SketchBooks in the Art Room!

Students in grades 5th - 8th are using sketchbooks are a major part of their Art cirriculum this year. One of their first assignments was to design an original cover of the sketch book, incorporating lettering, composition and of course - their own creative personality.

Sketching and doodling are important, not only for budding artists, but for creative thinking and problem solving.  It is a valuable tool that engages the mind, enhances our memory retention and concentration by creating a visual language.  Many of our most creative minds have kept sketchbooks...Thomas Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci just to name a few!

SketchBooks are important...and fun!  Keep Doodling!

Monsters in the Art Room!

Both Kindergarten and 1st Grades have been busy the past two weeks creating these adorable and very silly monsters.  We began by talking about lines and shapes, and how a line can make a shape.

We then drew the body of our monster with line to create his or her own unique shape.  The bodies were then filled in with more shapes and lines.  Finally, we used liquid watercolors to paint a wash of color on our monsters.

After our paintings were dry, students created the details of eyes, mouth, teeth, etc. by cutting shapes out of coloful paper.  Can you see our theme?  Shapes, lines and patterns!!  

This lesson was inspired by DeepSpaceSparkle!

3rd Grade Pumpkin Paintings

As we settle into October, our students are hard at work creating their fall masterpieces.  3rd graders are learning Color Theory as they have fun creating pumpkins for our soon to be revealed Pumpkin Patch!  These amazing pumpkins were first drawn in black oil pastels, then painted using only primary colors.  No orange or green used here!

Students had to create their own unique shade of orange using yellow and red paints.
Leaves were also drawn, blue and yellow were mixed to produce the green!

New Art Room!

New Year, New Art Room!  This is our 3rd year here at St. Mary School with an Art Program and our 3rd Art Room.  This year's Art Room is upstairs and we have a sink!  Yeah!!  It is always a challenge moving all our wonderful supplies to a new home but very much worth the effort.  See for yourselves!

Before

After

Before

After

All room decor is created by our students!

We Love Color!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to a new school year!  I am excited to be back with the students creating new masterpieces! Last year I concentrated my effects on posting all the student's artwork on Artsonia, an online school museum, which was very successful.  This year I am going to try to keep up both the Art Room blog and our gallery on Artsonia.  Wish me luck!

Above is our Back to School Mural hanging upstairs next to the Art Room.  Our amazing students created these flowers during the last classes of Art last Spring.  We recycled our table covers by painting on them and using up any left over paint from the school year!  The results are beautiful!  Thank you to PaintedPaper for the idea!