Art Club: Glass Plates

For the last few weeks, my art club has been working on lots of glass plates to sell at our art show.  This is going to be our major fundraising event for our field trip.  We will also be selling our boondoggle as well.  The art show is slowly creeping up on us...this year it will be on May 21st, budget vote night.

This particular student wanted to do a version of Starry Night...

The top two plates are my creations...

It's been a slow process getting them all fused and slumped...I can only do one large plate at a time with a few small plates.

One of our experiments are coral bowls.  I found this pin on Pinterest and I decided to experiment with the students.  My finished bowl is on the right, and one of the bowls that has not been fused is on the left.  We didn't quite follow the steps exactly from the pin, but pretty closely.  I have a box of Wasser glass (I think that's the brand) that I tried using with the Amaco glass last year, but with bad results.  The COE for both types of glass was the same, but I think because the brands were different, they didn't fuse very well together.  My test plate had a lot of holes and air bubbles in it.  I decided to try using the Wasser glass for these coral bowls...if it didn't work, it wouldn't feel like as much of a waste as if we used the Amaco glass, which I always have positive results with.

Basically all we did was cut up a 6"x6" piece of glass into strips and then layer them on top of each other.  Some students added some extra color using noodles and stringers.  It's been a slow process firing these, but they're looking pretty cool!

YAM: Dress Like Your Favorite Artist or Artwork

So here it is, our last YAM spirit day!  Today was dress like your favorite artist or artwork day and there were some really awesome costumes, especially from some of the teachers!!!  (The really funny part is that I did my makeup at home and then forgot that I had to stop and get gas on the way to work!  The little gas station on the way doesn't accept credit cards at the pump...you have to pay inside.  The women there know me well...all they said was, "Must be something going on at school today!")

Our principal is on the left...she's been waiting over a month to wear the dress she bought for today!

Here is the project 4th graders worked on.  Their teacher chose Van Gogh and their teacher incorporated it into their science unit of constellations!  Awesome!

This one is the 4th grade teacher's example.

Finished Bottle Cap Mural: Starry Night! (And what I learned about making a bottle cap mural!)

Well, here it is!  Our bottle cap mural has been finished and mounted!

Is it bad that I look at this, now that it's all finished, and I see some things I would already fix???? Like the fact that the end of the top swirl has a break in the dark blue caps...and that the small end of the bottom swirl looks like it needs some dark blue caps in it?

Friday was staff development at my district and we were all allowed to take the day to basically work on whatever we needed to do, which was GREAT!  A few people had grade level meetings and such, but I was finally able to get my room back in order!  I spent about 30 minutes helping to hang this and getting caps glued back on that fell off in the process.

During the hanging process, these caps fell off the mural and had to be re-glued...Not too bad.  

Now, believe it or not, there are some faculty who DON'T know that this is Starry Night!  I'm going to make a nice sign that gives a little history of VanGogh, as well as how and why we made this, and a poster of Starry Night to display next to it.  I'm also going to make a DO NOT TOUCH sign.  That's the custodian's worse fear...that the kids are going to rub up against it and pick the caps off since it's not behind glass.  The fact that bottle caps fell off only makes them worry more! :-/

Here are the types of caulking I used, and which I found to work the best!
Whenever I do another bottle cap mural, the first caulk with be the one I buy again!

Positive:  Best hold.  I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10.  The custodians had to pry a few pieces off in order to screw it onto the wall...they said the ones glued on with this were really stuck!  Relatively cheap too...bought a 4-pack at Ace Hardware for $10.

Negative:  Dries white.

  

Positive:  It dries clear.  

Negative:  Some of the caps glued on with this fell off.  I'd give it a hold rate of a 7 out of 10.

Positive:  Honestly, can't really think of any!

Negative:  Dries a cloudy white color.  Very poor hold rate.  This was the first one I used because we already had an open bottle of it at home.  A lot of the caps fell off the next day just by running my hands over it!  I'd give it a hold rate of 3 out of 10!

