Mini Masterpiece prepping with Artist Trading Cards :: Interactive Art History

This is my third year of doing the ever popular Mini Masterpiece project with the Art History students and this year I decided to add something into the creative process of it by having the students do some trial runs with artist trading cards (ATC). Do you do ATC at all with your students?

In all honesty, I have wanted to get in on the ATC "game" for quite a while and I even have quite an inventory to do it - I ordered different supports in ATC size at the beginning of the year - but I haven't been able to get it and keep it going. I blame the ridiculous schedule I keep at any given time with working full-time, graduate studies (also full-time), married and family life, and everything else in between.

(Next year, my goal is to definitely get ATC creation and exchanges going here within the school's art community and then eventually have it connect with another school/art community. I think it would be a great for a student leader to spearhead and so it's on my goal list to make happen in that way. Anyway...)

I have all of these ATC but I haven't used them this year so far. Last week there was a major school-wide field trip that happened though with the Science department and I was left with only half of my students in almost every class! It was the perfect time to break out some ATC for the students to do some creative processing and exploration. I found it especially useful with the interactive art history students since they are prepping for doing the Mini Masterpiece project and the ATC are just the right size to get them to start thinking about scale in order for them to do more successful works of art when they get their final materials.

I put my hand in this shot so you can get a better understanding of how small they are! 

The students used the Portfolio brand Oil Pastels that we are such a huge fan of and they all turned out some pretty amazing ATC that many of them took with them in order to be able to give to their friends and/or hang in their lockers.

I have never done ATC before but I feel like it really worked as a nice stepping stones for art history students to feel a little more prepared and confident for when it comes time for them to put paint to canvas.

Why ride waves when you can paint them :: Oil Pastel studies of waves

In continuing to prepare the 2D Design class to jump right into landscape painting from picture reference for their turn of doing a Place of Grace, we got our proverbial feet wet by wave painting!

While we could have done a youtube instructional video for this one, after the clouds in the sky and the tree, I felt like they should attempt the waves a little more on their own. I did provide some instruction for the purposes of prompting them to connect what they would do with the waves back to the tree and the clouds - like helping them to realize that the crest of the wave is not unlike the clouds or the foliage of the trees. I also helped them to see the darks, mediums, and lights of the sections of the wave as well as helping them to understand where things should be more heavily blended and where their marks should be preserved as they are.

Overall, the goals of the wave painting were to allow them to have a lot more autonomy, be a little more intentional with their marks, and prove to them that they can paint (and well at that!) by using a picture as a reference. I differentiated the instruction by allowing them to select which wave they would do but by the end of the exercise they all had attempted to do both to of them. I projected two pictures I found of wave paintings online and I projected them split-screen style on the dry erase board so I could label them as I needed to.

You can see some of the labels I drew on top of the pictures. 

And here is the student work! The students are getting better and better with their marks and I am so delighted with how they are becoming more "painterly" with their work overall. I am especially excited because this is a class of student artists who are very much foundational in what they know of art so this is their first major endeavor into really producing something that (for them) will feel a lot more legitimate. See if you can figure out which wave (A or B) that they did based upon their work!

This student wasn't done but I believe they have the essence of the wave they were attempting.

There was a lot of peer tutoring going on amongst them a they did their work and I know that helped. Many of them also learned (and demonstrated!) the importance of not just drawing in the center of the paper and using the whole space of the paper. Showing them how to bleed and anchor the shapes, colors, and values to the different sides of the paper really helped them to better understand the overall composition of each of their pieces.

One last thing I did was to play a youtube video as background "music" in order to make their painting as full sensory as possible. It was so relaxing hearing the waves crash every day that they did this. Here is one I used...

This is the first year that I have used youtube at least every other day - for either co-teaching instructional purposes OR to do things like helping to create a more authentic experience of creation in the studio classroom and I am going to keep doing it because it has really made a difference for the students and their work.

Something else of all of this painting of landscapes? I am convincing them (as I told them I would!) that despite any of their individual claims that I ALWAYS hear from them of "I am not an artist," they not only will come to love and crave the experience of painting but they will also be good at it too!

More finished pieces of "a place of Grace" landscape painting project

As I previously promised, here are the rest of the student work examples from the landscape painting project "a place of Grace." The original positing discussing the lesson and showing the first round of student work was HERE.

