Rangoli

5th grade artists are in the middle of one of my favorite projects: Rangoli! Students started by creating a radially balanced design to simulate the beautiful Indian artwork, which is a temporary art created with colored sand, rice, or flowers to celebrate Diwali. Below is a video of someone creating a design using sand:

Check out the Rangoli slideshow on the 5Art page for more information and video examples

Once students finished their patterns, they chose 4 analogous colors (colors next to one another on the color wheel) to complete the artwork. Students used bright chalk pastel on top of black construction paper to create contrast. Here are some works in progress:

Mask painting

6th grade students were just as happy as I was to have Art yesterday! Artists are working on painting their masks, using neutral colors first, and then adding emphasis to one area by adding a tertiary color. A lot of progress was made in class yesterday!

MAY Fair 2017

Come out to support local FCPS artists, including 4 from FCCS, at MAY Fair on Saturday, May 6. It is an art show where artists will be selling their artwork. We will have live music and activities - I will be there giving free Henna tattoos. I hope to see many familiar faces there!

Congratulations to Nyah S. (6th), Zoe M. (7th), Alex A. (8th), and Sarah K. (8th) who were all chosen to participate in MAY Fair!

ASL Hands

7th and 8th grade artists are working with my favorite medium for their current project: charcoal! After viewing a demonstration and practicing both additive (starting with a blank paper and adding charcoal to the page) and subtractive (starting with a darkened paper and erasing to show the picture) drawing methods, students chose which technique they wanted to do to draw their hands. Students must use American Sign Language to fingerspell three of their initials and draw what they see. Period 4 has had two class periods to work on their artwork so far, and I am impressed!

Papier-mâché Mask Update

6th grade artists are finishing up with the Papier-mâché portion of the African mask project this week. The masks look fantastic! We started 
Papier-mâché by using a mixture of watered down Elmer's glue, but switched over to a product called 
Art Paste, which is specifically used for Papier-mâché. Below are some in-progress images of the
masks. Enjoy!

"Things That Inspire Me"

The current 7th & 8th grade project has students looking at Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling artwork. For a homework assignment, students had to create an artwork that showed 3-5 things that give them inspiration. I received images that showed students are inspired to do well in school, to be a friendly and loving person, and to live a healthy lifestyle, just to name a few. I was also pleased to see the variety of ways students arranged their artwork. Some choose to present their inspiration in a grid, others included items in the border, or even aligned it similarly to Michelangelo's paintings. Enjoy some of the great artwork!

First ever podcast!

I had an assignment to create a podcast (a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new installments of which can be received by subscribers automatically) for the Grad Class I am currently enrolled in. I thought: what better information to put in a podcast than a discussion about our current artist! Please enjoy the podcast I created about Michelangelo:

www.spreaker.com/user/msstrasserart/michelangelo

P.S. There will not be a podcast where I present the objectives. Those can actually be found on the 7/8 Art page on the ASL Hand Drawing slideshow!