Good Luck Maneki Neko!

We've all seen him... the cute little cat waving from the front desk of a store, restaurant or place of business. Meet, MANEKI NEKO!

The legend of Japan's Maneki Neko is about a stray cat a shop owner fed and care for, and in return, he waves in customers to his shop.

 My second and third graders drew precious waving cats using markers then framed them with Japanese or metallic paper "mosaics."

Too cute for words.

SUSHI! SUSHI! SUSHI!

Although I wish I came up with every lesson plan I've ever taught, the truth is there are waaayyy too many fabulous art teachers who've made fabulous art lessons before me! This lesson was inspired by Cassie Stephens, from Nashville.... a true art teacher, extraordinaire!

Using the book, First Book of Sushi, by Amy Wilson Sanger, my students took a look at different types of Sushi, and different ingredients used.
Then the fun happened....

K-1 made fabulous flat bento boxes, while the upper grades made a origami  bento box and added more 3-dimensional elements, which looked super in our Blossomwood Art Gallery!

America the Beautiful!

In November, I felt the need to celebrate our own country!

Inspired by a trip to New York City with my favorite boy in the world, We created some fabulous Lady Liberties....

We began with a pencil drawing AND portrait practice and followed up crayons and watercolor resist to create a beautiful patina (see what I did there? new vocabulary.... chemistry... ) for our Statues. The kids especially loved watching the video on www.brainpopjr.com about the Staute of Liberty and learning the history.

 Way to go, kiddos! AND psst.... an art teacher's tip: USE BLICK LIQUID WATERCOLORS! They are fantastic, budget friendly and have beautiful pigments. You'll thank me later!

Silly Skeletons!

As my schools change from year to year, so do the demographics.  I LOVE getting to know children from different cultures and embracing their festivals and celebrations!
Dia de los Muertos in a popular celebration from Mexico, celebrating the loves of loved ones who've passed away.

Inspired by Mexican folk art and ofrendas (offerings to the dead), my students made wonderful skeletons...learning about anatomy of the human body, while being challenged (or angrily struggling) with ONLY tearing the paper for bones, not cutting it.

After the basic structure was completed, we added details to the skeletons to create a personality.

Not too be left out, my kinders and first graders did a marvelous job with a slightly simpler version:

and the finale, Sugar Skulls using metallic crayons on black paper!

Stunning Skeletons!

Precious Ganesh

So one of the most beloved stories in Indian culture is of Ganesha, the little boy with four arms and an elephants head. If you're like my son, you've seen him as a statue or his picture above the door walking out of your favorite restaurant.

Ganesh is the "overcomer of obstacles" the one you count on as a helper. He carries an axe, (for chopping away problems), food (as a offering or snack), a lotus flower (symbolizing new beginninsg and rebirth) and hold his fourth hand up in blessing. He also rides around on a mouse... so look for his little friend in artwork of Ganesha!

My 4th and 5th graders are making awesome puppets in the form of Ganesha. Starting with posterboard, we trace 8 seperate pieces of Ganesha's body....then decorate the pieces and trace over with sharpie marker.

Using crayons, we color in the designs and cut out each piece.

Even wonder what you can use old-school brass fasteners for? Here ya go.... We punch holes and join the arms and legs to the body with the brads, and complete our puppet with a popsicle stick handle.

Voila! A dancing Ganesha.

India's Diwali Rangoli

Okay, I know, That's a mouthful! As if Indian culture isn't beautiful enough with the gorgeous color and design, they also have a festival that is the "Festival of Lights." A festival devoted to "pushing the darkness out of our lives and embracing the light..." Well, that's something I can buy into.

During Diwali, designs called Rangoli are drawn on the floor of homes. This radially symmetrical design can be made with sawdust, flower petals or chalk and usually has oil lamps surrounding it.

To begin our rangoli, we fold our paper into quadrants (ding, ding, math word!) and draw a circle in the center where the lines intersect (ding ding, math word!). We then add different shapes that are radially symmetrical (ding, ding... again?)

After our drawing is complete we use a black sharpie to outline. I started using chalk and quickly realized it would smear too easily.....

Construction paper crayons or fluorescent chalk finishes the Rangoli.

Just because we enjoyed the printmaking in K and 1 so much, we stamped a background paper, and cut out our Rangoli and mounted it on the stamped paper.

Fabulous.

Welcome Back...again!

After a brief (cough cough) hiatus, Tiny Talent is up and running again! This year I find myself at 3 schools, teaching around 1,300 kids. Do the math on that one... ha! So forgive me if my posts are slacking in details and frequency.... I'm doing my best, y'all!


We are revisiting cultures, celebrations and festivals around the world this year. I selfishly love teaching these lessons... because they really fascinate me! Kinders and first grade started the year out with India's Parade of Painted Elephants!

Here's a great article about the Parade from National Geographic:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/painted-elephants/shea-text

Step One was viewing images on the activboard of elephants decorated for the Parade and drawing our own! We use a template for the outline to ensure our elephant is BIG....

