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!

St. Mary's Art & Music Show!

On April 10th 2014, St Mary's hosted it's Annual Art & Music Show!  This year the students transformed the upstairs hallway into a tropical rainforest.  I must admit, I think we surprised ourselves, take a look!

5th Grade Toucans

View of Hallway

1st Grade Painted Paper Butterflies

2nd Grade Painted Paper Spiders

One of the many Mini-Murals created by our 4th & 5th grade artists

Snakes were a favorite!

Students created foliage and animals of the Rainforest

Some of our fabulous 6th graders showing off their beautiful Chameleons

6th Grade Colorful Chameleons!

4th Grade Kings of the Jungle! (Lions don't actually live in the rainforest, but they were fun to draw!)

7th Grade created these amazing chalk pastel Tree Frogs

8th Graders were given the challenge of basing their compositions off a Henri Rouseau painting.
The results were stunning!

Another 4th grade Mini-Mural

All of the Art on these walls were created in groups.

Breathtaking Waterfall painted by our 8th Graders!

Thank you to all the students for their hard work and our faculty for their patience as we took over the walls of St. Mary School! My main objective in creating this themed Art Show was to give the students the opportunity create something bigger than themselves they could be proud of.  Every student created an individual piece of art as well as worked in groups to draw & paint the amazing tropical rainforest leaves, flowers and animals that make the jungle come to life! Our students came together as a community to create a truly beautiful work of art. So Proud!

St. Mary's Art and Music Show!

It's that time of year again and this year is going to have more artwork than ever!  The students here at St. Mary School have been hard at work for the last few weeks painting up a storm!  This year student's artwork will be hung art gallery style in the downstairs hallway of the school.  But, come to the upstairs hallway to be transported to a Tropical Rainforest!  Experience the animals as well as the surroundings of this very special place on our Sacred Earth.

In July 2013, at the World Youth Day event in Brazil, Pope Francis made a plea to the the world for the amazon region and it's people.  He calls for "respect and and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man." This creation, he said, should not be "indiscriminately exploited, but rather made into a garden."

Students not only have been learning about artistically creating the plants and animals of the rainforest, but biodiversity and conservation of the region as well. A donation bin will be available at the show to raise enough money to symbolically adopt one of the endangered species of the rainforest.  Come and See Us!

Students working together to create the rainforest