint into the thread spools and lego nooks. Still looks cool, though!

Vincent Van Gogh: Sunflowers

The artist Vincent Van Gogh has provided us art teachers with a wealth of styles and techniques. I had many great aspirations to have the students create sunflowers with actual seeds, black beans, etc. But when I thought about it, I decided to work with oil pastels because the rich color and texture would mesh well with Van Gogh's Impressionist style. I went out and bought a big, beautiful sunflower so we would have an actual still-life to work with. And of course, what is a Van Gogh lesson without the students asking if he really cut off his ear..and was he really crazy?

So I always tell them...he only cut off the lobe...and yes, he was really crazy. How else would be have created such works of art? Surely a sane mind couldn't produce quite the same caliber of work.

We artists, we're crazy! Teehee

• This is a lesson that takes almost zero preparation, but yields a great result.
• As always, show students examples of the artists' body of work, so they have a grasp of what the artist is about. I have several large Van Gogh books that were passed down to me by my uncle, who was a modern art lover as well.
• I set up a still life with the giant sunflower in a humble little vase and handed out a 9 X12 piece of drawing paper or Bristol board.
• Instruct the students to lightly pencil sketch the still life.
• When they are ready to start coloring, encourage them to use a little bit of pressure, to release the oil pastel's rich color.
• I gave students the liberty to be creative with their vases, so they didn't come out the same.
• As a final touch, I had each student sign their vase, just like Van Gogh did.
• As always, I was impressed with each students take on the sunflower.

The artwork above was created by a third grader.

Keith Haring: "Graffiti Art"

I wrote "graffiti art" in quotation marks because Keith Haring's artwork is considered graffiti art, but in reality, aerosol artists were already wreaking havoc on subway trains and walls in NYC before Haring was ever called a graffiti artist.

But you can still put Haring in that category because the art he created was, in essence, the same thing those young vandals were doing on the walls in the middle of the night. While riding the subway, Haring noticed the billboards that were in the process of being changed were left with a black, matte board. That was when he began creating transitory rhythmic, line drawings on them, in white chalk. Sometimes creating as many as 40 a day!

I thought this would be a fun project to do in markers, to give the students another chance to work with the colorful markers.

• Hand out 9 X 12 drawing paper or poster board.
• Have a discussion about family and friend relationships. Haring devoted much of his time to public works that carried social messages. We decided to work on a family/friends theme.
• Each students lightly sketched their drawing, making sure to use Haring's iconic heart shape.
• Encourage each student to use a variety of colors and to fully color in their design, outlining in black for the colors punch through.

The artwork above was created by my son, who is in the fourth grade.

Edvard Munch: The Scream

Edvard Munch's painting is one of those very recognizable works, akin to Van Gogh's A Starry Night and Grant Wood's American Gothic. Everyone knows "The Scream". So what I did was bring the image to class and we had a roundtable discussion about how Munch's work of art made us feel. Munch was an Expressionist, and his purpose was to express a certain feeling, an emotion to the viewer. So I asked the students how it made them feel. It was unanimous, no one wanted this painting hanging in their bedrooms--they said it wasn't scary, but it made them uncomfortable.

That said, I think Munch made his point. "The Scream" makes you feel something, even if you don't know exactly what that is--it's still an unpleasant feeling. So our goal for the project was to create their own "Scream". This is one of those projects where the emphasis is on the idea behind the artwork, as opposed to technique.

• Hand out 9 X 12 sheet of drawing paper or Bristol board.
• Let students lighting sketch their design. We began by creating a horizon line, then there was a short lesson on perspective before students drew their bridge. I gave the students liberty as to how their main figure should look.
• I love oil pastels because they are so versatile. Students can use them in a similar way as crayons, they can also apply some pressure and blend so gives it a painted effect.
• After the students colored in their backgrounds, I had them outline in black, to give the colors a chance to pop.

The artwork above was created by a third grader.

Joan Miró : Assemblage

Joan Miró is one of my all-time favorite artists. Wait. I say every artist is my all-time fave, don't I? LOL But this abstract artist from Spain really is. I love his carefree, child-like style, his colors. They just make you feel good looking at it. I've long wanted to interpret Miró 's abstract style, and this project was alot of fun. I incorporated an assemblage technique, just to give the students something tactile to work with.

• Make sure to bring some of Miró's artwork to show to the students, so they can get a better idea of Miró and his abstract style. This is such an important step in teaching modern art. Its hard to understand and/or visualize the concepts so being able to look at each artist's work is imperative.
• Hand out 9 X 12 sheets of watercolor paper and make sure each student has a palette with 2-3 different watercolors.
• It's important that the student use a large watercolor brush, to give the background an appearance of washed color, as Miró did.
• Encourage them to blend their watercolors nicely because this is the first layer that we will be creating our assemblage on.
• Once they are finished painting, bring out the trusty hairdryer so the projects can be done within the hour. No one likes to watch paint dry!
• Once it is dry, encourage students to draw abstract shapes with oil pastels. They can also cut interesting shapes out of scrapbooking paper.
• Once students have laid out their abstract design, they can add their final touch, which really brings a graphic punch to the project.
• Black yarn! Of course, students could have used a black oil pastel or a black Sharpie, but I though using a spool of black yarn would be fun!
• Each student created designs with a bottle of elmer's glue (just supervise them carefully or they will get glue happy and create a mess!), then carefully placed their black yarn on top of it, snipping off the end with a pair of scissors.

The artwork above was created was a third grader.