Notans

This was a last-minute project I decided to do with 3rd grade for the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. At first, I thought my idea was a bit too ambitious, but the students ended up surprising me with wonderful results. A last minute schedule change gave us an extra class to work on the project. The students who worked slower the first day were able to finish and the others had the time to do an extra, more complicated notan. Together, the finished pieces were so nice and colourful- I just had to hang them up for everyone to enjoy!

Art&Science

Today was another exciting day in kindergarten! Since we have been talking about colour and colour mixing, I thought I would try an inter-disciplinary activity to explore the colours which make up black. My Dad, the chemist, has done paper chromatography with us for as long as I can remember, and we always enjoyed it as an activity that linked science and art together. I enjoyed it so much that I explored it further as one of my senior studio projects:

First, we made pencil dots in the centre of our papers, and then created radial designs to surround the dots using black washable markers. The finished designs were then put onto cups of water with a pipe cleaner wick. The kids were SO excited to attentively watch and see how the black ‘magically’ changed colour!

Series

I recently finished off a semester with my very first high school drawing class. To watch these kids learn and grow has been an absolute delight, I will miss them! For their final project, they had to choose an object to use in a series of 15-20 drawings. These drawings were to be completed using a variety of different compositions, techniques and media. The project allowed students to demonstrate some of the elements we explored in the course (line, space, perspective, value) and gave them the opportunity to be creative and try new mediums. It proved to be a good challenge for them to explore many different ways of looking at the same object!

I am very impressed with the final results. Each of my students have come so far since the beginning of the semester and I loved watching each of their creative journeys. Allowing open access to materials was a bit chaotic at times, but it was worth it! It was so neat to watch the creative exploration in the room and see how they inspired one another with ideas. I even had a few venture out to try non-conventional mediums, including tea and axle grease, which made me quite giddy. They learned a lot more from each other in two and a half weeks than I would be able to teach them in that amount of time!

Once the required drawings were completed, I stressed the importance of presentation. Students had the choice between presenting their finished drawings in a folder or through another creative means which was discussed with me beforehand. I was pleasantly surprised to receive several creative presentations, which included a few videos and a handmade box.

Here are a few, enjoy!

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