Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Painting with Crayon

I decided to try something new this year and experimented with crayon painting.  This was a fun and tricky project for our fifth graders.  We collected and sorted old and broken crayons, soaked them in water and removed the paper.  (Soaking removed the paper very easy on most crayons)

Students began by drawing and adding collage elements for the base of the project (For collage we used magazine pieces and colored paper)


Heated up the crayons in tuna cans and warmed it in an old skillet from goodwill


We made sure to do the painting over the kiln where we have the ventilation hood.

The brushes held the wax of the crayon and dried within 10 seconds of dipping it in the wax.  Students became frustrated when trying to paint small areas because built up wax would prevent them from small detailed areas.  We decided to just paint the large areas with wax and smaller areas with water colors and colored pencil.  The results turned out very well!










Lego Sculptinary

When most of the class is finished with their artwork and there are 5-10 students still finishing work, I like to play my twist on Pictionary. Groups of students use legos to create the word selected.  Each team has 3 minutes to create and present their artwork, one team is selected at random to be the judges for the project.  (they complete the sculpture too and are notified after the time is up.) 

Building as a team

Putting parts together (Roller Coaster)





Shark Attack







Rocky Mountains





Thursday, May 1, 2014

What the Art Teacher Wore

Everyone remembers their Elementary Art teacher, most of them wore the same shirt/dress smock combo every day...now with paint on every pair of pants I own, I understand why. Well cue Cassie Stephens ( Blog ) She creates famous artworks on many of her outfits and is currently running a best dressed contest, you might want to head on over and vote for Michael VanGogh aka Me!




VOTE HERE



Check it out and vote away! (Mobile version, scroll to the bottom and click view desktop version)