New books - Coming soon!

The Art Teacher's Substitute Notebook:  The Basics and The Art Teacher's Substitute Notebook: K-2 Lessons are now available for download!  

Click Here!

Learn more about these fabulous notebooks in the No Corner Suns Store!

Dia de las Muertos - Day of the Dead Handout

This Dia de las Muertos/Day of the Dead handout is an introduction to the holiday for primary or secondary students.

Day of the Dead is a great holiday to study. There is a lot of cool art and folk imagery.  It could also be integrated in with History, Social Studies, Spanish, and even Science by learning about human anatomy!
My students have made tin ornaments, alters, and milagros.

Family Portrait Worksheet and Sculpture Handout

Family Portrait Worksheet and Sculpture Handout helps introduce students to family portraits as a subject matter.  Page two introduces students to bas relief sculpture and new media and techniques they could use

Ceramics Vocabulary worksheet

The Ceramics Vocabulary worksheet lists important terminology students studying ceramics should know.  It's a great worksheet for review, or to discuss as a class.

Hieroglyphics Handout

The Hieroglyphics Handout is a pretty extensive breakdown of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics.  Unfortunately, I do not know where it came from and this copy is not the best.  But it is so detailed!  I wanted to include it on the blog.

Invent Your Own Cartoon Character! handout

From SchoolArts in 2001, here is a Invent Your Own Cartoon Character! handout.  This is fun for all ages!  This can be a sketchbook supplement, in the drawing center, or used as a resource for a unit on cartooning!

Color Theory Color Mixing take home worksheet

The best way to learn how to mix colors is to actually mix colors!  It may seem like artists just know instinctively how to mix, but it doesn't just come naturally.  Students who are just learning color theory and color mixing need to understand how the colors react with one another.  This Color Theory/Color Mixing take home worksheet will have kids problem solving to get the right answer.  This is a useful review for students who have already had some color mixing experience.

Color Theory Worksheet - Intermediate/Secondary

This Color Theory Worksheet is a little bit more inclusive than the worksheet I had previously posted.  This worksheet is full of color theory vocabulary words that the students would have to find the definitions for, or review and go over with you.

Composition and Design Handout

Composition and Design can be a little confusing to teach.  Sometimes kids get it and sometimes they just don't.  This handout explains composition and design pretty good to secondary or high school students.  It is a nice handout to put in a sketchbook and refer to for a project or to brush up on some composition terms.

Ancient Roman Mini Mosaics Worksheet

This Ancient Roman Mini Mosaics worksheet introduces primary students to mosaics as an art form and to the art of Ancient Rome.  This is a great primer for some construction paper mosaics, or even the real deal!

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"Your Art Room's a Mess!" Now available in .pdf

Not everyone has an iPad and is able to access my new eBook, and I don't want those people to be stuck with disorganized art rooms and rambunctious students!
I've made "Your Art Room's A Mess!" available in my TeachersPayTeachers store as a .pdf download. It's a little more expensive this way, 'cause TPT takes a big cut.  The .pdf version can be read on many devices and even printed!  All 107 pages.

Thanks for checking it out.

Musical Clip Art Handout brainstorming reference

Music is a great subject matter for visual art!  With primary students it can reinforce instrument names and types. Intermediate and secondary students can relate more to the sounds and songs they like, and think about visual rhythm.  Clip art is never a good substitute for something drawn or created by the students, but it works well as a reference and to get students brainstorming.  This Musical Clip Art page is exactly what it sounds like.  Several clip art instruments on one page for quick reference.

Nefertari Coloring Page

This Nefertari Coloring Page was originally from a book that I unfortunately have no recollection of.  It is a quality picture and a nice supplement to an Ancient Egyptian unit.

Star Wars Hall Passes

The link was not working on the Star Wars Hall Passes earlier!  Now it is.

Hall Passes! And Star Wars.

Do high schoolers still use hall passes?  It seems kind of old fashioned.

If there was one thing my high school students could depend on, it was that I was(am) a huge Star Wars nerd and I took every opportunity available to incorporate Star Wars into their art education.

I don't do this so much anymore, and I will tell you why.  My first few years teaching were right at the height of late 90's Star Wars fever.  The originals (er... special editions?) had been rereleased in theaters, and the world was abuzz with the anticipation of The Phantom Menace.  What an exciting time! That movie was no good.  It did not wane my feelings for the franchise, but the new generation of Star Wars fans being educated in public schools had no idea what my Star Wars was really about.  It progressively blossomed into the Clone Wars series, Lego Star Wars, and other things that I could no longer engage in or simply relate to.  If Star Wars came up with my elementary students, it often became a moot conversation between me and a fifth grader who frankly had no idea what they were talking about.


