A Shoe All About YOU!!!

As a getting to know you activity at the beginning of this school year, I was inspired by this A Shoe About You idea from The Imagination Box.

There are several drawings of shoes available online, so I just chose a couple for students to trace. They could keep all the details, leave some out, or add more to turn into a style of their own. 

After getting their shoe shape established, students were to fill the spaces inside the shoe with images that represented their interests. 

After shading with pencil or coloring/shading with colored pencil or both, students decided on a background for their shoe to live in.

Overall these turned out awesome and it was a good intro to Art Class this year after a long summer and possible creative break for some!

Teaching Art Remotely in 2020/2021

Well, I have taken a bit of a hiatus from myartfulnest for a few years...but I'm Back!!!

 It has taken this CrAzY year to get me back online to share lessons with my students and now I am back to share all the fun with y'all! YAYAYAYAYA!!! The things we do when we are forced out of our comfy shells, right? I am hoping to spend the next few days, weeks, months getting back into this platform that I have loved and missed, but just haven't had the time (or energy) the past few years to invest. But it feels good right now to even be just typing and thinking of ALL the awesome things I've been doing in the classroom and on my own art time to share with you! 

I hope to continue to inspire you, my fellow teachers and creatives in many new ways!

So to start, here are just a few samples of the work I and my students have been up to the past year. Links to follow as I create pages about each idea!

A Shoe All About You!

More Shoe Themed Ideas

Project Seeing 2020 Personal Daily Art Journal

More Art Journaling

Color Wheel Op Art

More Color Wheel Ideas

More Op Art Ideas

Among Us Inspired Creations

Surrealist Perspective

More Perspective Ideas

My Artful Heart

Collage Drawings

So friends, stay tuned for future posts coming soon detailing all these fun projects and lots more!  

VIVA LA FRIDA!!!

My new 8th grade reading/writing/math/ART class recently studied the artist Frida Kahlo.  We used the free worksheets from Art with Jenny K to introduce students to working in a grid. (Thanks Jenny K!)  We studied the writing concept of Ex Votos and then wrote special notes of thanks on the mats of these projects.

Students then worked in small groups on 20" by 24" Fridas that I enlarged for them.

This group incorporated several of Frida's quotes into the background.

Starry Van Gogh

This year, a new class of 8th grade students have been working on studying a different artist every few weeks using reading, writing and math concepts.  We studied Van Gogh and the Starry Night recently.  Students enlarged their own version using a grid and 1:2 ratio and finished it in marker, chalk pastels, or oil pastels.  They then worked in small groups to create a song about Van Gogh using Twenty One Pilot's song Heathens and Don McLean's Vincent as inspiration. Students then turned their song lyrics into a "font poem" creating a visual display for their work.  

I added this group enlargement from a few years ago to fill the display.

Screaming for The Scream

The Scream, Edvard Munch, 1895, pastel

Above and below: Student samples using oil and/or chalk pastels.

I hung the students' projects with the 8th grade collaborative Scream from a few years ago.  It was good to see the different personalizations of The Scream and the additions of the interpretive poems! Students really took to the assignments!

Halloween Scrappn'

I love Pinterest for all of the images people share, especially the inspiring vintage Halloween!  Once again this year, I borrowed a few images from various sources (find these images and sources here) to make samples using decorative papers, ephemera, stencils and stamps sold at my favorite art store Mrs. O'Leary's in Wichita.

Here are a few of my ideas:

In the two samples below, I used Mrs. O'Leary's 

line of rubber stamps called Artful Illusions.  

My friend Faron helped with the itty bitty ephemera additions on the sample above. She is really good with all of that extra stuff. Thanks Faron!  You can see more Halloween artfullness here.

Fall Sunflowers

Sunflowers are some of my favorite things to photograph.  This year, I found a new field south of Wichita. They were very well behaved!  I was able to play with depth while taking the pics and then played with color and tone afterward. Here are just a few of my faves...