art at the fair...

We were given the opportunity to display some of our artwork at the Williams County Fair this year!

All grades are using Artist Trading Cards this year... as practice for techniques, as projects, and as "free art" when finished early. I gave each student a pocket page protector to store their cards in, and throughout the year we will be participating in ATC trades with other students at Bryan City Schools, other schools, and throughout the world!

These are the 3rd graders' ATC's from their first day in Art... one student drew a line on the card, then they passed them to their left, and another student finished the drawing using their imagination. I was so impressed with their creativity! Didn't they turn out great?!

Fifth grade started out the year reviewing the Elements of Art - Line, Shape, Value, Form, Texture, Color, and Space. They created these accordion books to show a sample of each Element. Throughout the semester we will be focusing on the Principles of Art and how the Elements are used to accomplish these, and then at the end the Principles will be drawn on the back of the accordion books! 

And, finally 6th graders are learning about World Facts and History combined with the Art Elements and Principles, so we connected the theory of Pangea and the continents with Puzzle Pieces that were inspired by our own personal interests. We focused on using the element of Space and principle of Contrast to create a visually pleasing composition. I loved learning more about my new artists through these artworks!

artist trading cards...

Through my Pinterest-ing, I've found a ton of information on Artist Trading Cards and was so excited to try it out this year with the 3rd graders! Artist Trading Cards are 2.5" x 3.5" artworks that can be traded with any other artist in the world... 

We decided to make Mixed Media Self Portraits. We studied a lot of different art techniques when making these. We began by talking about harmony and painting our paper using colors we thought looked good together using a watercolor wash. 

Then we learned about rhythm in art, and made white prints on top of our colored paper using Styrofoam printing plates that we drew our own rhythmic design on. 

We then used collage to create our clothing… for this part we watched a really cool video online about a four year old girl in Ohio, nicknamed Mayhem, that designs clothes out of paper! Her designs have become so popular through her mom’s Instagram account, that she’s been featured on The Ellen Show and she is now helping J. Crew design a kid’s clothing collection! You can find her online by searching “Fashion by Mayhem” - she was our inspiration! 

Lastly, we painted the skin and hair details, trying hard to mix and match colors to show our own uniqueness the best we could. We did not include facial features because we were hoping to keep an abstract-ness to the portraits. Didn't they turn out so cute! 

After they were done, we signed the backs and sent them off to Mrs Hahn's 4th grade artists in Rogers Minnesota! And my artists were thrilled to receive this back soon after: 

Thank you Hassan Elementary School - we love our new artworks!