Artsonia After School Art Club: Paint a Peacock with Me!

I spent some time this summer making more videos... but this time not for my awesome YouTube Channel... but for Artsonia's.

My first video was the one I sent in as the "audition" I guess... and you had to introduce yourself and it seemed weird.  I talk in weird voices and make faces all the time to a group of kids and never have to watch myself doing it.  The project is good though.  I wanted to teach a nice simple concept, and I wanted to make sure that I was catering to kids doing art at home.  It works. And I'm hilarious.  It's also the only one that has a cool soundtrack, because they told us not to add music to the rest ☹️




The videos get more and more embarrassing after this one! My daughters are looking into the witness protection program.  I can't wait till they publish more. 😶😃

Merry Christmas Art Lesson Directions Bundle

I put together a bundle of my K-2  Catholic School Christmas Art Lessons directions.  As I mention in the description, the end products aren't very unique from one another when they are finished, but they are cute when done in the children's own hands. 

It's the constant struggle of "step-by-step do this and it will look awesome" vs. "have at it kid".  The end results of these three lessons come out fantastic for my K-1s especially.  I know my second graders can do more riveting things.  Parents love them and tend to purchase lots of things on Artsonia, which makes me happy.  Plus, we do learn valuable skills along the way.  Think of it as process and skills over product.  That helps me sleep better.

See more in our Artsonia Galleries:

2017 Baby Jesus

2018 Baby Jesus

2017 Advent Wreath

2018 Holy Family

2018 Advent Wreath

Spoopy (spooky) Silhouettes - Printable Lesson, Tacer, & Clipart for Halloween

Last year I was asked to leave an art project for the 5-8th grade to do during their Halloween Party/free time afternoon.  Unlike what sometimes happens, I did not get a classroom full of kiddos in head-to-toe costume dropped off to have art class in lieu of their party...or after their party.  

I did not want to leave something lame, but I didn't want to leave anything too involved since I wasn't going to be there.  Hence, Spoopy Silhouettes was born.

It's a classic Pinterest project.  All I've done is put it into one nice downloadable package for you. This is a nice one to do on Halloween when you do have to teach, but you don't dare touch those beautiful landscapes the kids have been working on for weeks, or get out the chalk pastel self-portraits.

The lesson includes:

2 page printable instructions

1 tracer

10 pages of halloween clipart - from the internet, I just curated them for this project.  I did not draw them!

You will need:

Sharpie Marker

Scissors

Liquid School Glue

Coffee filters

Pencils

Watercolor Paints & supplies

Black Construction Paper

Crayons

We put our coffee filters on the air vents to dry quickly! 

Happy Halloween!

Victorian Architecture with Middle School - Gingerbread Houses

For my middle-schoolers architecture unit, I decided to concentrate on the Victorian era.  It's close to winter break so I've chosen our drawings to be gingerbread houses!

I've stolen some images from the Internet and put together a PowerPoint presentation to show the class.  

The PowerPoint shows images of Victorian Style gingerbread houses, and real gingerbread houses.  It also lists some of the architectural attributes of Victorian homes that I want the kids to learn.

I also made a handout with directions and key vocabulary.  It includes the rubric for this lesson as well.

Here is the first video where I show how I drew the project.  This demonstrates how they should start with simple shapes then add detail.

Here is the second video where I paint the gingerbread house with watercolor.

America the Beautiful - An art and music integration lesson.

My music teacher is an over achiever, and wrote a bunch of new units using our new standards, in our new format, over the summer.  When we collaborated at the beginning of year, we discussed what units she would be doing in each grade and when.  Her first unit for fourth grade, "America the Beautiful" would integrate well with our usual watercolor landscape painting.  I used to focus on integrating the classroom's discussion on Illinois and we would use the flat landscape as our inspiration.  "America the Beautiful" would be a great departure from Illinois wildflowers.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

I was already familiar with the contemporary artist Terry Redlin, who's prints, mugs, calendars etc. were available at every mall in America.  His style is right up there with Thomas Kincade: the painter of light.  Seriously, these aren't the type of artists I ever want to promote in my art room.  Pandering to the mainstream populace to create trite overworked subjects makes me want to gag.  Total sellouts.  I'd jump at that chance though.  That guy probably has houses in L.A., Paris and Vail. In each one, a 70 inch plasma screen.  However, I knew he had a series of prints called "America the Beautiful."  And, they are beautiful.  I mean really!  (In that pandering to the mainstream populace to create trite overworked subjects kind of way).  Terry Redlin's style is really appealing to kids.  Kids love things that are *perfect*.  The lighting, the exactness, the details, all amazing.  F

from sea to shining sea

The goal for our first lesson in this unit was to familiarize, & visualize the lyrics to America the Beautiful.  I created a PowerPoint presentation to get us discussing.  It begins with a little history, a link to Ray Charles singing, and then lyric-by-lyric the Terry Redlin paintings.  I used Visual Thinking Strategies  to get my fourth graders talking about each of the paintings. I would interject by pointing out the parts of composition and try to get students to notice the details that quite literally illustrated the lyrics.

The PowerPoint also shows a few fine art exemplars of other artists who chose "America the Beautiful" their theme.  And finally, I included this photo from The Friendly Neighborhood Art Teacher that helps explain the parts of composition.

We continued our lesson the next week with some basic color theory.  Fourth graders practiced making neutral colors and how to compose their landscape.

Our last work day, we reviewed our assessment chart and fixed up our pictures with watercolor pencils.

I attempted to figure out the new art standards as I put together my assessment chart.  I still do not think I correctly understand where everything fits in.  This is going to take some time!

Watercolor Heaven! That brief moment when everyone is painting and everything is perfect.

I've mentioned before how 3rd grade is often a challenge for me.  I finally got up my nerve to  watercolor paint with them, and it was everything I ever imagined it would be.

We have been learning about implied texture and making awesome alien portraits.  We drew an imagined formal alien portrait and added implied texture.  We traced in crayon and were planning a wax resist painting.

My class right after lunch was a disaster.  It took us forever to get supplies.  Several students did not follow set up directions.  Several students were not listening to instructions.  Several students ended up not able to paint.

We never got to watercolor heaven in that class.

I was already super cranky when my end of the day class came in.  I went through my same spiel.  We set up, we listened to directions, we got supplies.  And then it happened.

Watercolor heaven.

The room was silent except for the occasional excitement when the water changed color, or when they started to paint over their white stars and saw them magically appear.  I circled the room and everyone was on task.  Colors were translucent, brushes were in a point!  No one's brush was having a bad hair day, or scrubbing holes in the paper.  No one was using tissue to clean up spills and no one was wiping their brush on their smock.

Watercolor heaven t'was just a fleeting moment though.  Soon someone needed clean water, and another table spilled.  Two kids ran out of yellow, and another reallllllllly had to go to the bathroom.  One kid was done, another stuck their fingers in the paint, and of course one kid splattered water at their tablemates.

The hustle and bustle of cleaning up began.  The rest of the hour was a blur, but when their classroom teacher asked how they did, all I could remember was watercolor heaven.  "They were WONDERFUL!!  They did such a great job today!!"