Lesson Idea: A place of Grace | Landscape painting with Water-miscible oils

So... it's been at least a month and if not more than that since I blogged a lesson idea. It has happened like this not because I have been sitting around twiddling my thumbs but much more because I have been doing this lesson for that long and on Friday was the final day of it!!

I have already blogged about the WiPs stage of doing this landscape painting project with my 2D Design class HERE when I shared about the creative processing related to establishing strong and successful visual composition and then HERE when I showed the students applying color (for underpainting purposes) to their sketched (on canvas panel) pieces. This project was intended to be a very long-term type endeavor both because I wanted the students to do well in painting their selected places of grace landscape paintings as much as I wanted the painting process itself to be a place of grace in the midst of their busy school days. I am happy to report that on both accounts there was major success!!! 

By encouraging and supporting their learning processes of painting techniques and manipulating/working with water-mixable oil paints, they ended up learning not only about how to create some incredible examples of great visual composition not just in the structure of the overall elements of the pieces but also by using color relationships and intentional value work to push and pull the painting in the directions that it needed to go. The students worked from photo reference and they were required to go through a number of stages before they got to the point where they were laying paint to canvas panel. 

If you can believe it, the majority of the student work that I will be showing you was done by students who have never painted in this style/type of painting before. I did a lot of 1:1 consulting with each of them every day to ensure that they would move along swiftly as much as confidently and this project endeavors has turned out the greatest amount of successfully created student artwork examples ever for me!!! I am so incredibly proud of these kids. The below is just a small sampling of what I could have shared with you but I will be doing at least one more round of sharing more examples tomorrow so come back and see me then! 

Each piece was painted on a Blick-brand canvas panel that is 11x14 inches and the brand of paint we used was Reeves class pack of water-mixable oil paints. Also, I went through three entire large tubes of Titanium White (purchased separately) that I distributed/rationed carefully to make sure nobody took more than they needed but everyone got exactly what they wanted.

I just LOVED doing this project and I cannot stress how proud I am of my student artists for turnig out the incredible work they did. Many of them discovered what their personal artistic voices look like and a select few will be embarking on developing what they have discovered and refining it in their own (and mine as well) time. (More about this on another day.)

Anyway, like I said, tomorrow I will share another handful of student samples of this project. Hope you enjoyed the above so far!!

Worth the wait

How do you feel about paintbrushes? Are they a big deal to you? While I am not solely a painting teacher, I do plenty of painting with my classes - most of which are foundational in nature. Because they aren't super advanced artists (yet!) I insist upon using top-of-the-line brushes and I mostly just want to focus on ones that are solidly built without sacrificing key things I want my students to learn - like which brush type/size is most appropriate for specific tasks of painting - meaning I want to be able to have a wide array of brush types for them to be able to choice from for their individual purposes.

All of that said? I have found that the best brushes to use with my classes are the Big Kids Choice Paintbrush sets (with the classroom caddy if you can get them like this!!) by Royal & Langnickel. They are short-handled craft style brushes (vs. being long handled artist length for painting on an easel) with synthetic bristles and both flat and round tips in three different sizes each...

They are very popular among art teachers (as I have come to find out) and around this time of the year they are almost always sold out because they are so highly sought after. Years ago when I first discovered them on accident, I got them for a STEAL by buying them in bulk (I bought more than 3 of them) and they were only $55 a piece!!! Amazing! Nowadays it is much more likely that you see them for at least $75 a piece and if you are lucky you MIGHT score some for just a little less than $70. I have ordered them every time from Dick Blick and if you search for them you will find that there are two listings that appear to be for the exact same thing with the exception of the price. One is listed as $2 more than the other. Why? Because one of them has a blue handled teeny-tiny brush perfect for details and then a red handled one with a nice wide flat one perfect for painting reasonably large areas and the other one has six sizes - three of round, three of flat that I would guess are in sizes that are the most popular overall for artists of any ability or age. That being said? If I were you I would spring for the set that has the teeny-tiny blue handled brush because if you are buying them in bulk, the price difference is only 9 cents. I made the mistake of not ordering that set and though I wish I hadn't I have enough of them on hand that I am not bothering with sending them back and exchanging them.  Below is a picture of three baskets of the cheaper set.

Better than bouquets of flowers in my book!!

