Illuminated Verses

 

We talked about Illuminated Lettering and I used information assembled by Amy Bruce, which I found here on TishaLou's Adventures of an Elementary Art Teacher.  You can also find great examples of fancy letters on this site too.

Most importantly though, we watched this video about Makoto Fujimura and his recent work of art titled The Four Holy Gospels.  

 

The students were truly inspired and I believe it shows in their art.  I feel so lucky to have these beautiful verses up on my art room walls!!

Each student chose their own verse.  Wrote it in pencil first, then traced pencil with black sharpie and decorated with colored sharpies.  Lastly they added gold acrylic highlights and mounted on black paper.  The paper used was donated to the school years ago and looks like parchment.  Unfortunately it had a bit of a waxy surface, vellum, so the sharpies bled around a bit, but I think they're still gorgeous:)

Thanks No. Co. Christian students!

Fancy "Gettysburg Address"

Image via Wikipedia

"So Mrs. Smith, how long is four score and seven years?"

Hmmmm what is a "score"?

Well, a "score" is an old fashioned word meaning the amount of 20. Not too many common things come in packages of 20, so we don't use the word "score" in this context anymore. (The word "dozen" can be grateful to donuts and eggs, otherwise that word might be a memory from the past too.)

Now, since a score is 20, then four score equals 80, then add 7 and we end up with 87 years.



So if President Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address in 1863, was he correct in saying that 87 years earlier a new nation was brought forth on the continent? Oh, let's do the math to make sure the President was right..........When was the new nation brought forth - or what year was the United States born?

Yes, 1776 (Yeah, extra credit for saying July 4th too.)

So what's the difference in years between 1776 and President Lincoln's speech in 1863? Ah ha - yes, you heard the clue word "difference" so do we add, subtract, multiply, or divide? Yep, subtract! 1863 - 1776 = 87. Phew, President Lincoln was right!! Of course he was, everyone knows that President Lincoln was very, very, very, very smart.

Okay, done with the math part of the lesson, let's do the art part now:) For Fancy Gettysburg Address, we used one 2 1/2" x 3" piece of white paper, 6"x9" white paper, copies of fancy F's for inspiration, black marker, and lined paper for guide to keep words aligned straight. (Here's more info. on where I find my copies of fancy lettering.)

Step 1: Put small white paper in upper left corner of 6x9" paper, then copy Gettysburg Address.

Step 2: Decorate a fancy "F" on small piece of white paper. Make sure decorations go behind the letter and not in front.

Step 3: Glue "F" onto 6"x9" paper at the beginning of first sentence.

Big thanks to Flamson Middle School 8th graders!

An artful SPRING...

Fancy letters are always a hit with kids.....and we decided to honor spring by making the word artful.

For this lesson we first talked a bit about "Illuminated Lettering" - for great information about real illuminated lettering lessons visit TishaLou (yes, she and I have the same first name AND her married name is my maiden name!) and Amy Bruce's awesome lesson here.

Our version wasn't quite so illuminated (yep, little Mr. Time troll squinted his beady eyes at me while planning and said you're only going to have enough time to draw and color), but I think they turned out lovely, just the same.

Materials:

6x9" white construction paper

3x4" white construction paper

glue

colored pencils or markers

Step 1 - Draw a large "S" on the 3x4" white paper, then decorate with designs and colors. I showed students on the board how to make their decorations appear behind the "S" by jumping over the "S" when drawing their designs, instead of crossing in front of the "S". I also gave the students a few copies of fancy "S's" (ha, I've never typed "S's" before....took me a minute to figure it out) from this site that was shared by Kathy Barbro on her fabulous blog with amazing art lessons.

Step 2: Glue large "S" onto background paper, write the rest of the word, and decorate.

Thanks lots San Gabriel Elementary 4th and 3/4 combo class!!!!