Welcome to Creative Arts!

It has been so great getting to meet all my students this semester! I plan to update this blog every two weeks or so in order to share a snapshot of what is occurring in the art room! This will be an archive of all things art for the 2022-2023 school year. Each week I will email parents with a brief overview of what to expect for the week and include any important due date reminders!

A little about Ms. Strasser - 

1. This school year will be my eighth year teaching! 

2. I teach creative arts by day at OMS and instruct color guard at OHS by night! Come check us out at OHS football games!
3. My favorite art media is charcoal.

4. I set a goal to read 5 books this year (to help me get back into reading for pleasure) and so far I've exceeded that goal by reading 9 books! 

5. Of all the arts, visual art has been my passion my whole life, but I thoroughly enjoy music & theatre - attending concerts and musicals are some of my favorite hobbies! (I am so stoked to be seeing Lady Gaga next week at Hershey and Hamilton the week after that at The Kennedy Center!!)

This is actually the LAST year FCPS will offer creative arts. I am sad to see this course go, but excited as we move toward a more digital course. Since this is the last year, I'm going to try some new digital lessons that I cannot wait to start! Please keep coming back to the blog, especially the Virtual Art Show, to see what exciting projects we get into this semester!

Term 3!

 The end of Term 2 FLEW by and we're already one week into Term 3. It's been lovely getting to meet new faces, and now that my classroom is with the rest of the 7th grade team, it's nice being able to say hi to my students from last semester.

We're starting the semester off with an About Me page so I can get to know my students. After that, I introduced students to the Draw Something activity. I love this creative exercise because it allows students to literally draw anything out of the provided lines and shapes. For this first Draw Something, students had to complete it digitally on Kami. This is a great platform for all sorts of projects, but I especially love it for drawing. I already posted a few images of in-progress works on my social media pages. 

Djembe Drums Are Complete!

 Students finalized their papier-mache Djembe drums by adding a balloon as a drumhead. In class yesterday, students followed along to a few drumming tutorials in order to practice playing their drums.

 I have updated the virtual art show to showcase all 30 groups! Here are a few sneak peeks: 

Next up, students are working on creating a collaborative portrait. Before Thanksgiving, students followed along to a shading technique tutorial to learn different ways to shade artwork.

 

Today and tomorrow, students are practicing another important skill: grid drawing! Next week, students will combine both of these techniques in order to draw their portion(s) of a face. Once all the pieces have been completed, I'll assemble the faces and the models will be revealed! Stay tuned for more progress on this project.

Djembe Drums

Students have been BUSY in the art room recently, creating their very own Papier-mâché Djembe drums, a miniature version of a traditional African instrument. Students began with an armature created by two cups taped together, and added layers of Papier-mâché with newspaper and art paste. 

Students did a great job building strong structures, finalized with a layer of paper towels to create a blank canvas to paint on.

 Today students are working on designing the painting for the drums, planning for a cohesive design to show that they are a part of a team. 

This week students will be using acrylic paint to add their designs. Stay tuned for pictures of completed Djembe drums!

Previously, students created Scratch Art Calaveras in honor of Día de los Muertos. First students created their own scratch art paper by filling it with crayon designs and covering it with black tempera paint. Once the paint was dried, students used a wooden skewer to etch their design, creating a patterned sugar skull. Here is a selection that is featured in my classroom, but check out the Virtual Art Show for close-ups of more drawings!

Spooky Radio Plays

 Since it's Spooky Month, students are working on Spooky Radio Plays. Last week I introduced students to the concept of listening to a theatrical production on the radio - some students were surprised by this concept and couldn't imagine having to just LISTEN to their entertainment instead of being able to WATCH it. I shared a short clip of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds as inspiration for this unit. Students are working either solo, in pairs, or small groups to write and perform their own radio plays. Most students are choosing to tell a scary story, but all stories are welcomed for this assignment. A large part of radio plays are the sound effects, so students will also become Foley artists and must provide their own sound effects to help the listeners visualize their story. Students who are working alone are able to voice all the characters themselves, or may employ family members or friends to help act. The radio plays I received last year (while students were all virtual) had a lot of parents and siblings (even cousins and grandmothers) perform and they reported back that it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to hearing the recordings that students come up with this semester. Once the radio plays are completed, I'll ask students if they want to share their work with the class and I'll play some in the classroom and post some on their virtual art show. 

Elements of Art

 Today is the last day for students to work on their Elements of Art Composition. This project is where students show what they've learned about the 7 Elements of Art - prior to this, the class was split into teams to research and create a slideshow on one of the elements in order to teach the whole class. For the artwork, students were given a choice as to how they demonstrated each element; some students divided their page and drew examples of each one, while others created a composition of their choice and made sure to include each element. I have some works-in-progress to share below, but the final artworks will be added to the Virtual Art Show next week! As of today, the VAS for this semester will be live on my blog - woohooo!

Class Flag Winners

I am thoroughly enjoying being back in school M-F because I forgot how awesome it felt to FLY through projects. Students have already completed their first Draw Something, the personality map, class flag, Elements of Art presentations, and started their first doodle calendar! I will be updating artwork on the Virtual Art Show over the long weekend, so be sure to check back. 

Students were divided into small groups this week to become "experts" on one of the seven Elements of Art. Once they conducted a little bit of research on their element, they created a slideshow to present their findings to the class, as a way to put all the information together like a jigsaw puzzle. Presentations were started today, but will have to be completed when we get back on Wednesday.

Each class had outstanding class flag submissions, making it very difficult to vote for a winning design. I really loved being able to see the collaboration occur in the classroom - I missed the sound of students busy at work! After looking at everyone's personality maps, we created a list of shared interests that the class had in common in order to start establishing our class culture. Groups were instructed to use the class color and the list of interests to create a flag that displayed the things that matter to us most. Here are the winning designs (the others will be included in the Virtual Art Show):