Here are two pages of hall passes.  The Star Wars Hall Passes have nothing to do with art class, except for a Far Side cartoon that replaced some unfortunate character.
The second page is a mishmosh of passes I drew or apparently haphazardly threw together.  Either way, the collection will add class and elegance to your art room.

Your Art Room's A Mess! An update on my new ebook.

Your Art Room's A Mess is my new ebook available on iTunes/iBookstore.  I just updated the free sample!  This new preview includes:

•  the table of contents (now you can see what is in the book!)
•  the preface
•  a bit of chapter 1 - Management Plan
•  and what is going to happen with pencils!

The book includes everything I have ever learned (to date) on what certain art supplies are used for, distributing and storing supplies, what's going to happen when these supplies get into the students' hands, and what the special concerns are with these supplies.

Please visit the iTunes store and check it out.  Thanks!

Breakfast Food Color and Cut page handout

Breakfast food is a great subject matter to explore in art class!  It is relatable to every kid and it usually does not incite yucky noises and disgust the way dinner can.  Vegetables, am I right?

The Breakfast Food Color and Cut page was made for kindergarten students.  Similar to the Fruit Color and Cut page, I used this during a unit on still life drawing.  Kindergartners would draw their own placemat, plates, forks, drinks, and napkins onto a piece of construction paper.  They would then color and cut out the breakfast foods they wanted to include, or they could of course draw their own.

I drew these pictures probably 10 years ago.  I used tracing paper, tape, and Sharpies to turn them into a handout.  I still had the originals in my file.  I thought it was kind of funny that I had to go through all that to make these simple illustrations. Now, I can do it so much faster and with better results on the iPad or computer.

Fruit Color and Cut Pages

My kindergartners learn about still life painting. We look at several fine art exemplars of fruit in still life leading up to making our own.  I teach students step-by-step how to draw different fruits, and we draw and construct our own fruit bowl still life together.  
The Fruit Color and Cut Pages came about when I realized not all kindergartners have the skills yet to learn step-by-step drawing, or work together.  Every once and awhile a class seems particularly young and they really need to just work on coloring, cutting, and pasting.  We still learn about the genre of still life, but their project is done more independently.  Students get the Fruit Color and Cut Pages, color them, cut them, and glue them onto a bowl or plate they have drawn on construction paper.

Prehistoric Art Coloring and Reference Page

I teach kindergartners about the Cave Paintings of Lascaux.  We usually watch The Cave Painter of Lascaux, practice drawing animals step-by-step, and paint on our caves - or rather crumpled craft paper.   I put together this Prehistoric Art coloring and reference page for early finishers and for all students to take home to discuss what they have learned.

Weaving Vocabulary Page

This Weaving Vocabulary Page lists some basic terminology secondary students should know for basic weaving technique.  There is not an answer key to go with it, but it is something the students could go over with you or use as a study guide.

I've got a book!

Most people spend their summers off lounging by the pool drinking mai tais, but I wrote and illustrated a book and put it on iTunes!

Your Art Room's A Mess  has been a labor of love for the past few years - and it's finally officially done! 

It just hit me one day how many weird little rituals and odd routines an art teacher goes through every day to maintain order and basically teach.  I never learned this stuff in college, I learned it by doing it, and most times it took a bit of trial and error.  How great would it have been to have a reference guide helping me along the way.

Check it out, and pass it along to any new elementary art teacher you may know!

Thanks!

Card Loom Tapestry Weave Handout

The Card Loom Tapestry Weave Handout is a color coded illustration to aid students learning to weave.  This illustration demonstrates how to attach a new weft thread and keep on weaving.  I have found that even my fourth graders get confused as to where they should tie their knots.  This is helpful to have as a reference on each table.

Story Book Page Design Assignment Page

I got in the wayback machine to pull out this golden oldie.

Written on a Mac II, or possibly a Gateway, the Story Book Page Design assignment page was meant for my Art I students way back in 1998.  My first year teaching!  I was a fan of over-explaining things, and of IMPORTANT STUFF WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS or bold.

There are a few typos, but the assignment is pretty good and still relatable to junior high, or high school students.  If I was teaching this lesson today I would not be nearly as strict.  I had quite a few requirements and rules! Yikes.  In hindsight, I don't think my students read it anyway.

Vincent van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles Coloring Page

This reproduction of Vincent van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles Coloring Page was originally from enchangedlearning.com.  I turned it into a worksheet for my students' sketchbooks - or an easy early finisher page.

Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus worksheet

I have been finding a bunch of old brainstorming worksheets, vocab pages, and other resources deep in the belly of my file cabinets.  Some of these are so old, the original file no longer exists...or is on 3.5 inch floppy!

This Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus Worksheet was used to introduce a sculpture project and integrate with fourth graders study of Ancient Egypt.