Happy Friday!

Today is midterm! It is hard to believe that we are already one eighth of the way through the school year and one quarter of the way through Creative Arts! I have so many more exciting projects planned, and students are doing a fantastic job powering through them.

At the beginning of this week, I introduced our unit on Africa. Students will be working in groups to create a musical performance, including both Djembe drumming techniques and African dance. Before starting this group project, students have been working on a mini visual art project. Students selected an African animal, drew the outline and filled the inside with zentangles, a relaxing, repetitive doodle. Most students are currently working on painting the backgrounds, showing their ability to create a value scale. I am impressed, yet again, with the creativity that all the students are bringing to this project!

I was finally able to hang the kaleidoscope artwork this week, so here are some images from the displays!

November Doodle Calendars

I did not send students home with a December Doodle Calendar for homework this month, so I am sharing a few examples of the 8th grade November Doodle Calendars. My 8th grade artists work hard every day in and out of the art room to practice skills and improve their talent, so I was so happy to receive 22 fantastic calendars. Here are a few in which the artists filled the space and came up with such creative ideas:

In case you didn't already know, you can click on each picture to enlarge it. Happy Wednesday!

Happy Monday!

Today marks the first day of the 15th week of school! 6th and 8th grade artists were so productive today that I just wanted to brag about them a little bit. 😀

6th grade weavings have finally begun! After demonstrating patience while slowly learning several weaving techniques, artists are chosing to use three within their composition in order to convey a specific theme. Students are chosing to either convey their theme through a literal representation (e.g. weaving a picture) or through color that represents their theme. I'll post more pictures right before Winter Break when students are sure to have nearly half of their weavings complete.

Last week, 8th graders glued their magazine cutouts to scratch art paper and started adding their zentangles. This project, Gustav Klimt Scratch Art, is borrowed from a great mentor of mine, Ms. Neel; students were creating this project while I was student teaching and I loved the outcome so much that I brought it to FCCS. Artists are putting their magazine cutout within a space, creating foreground, middleground, and background, and drawing with mostly contour lines so they can fill their empty space with a variety of zentangles, a form of soothing dooding. To set the mood, we are listening to relaxing music, which really seems to be inspiring the artists - take a look for yourself!

Each day my artists surprise me with more and more talented, creative ideas!