FALL 2014

Mono Printing/Finger Painting

On August 19th, 2014 a new art year started for my students and myself!  I thought the best thing to start with would be a lesson in mono printing.  We discussed  the word/prefix, “mono” meaning one and we talked about the process of printing one at a time, hence the word “monoprinting”

The students will remember it as finger painting.  I should have taken a picture of the clean room with freshly painted table tops, ’cause they won’t look this nice the rest of the year.   It’s a fun first day project.  They have to listen to me, cooperate with each other, and they all like smearing paint around.

You start out by smearing some paint around on a piece of plexiglass. You can see one student using a brush to smear the paint around and one student starting to scribble with one finger.  I tell the students to use one finger so it’s easier to clean up.

Once the design is scribbled into the paint, a piece of paper is set down on the paint.  You can see a student here lightly pushing the paper down in to the paint to get the paint to adhere to the paper.

Her you can see a student pulling the print. I stick to light orange and yellow colors usually to make cleanup easier.

 

Below are just some general classroom shots of doing the mono-printing/finger painting.  I wish I would have thought to take some picture of the K and 1st graders, they were all pretty excited!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7th and 8th Repeated Designs

Will did this as his first repeated design project, looks good Will. You wanted it at the top-we put it at the top!

I do this design project with all my classes.  At different ages it teaches different things and as the student get older they can develop their ideas more. It’s intended to teach concepts such as repeated, overlap, no over lap, random, orderly and it’s also a way of introducing fabric design-I want the students to understand that the designs they see on fabric are drawn by somebody.

Ms. Brenna did this and it came out great.  Nice simple circles combined into an engaging design.

I like the way this student incorporated the scissors into the design.  It’s partially done here, a little more completed below.

A work in progress.

A great variation of the pac man shape.

This should be a fairly intense piece when it’s done.  You have to admire this kind of drive.

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I like this kind of thing a lot.  Simple patterns combined into a nice finished piece.  I believe her name is Ms. Eiliana.

One more student who yells, “don’t take a picture of my face!”  Umm…ok.

Z wanted me to use this photo.  It wouldn’t have been my choice, but hey.

Nice repeated design with circles.

Another nice simple design, carefully done.  I’m thinking this is Trinity’s.  If not I hope someone tells me to correct this.

I am so appreciative of two students who don’t mind a photo of them and their work!

I believe this is the second assignment done by Ms. Brenna N.  Great stuff!

This is the finished version of the one listed above.

Great colors on this.  I boosted the saturation a bit when I was editing the photos, but it’s a nicely colored piece by any measure.

Mandalas

Mandalas are designs that exhibit the concepts of balance and symmetry.  I use mandalas to teach those terms and concepts along with being a good review of orderly design.

Here you can see a couple of students doing small sketches(practice drawings) of mandalas.

If you notice, most of the students have written the word mandala, numbered each of the mandalas and in all of the designs you can see the student demonstrating a good understanding of the concept of mandala and balance.
All of the the above are great examples of quick mandala sketches.