Lucky Me!

A package came in the mail with LOTS of stamps on it. Lots of stamps means good things, right?

Well, it was a good thing....I'm a Winner!!! I entered a blog "giveaway" and won this absolutely beautiful necklace made by Sarah from Sweden. She delicately wove gold wire into a circular design about the size of a quarter and attached glimmery pink swarovski crystals. Isn't it beautiful?! I love it!!!!

Her Etsy store, Sarah's Creations, just re-opened, but you better act fast because I'm certain her jewelry will sell quick. (I think her "Eve-Necklace" is my favorite, but it's hard to choose.)

Thank you, Thank you Sarah:)

O'Keeffe Quote

Image by peterjr1961 via Flickr

"I found I could say things with shapes and color that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for."
Georgia O'Keeffe, American, 1887-1986

Frida Kahlo is a favorite of mine, but the pain in much of her art (& heart) can be a scary subject for kids. Then, when I came across a Frida mural lesson that Laura had posted on her wonderful blog called Painted Paper, I was inspired to do melon still lifes with my students based on Frida's painting called Viva la Vida.

This lesson was done with white crayon and oil pastels on blue paper. Because of time, we only did three melons.
First we drew our still life with pencil on scratch paper.
Then we drew our still life with a white crayon on blue paper. The white crayon doesn't show under the pastels and it saves the kids from making messy art because a number of kids get carried away erasing too many lines.

Step 1: Large oval for back melon.Step 2: Add an "open mouth with jagged teeth" for the top of the open melon.

Step 3: Draw a "U" shape under jagged-teeth mouth.

Step 4: Draw slice of watermelon in front.

Step 5: Add table line in the background.
Then color!

Great Job Santa Rosa Academic Academy, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th graders!!!

Inspired by Faith Ringgold and Black History

Image by Barbara Company via Flickr

Disclaimer - I saw a lesson online awhile ago inspired by Faith Ringgold and her book, Tar Beach. The teacher had the students use magazine squares around the edges of the paper to give the border a quilted look. To highlight Martin Luther King Jr. day, I wanted to do a similar art lesson. Well, I searched and searched and searched some more for the lesson. I looked everywhere, but do I need to tell you that this "Internet place" is huge? - it reminds me of the kind of sushi I once ate, the more I chewed and tried to swallow, the bigger it got! I searched for so long that it became a competition with myself. I didn't even care about the lesson anymore, I just wanted to find that darn place that I knew it existed. Finally, after an amount of time that I'm too embarrassed to reveal, I gave up. So below is my version of the lesson, and if you know where the Tar Beach lesson is with magazine squares for the border, please send it to me:)



This lesson is simple drawing and collage. It's based on the art piece by Faith Ringgold titled "Coming to Jones Road #4 -Under a Blood Red Sky". It depicts African American slaves sneaking their way through the night, travelling north to freedom.

We used red background paper, cut out & glued on black paper tree trunks, colored the moon - trees- and people with pastels, then glued magazines pieces around the border for a quilted look.

Thank you Flamson Middle School students.

Walking California? (What kids say)

Schlepping my art materials from one classroom to another brought me a smile today.

Image via Wikipedia

A girl called out from the playground, "Hi Mrs. Smith. We're walking California!"
I asked, "What's walking California?"

She said, "Our teacher told us the distance across California and we do laps around the playground and at the end of the year some of us will have walked all the way across California!" Then she went back to skipping around the playground.

Aren't teachers just the cleverest beings?! If anyone can come up with new imaginative ways for making us "want" to exercise, leave it to a teacher. (Ha, not sure this idea would work in Texas!)

Blob Birds

Just have to share some inspiration I got this morning........good friend Mark Krames shot me this art piece he did with his young daughter, Elliot. She painted the blobs of paint, and he turned them into birds. The cutest bird group ever, I might add - all of his illustrations have such personality! (Someday Mark may bless us with his own blog, hinty-hinty.)


Now I'm inspired to have my youngest students paint some blobs, then have my older students turn them into "things".
Ha, collaborative art is so easy to think of and so hard to execute when it comes to scheduling....we'll see, wish me luck!

Quote

Image via Wikipedia

The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist.

A.K. Coomaraswamy- born Sri Lanka 1887- died in Massachusetts 1947

Curator/Fellow for Research in Indian, Persian, and Mohammedan art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.