Depending on the school and the availability of supplies, we used gray construction paper or white paper... and the faded out really gross lavender or light blue construction paper works great too!

After drawing and tracing with sharpies, we used construction paper crayons to color in the elephants.

At lastly, we used a super cool printmaking method, (using cardboard wrapped in yarn) to stamp patterns on a brightly colored sheet of construction paper.

After the paint dried, we cut out the elephants and glue them down to the fabulous background.

I'm in LOVE.

Blossomwood Bronze Pour

 

 

Okay, so not REALLY a bronze pouring party... but a really easy and inexpensive way to recreate bronze sculpture! We started by looking at Giacometti's sculptures. We discussed how thin and elongated the figures were and how their hands and feet seem to "weigh them down" to the base of each sculpture.

 

 

 

 

Next, using aluminum wire, we build a figure, and created a pose for our figure. The large hands and feet are important to help secure the wire to the cardboard base and make our sculpture balance. The aluminum wire is so pliable, we really didn't need pliers or wire cutters at all. Simple classroom scissors worked fine.

 

 

 

Using masking tape and staples, we secured the base and made the hands, hips and feet bigger.

 

Our next step is to cover the figure in aluminum foil and paint using black india ink to give the illusion of a patina bronze.

 

Stay tuned for more photos of the finished product!





"Mrs. Cook..... Why do we never study WOMEN ARTISTS?!"

Good question, Miss Sarah! So here ya go....

Laurel Burch's cats are everywhere, jewelry, tshirts, tote bags, notecards... the works! We began by looking at some of her fantastic felines on her website. Since Laurel Burch was actually alive (unlike many artists we study) not too long ago, we have her official website to refer to....

See Laurel's website HERE

Since this was a multi-layered project, it wasn't easy... or fast, but the results are awesome!

 

First we drew the cat, and colored in with construction paper crayon.

 

 

Then filled the background with "fireworks" and metallic paper mimicking Laurels Burch's jewel tones and metal in her paintings and jewelry.

 

 

And then here comes the gold....."purr-fection."

 

 

 

 

Just Keep Swimming....

This school year was hard for me to switch gears from "swim team mom" to "full time working mom"... so I decided to incorporate a little of my summer into the art room.

We began by taking a look at David Hockney's California Series of Swimmers:

 

 

The kids discussed the rippling effect of the water in Hockney's painting and problem-solved to think of what type of art media we could use to create that "look" on our paper.

 

The student's started by drawing a figure (preferably themselves) swimming.... we discussed drawing bodies in motion, and proportion. After the figure was drawn, we colored in and added white crayon wiggly lines all around our swimmer.

 

 

 

 

Of course, the most fun part of all was adding the sparkling blue watercolor to the top of our drawing. My art scientists discovered that oil and water don't mix, and they crayon would repel the watercolor, creating a very cool effect on the paper.

 

 



 

 

A well-equipped swimmer.

 

 

A bathing beauty.

 

 

A very flexible fish of a guy.

You win some, you loose some.

For the this lesson, I had this wonderful idea about crayon resist mixed with etching mixed with repetition and printmaking and......well, it turned out..... "meh."

No art teacher out there will tell you they have great success with every lesson they try. Unless they are lying.

Our inspiration for this project was Andy Warhol's Flower Factory.

 

Seemed easy enough.....We'll start by folding our paper into QUADRANTS (math word) and by folding it SYMMETRICALLY (math word) twice.

 

In each QUADRANTS (see... not all is lost, we're learning math) the student will draw one flower and color it in with crayon.... (looking back, I should have used oil pastels even though they end up all over the floor and on those precious clothes mamas send their kids in).

 

And then, color the background space green (again, use oil pastels, NOT CRAYONS.)

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, cover the green areas with black tempera paint.

 

 

 

Now the moment of truth.... scratching off the black paint (which I probably should have used a cheaper, more watered down version) to show the green underneath and creating that wonderful depth that Warhol has in his prints.

 

 

 

and we win some, we lose some. Thanks for the effort little ones!

 

 

 

 

 

 

James who?

Okay, I admit it.... I don't know everything about every artist in the entire world... shocking, right? So I was thrilled to find out about a little gem from Brooklyn named James Rizzi.

 

 

My son takes an afterschool art class from an awesome teacher who introduced them to this bright, colorful, "Peter Max meets Walt Disney" kinda guy....So being a lifelong learner, I decided to study up and create some fabulous James Rizzi birds with my Kinders and First Graders.

 

 

Of course, most of the credit belongs to Deep Space Sparkle-- the (in my opinion) best art teacher's blog out there...For detailed instructions and more wonderful lessons, check it out!

 

 

Draw and outline birds with black crayon.

 

 

Paint in with liquid watercolors.

 

 

Wet background and fill with "dabs" of watercolor.

 

Fabulous feathered friends.