Now, while I have made it pretty obvious that I work at a school with great means (read: budget) as it pertains to supplies ordering or just resources in general? I actually don't always just get whatever I want, whenever I want it. I Do have a budget that I adhere and it doesn't allow for me to just order my favorite things all the time/every year. The way I manage that is staggering the ordering of the the frequently used/favorite supplies that might also happen to be more on the pricey side of things like these brushes. I feel like even if we did have the money to buy these brushes though, I might not do that because then I feel like the students wouldn't understand the importance of taking care of your materials so they last. Afterall, art materials (and nice art materials at that!) are not meant to be used once and discarded forever. To be an artist also means learning how to take care of your materials and that includes maintaining them so you can keep using them if they work so well to begin with.

Something else about the Big Kids Choice Classroom brushes with the caddy? They come in these really great plastic cylinder packages that are so useful to use as storage in the studio classroom! I like using them for every day materials because it's easy to chuck things into them without them looking messy - similar to the way a glass cookie jar might look! Currently I have some of these from my last order that are storing/organizing markers and other coloring materials and it is so nice to put these in a cabinet and be able to SEE what is in them so I can pick and choose what will be taken out for use.

These brushes were back-ordered so I only just got them shipped and despite the fact that I received a heads up email that they were coming, I forgot about them and it felt like Christmas unpacking them, setting them up, and preparing them for use. I completely agree that "Good things absolutely come to those who wait" even if that wait means waiting every 3-4 years to be able to get these brushes.

That being said? I also am the proud owner (FINALLY AFTER 1.5 YEARS OF DILIGENT PRAYER AND ASKING AROUND!!!) of something pictured here...

If you watch my instagram feed, you might recognize this as a picture I posted a couple of weeks back when I was in the throes of attempting to acquire some of what is pictured without success. Am I being annoyingly elusive? Don't get what I'm talking about? I don't expect you too because I wanted to share the fact that I have been working on something VERY special (and I guess secret as it has been) for my school to enjoy - both current art students and not AND faculty as well - that seeks to make art appreciation stretch far beyond the confines of it happening in the studio classroom alone. This "idea" of mine is one I have been carrying around for a seriously long time and this year I finally got it in me that I had to make it happen - no ifs, ands, or buts. And that is ALL I will tell you for now until it's good and ready to go for me to present it as something for you to do in your classes too. ;)

How to clean up a wet mess

While I don't hang up awesome visuals around and about the studio classroom to encourage and instruct how to clean up I very much expect EVERY SINGLE STUDENT to have working knowledge and ability to be able to clean up a "wet mess" that might be that of paint, glue, water, etc. etc. etc. Here is a demonstration I do to help them learn how to do it in the most efficient way I have found to do it...

Our motto for how to take care of a wet mess?

Dry to Wet,

Damp to clean-up!

We repeat it so much it is hard to forget and if ever there is a question of what to do when a mess happens, I always ask the following...

1. Is it Wet? Then it needs something DRY to make it less wet.
2. Is it Dry? Then use something DAMP to clean it up!

Easy-peasy! I hope you can use it in your classroom too. *high five*

The pitfalls of inviting me to your wedding

With summer now here and it being wedding season, I'm keeping with my resolution of this year to live a life more creative and give handmade.

Now, giving handmade for a wedding present can be a dicey thing. Gift giving can be really hard and wedding registries exist specifically for informing all invited guests of what might be most appropriate or most welcome by the newlyweds. With regard to this, a handmade gift might be graciously received but it might also not be as fully appreciated as something else. What it comes down to is it depends on the type of handmade gift that is given.

While I could do any number of handmade works, I have been taking the painting class and I am feeling confident that I can paint something reasonably acceptable for the caliber of a gift that would be for a wedding. The bride and groom are both history buffs and appreciate the value of our nation's capitol so it seems most appropriate to do something grounded in that. I got an awesome panel (essentially it's cradle board) in a really nice size that will hang without a frame just beautifully on any focal wall of their home together. I have already done some commissioned artwork for the couple so I know they appreciate my brushwork enough and I pray that I can make the piece I am working on (as seen above) special and timeless enough for it to be well received to recognize their marriage together.

Mini masterpieces in the making for all of the moms out there...

******** The Lesson idea write-up for this was posted last year and you can view it HERE.*******

This project is such a fan favorite for the art history students and there are definitely showing great promise with what will be given to their moms for this year...

I don't know that I ever get tired of mini masterpieces!!! Cannot wait to hear from the students how they went over for Mother's day this weekend.