Altered Sunflowers

This September my sister and I got to go play sunflower fielding around the Wichita area.  Once we found them, we had fun photographing the dream like awesomeness!  I used my IPad for some of the images.  When we returned home, I altered a few with the Pencil Sketch App. 

Above show the watercolor, colored pencil, and pencil filters. Below is the frame effect.

WARNING: Altering photos using the Pencil Sketch App is a bit addicting! The next experiment is to have students alter their artwork and print a few for their portfolios...will let you know how that goes!!!

Sugar Skull Art

7th grade created a few Day of the Dead Sugar Skull inspired art works last week.  Above shows Styrofoam prints we printed in black and white paint. We used the skull design worksheet below that I found on Pinterest for ideas.  They mixed and matched the details and traced and transferred to create a symmetrical skull design.

After printing 4 prints, students altered at least 2 with construction paper crayons. We also used the crayons to color their foam plates. We matted them to an extra paper that they inked up on to create another effect.

Their pattern for their print was then colored and matted to this optical illusion backgound I found on Pinterest.

Two of my 7th grade classes printed, the other two created metal repousee skulls.  We traced the patterns onto the metal, then indented the designs deeper by pushing directly into the metal and popped somethings forward from the back, then colored over the metal with colored sharpies. Students then chose papers to layer with and matted them.

Overall, it was a great week celebrating Day of the Dead and learning some different techniques using the Sugar Skull as a motif. You can find more Day of the Dead art here.

Day of the Dead

These are my latest Day of the Dead projects. This is a wooden box with a a shadow box glued inside the lid to create a box of remembrance. I was able to gather different Day of the Dead symbols that are important to me and represent those who are dear to me who have passed. 

The front and back covers were painted black and then covered with this fun sugar skull paper.

This year's alter or ofrenda for my classroom has grown!  In addition to some fun Day of the Dead accessories, I added pictures of our artful Mexican ancestors to honor.

Jose Posada and his Catrina

Frida Khalo and her self portrait

Diego Rivera self portrait

This is the front/back of a 3 by 4 inch altered Artist Block in the Day of the Dead theme. I modpodged a pre-designed skull napkin over a distressed paint layer in white. I added rhinestones, corrugated cardboard, and lace to finish.

You can see more Day of the Dead projects here.

We will be creating sugar skull prints and metal repousees this week in 7th grade. Be sure to check back soon for pics!

Stenciled Halloween

I got to play stencils again for Mrs. O'Leary's Art Store. Here are a couple Halloween/Day of the Dead canvases I just completed. It is always fun to layer and combine different elements into a finished piece, yet challenging to work within a theme. You can see more stenciled canvases here.

Halloween Books

I HEART Halloween stuff! It is so much fun to use all of the new papers, stickers, dies, embellishments, oh my! They lend themselves easily to fun book pages collages.  

These two 6 by 6 books were fun and easy to create by mixing and matching all the great stuff!I love the color pallet and the simple paper designs. Can't wait to play more!

You can see more of my Halloween books here.

halloween scrappin'

I am just loving the new Halloween scrapbook papers and dies that are out now!  I have also found lots of vintage Halloweenie images to play with on Pinterest.  Combining them was a fun and easy challenge! I made these as stamples for Mrs. O'Leary's Art Store.  I glued them to 12 by 12 cardstock and they stand for awesome displays.

I love how these turned out...a fun scrapbookie twist!

You can see more of my scrapbook pages 

here and here and more Halloween fun here.

bulletin board minions

I was inspired by the recent Minions movie to create another Minion theme art hallway bulletin board this year. I found lots of inspiration online and incorporated the pencil theme with them as well.

I found this image of the Minions holding pencils, ready to learn from _artistiq_art on Instagram.  This was the perfect image to get me started!  I then found the images below from moviepilot.com to create a little gallery of art history inspired Minion pictures.

I recreated the Minions out of poster board and construction paper, adding a pencil and substituting a banana for fun.  I kept my pencil border and large pencil sign to remind students about the most important things to have before entering the art room!  You can see more Minion themed projects here.