SeaLife Art

My high school students finished their "zentangle" version of my Sea Life MEGA Poster and I love the way it turned out.  

They do to:)

Our school colors are Red and Black, so that's why they outlined the subjects with red and did the zentangling with black.  Next time I tell them to outline their subjects with a thick red line.  The thick red lines around the subjects look better than the ones with a thin red outline.

Funny how some students don't like making zentangles?  I consider it such a huuuuuuge luxury to sit down and have the time to make a zentangle and they consider it a chore.  Oh well, that's what makes our planet more interesting - we have our differences:)

Here's a link to the MEGA Poster PDF at my Teacher's Pay Teachers store.  Of course it can be colored traditionally too, and even 1st graders can do this project.

POSTERS for your classroom!

      Posters for your classroom, created by your students!

"Poster", "Poster with Theme", "MEGA Poster"

     

I can't tell you how long I've been working on these POSTERS!  Lots of glitches along the way, but I'm sooooo very excited to finally have my first ones available.
More coming soon!  Oops, did I just say soon?  I must be quite the optimist because these took approximately 25 x longer than I expected.  So many percolating projects in my head, hard to get any of them to fruition.
Huge thanks to my DEAR Friend, wonderful mom, senior olympics soccer player, uber community/school volunteer, and awesome Graphic Artist & Web Designer Eileen Vavra!

Egyptian Art Book- PDF Download

Our 6th grade students study Egypt in Social Studies, so I decided to create a PDF art lesson, which you can purchase here for $6! Directions include drawing instructions for a Mummy Cat, Egyptian Eye, Scarab Beetle, Asp Snake, and Pyramid Landscape. The lessons are super easy to incorporate into a typical busy school day. No special materials needed. With the step by step directions, teachers without any arts background will feel comfortable teaching these directed drawing lessons, or copy the directions for groups of students and they can even do them on their own!

Big thanks to Santa Rosa Elementary 6th graders!!

Pop Art

Image by Fábio Biff via Flickr

*Note, small glitch, if you tried to purchase my Andy Warhol PDF lesson this morning of 2/26/10, the transaction was stopped by PayLoadz b/c the number of downloads exceeded my account level for this month. My PayLoadz acct. is now upgraded and all future transactions will go through, no problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Do your kids love Pop Art as much as mine do? Something about Pop Art seems to resonate with "every" child each time I do a Pop Art lesson.

For this lesson, the students created 3 different drawings on small 4" x 4" pieces of white computer paper. Then they chose one of the drawings to use as their master for creating 4 prints inside 4 quadrants of a 9" x 9" piece of white construction paper.

Here are instructions for the lesson below, but if you'd like more precise instructions, with blackline masters and another version to use with younger kids...Check out my "Andy Warhol/ Crayon Pop Art Lesson" available as a PDF download. It also includes student friendly background information about Andy Warhol and Pop Art.

Each student will need the following materials:
pencil
3 pieces of 4x4" computer paper
1 piece of 9x9" white construction paper
Black Sharpie for tracing.
Crayons, pastels, or markers for coloring.

Step 1 - Using a 4x4" paper, first they each drew a CRAYON, following my directed drawing lesson on the board. Then they each drew a SOUP CAN, again following my directed drawing lesson on the board. Lastly, they created their own drawing of a "popular" object.

Step 2 - Students chose one of their drawings and created 4 prints of it on their 9x9" construction paper. To make the prints, students slanted pencil and filled the backside of their drawing with lead. Then turned the drawing over and traced it with pencil onto the construction paper.

Step 3 - Students traced that print with black marker.

Step 4 - Repeat steps 2 & 3 until all four quadrants of the sqaure have an image drawn in black.

Step 5 - Color.







Really big thanks to Mrs. Venn's students at Flamson Middle School!

The Great Wave

Image via Wikipedia

This was one of those lessons that turned out better than I could have imagined. The kids were so excited about the subject matter. The giant wave, with the clawlike hands reaching toward the brave fishermen. Mt. Fuji in the background, with the Mt. Fuji wavelet mimicking Japan's most revered mountain. And of course the Yin/Yang symbolism and shape of the wave and the sky. (The 4th grade students doing this lesson knew all about Yin/Yang and were enthused to share with me their knowledge. Needless to say, the skateboard and surfing culture has given kids insight that I wouldn't have expected.)

Since this lesson was so well received, I decided to add it to my collection of PDF lessons available here. The lesson also includes a wonderful story about a time that Hokusai enlisted the help of "chickens" to create some art that earned him an honor among the Shogun military regime in Japan. Big thanks to San Gabriel 4th graders for their art enthusiasm!

Update - June 4, 2025....Here are some fun "knock-offs" of The Great Wave, or as some might call it these days, "Creative Dupes (duplicates)" of The Great Wave.

https://www.artmajeur.com/art-now/en/artworks/11003218/the-big-wave

Artist:  Aaron Kai

Artist:  Tony Fernandez

Artist:  Randal Roberts

Murals inspired by The Great Wave can be found ALL over the world... Keep your eyes open & I'm certain you'll find one!