The only other advise I'd give that I learned is how to glue the caps on.  Initially, I was just running a line of caulking on the board and then pressing the caps onto the line.  A lot of those caps fell off.  I found that we had to actually apply a generous amount of caulk to EACH individual cap.  What worked great was having two students work with you.  One would pick up a cap, I'd apply the caulk, and they would replace it while the other student did the same.  Just had to keep reminding them to keep the caps as close together as possible!

Marbled Starry Night Puzzles

Since I had the shaving cream whipped out for my artist staff development, I decided to try it after school.  Luckily, I had a small group of students who decided to do my activity...we had just enough shaving cream left for them to do some marbling.  I wanted them do their own version of Starry Night using the paper marbling technique on the puzzles, however most of the puzzles didn't end up looking very Starry Night-ish.  We used tempera paint for this.

These two puzzles were the only ones that actually did a Starry Night version.  The others got frustrated because they swirled too deep into the shaving cream before taking the print from it.  The other four students ended up painting over their paper marbling.

This was the first time I did paper marbling with students.  I would suggest, if you haven't done it before, to really STRESS not digging too deep into the shaving cream with the fork/comb when swirling it.  Most of the students went too deep, and then kept swirling and swirling until they created a muddy color.

YAM: Artistic Staff Development, Post #1

I am going to do this post in four, otherwise there would be too many photos.  As part of my YAM activities, my principal invited me to do some artistic staff development with the teachers to get them on board.  One of the things I have asked them to do (and my principal backed me up and made it a requirement for the teachers to do) is to read a book about an artist to their students and do a small project of some sort.  It doesn't have to be an art project...I'll do that for them in art class.  It could be a writing project...cooking activity...whatever.  

As you can probably imagine, there are a few people who aren't on board.  Surprisingly, there are a few who say it's a waste of their time and doesn't pertain to them.  (My administrator took extreme offense from this, as in her eyes, it means they don't support me or the art department in their own school.  Have I mentioned that I really like this new principal that we have this year?!)

Either way, the staff development activities will still be happening, and I'm really excited.  I have some teachers on board with me who I didn't expect to be on board with this.  One of the 3rd grade teachers brought his kids to art yesterday and told me they started looking at Picasso.  "They should be able to tell you about his blue period, rose period, and identify the characteristics of his art."  Wait, what???  You did that ALREADY?  I was blown away, and VERY excited to hear this!  Once I give the 3rd graders one more day to finish their castles, we will make some slab, cubism faces in clay.

Another example that really excites me is one of our 1st grade teachers had decided to do Monet.  She borrowed this Monet book from me, and after reading it, decided she was going to attempt cooking the scone recipe that is in the book with her students!  How cool is that?!  She said that her kids are working on creative writing, so I suggested they could write a small, descriptive story about Monet painting in his gardens.

Anyways, I have chosen eight artists to cover with the staff members.  We will do five artists on Monday after school, and four artists Friday after school. (Originally, our staff meeting on Monday was supposed to go until 4:00 and we were going to rotate through all 9, but because we have conferences on Wednesday, we had to split it up.) I'm figuring about 7-8 minutes at each station (since there will be people who will live right at 3:15, when they are allowed to).

I've done and photographed each project I'm going to have the faculty do.  This weekend I'll be making some nice visuals with my photographs to laminate and have at each table so that I can circulate between groups.

1. Van Gogh:  Marbling with shaving cream:  A few days ago, Mr. E. did a post about paper marbling.  I've tried this once before myself but never with students.  Originally, when I was thinking of Van Gogh, I was just going to recreate a simple painting of a field with a cypress tree in acrylic, but then when I saw Mr. E's post, I decided to try the paper marbling on canvas board.  Here are my results.

Original idea to base off of on the left, Starry Night influence on the right...

  

I used drops of tempera.  I probably went a little overboard on the amount of paint I used for this demo, so I'll note that in my directions on my visual.

Here is the canvas with the shaving cream paint still on it...

And here it is after I scraped it off...Can't see much of the swirl anymore.  I used cardboard to scrap it, but I will have the staff use tag board instead.  After they scrape the shaving cream off, I'll have them paint a simple silhouette.

2. Andy Warhol: Repetitive subject.  For this, I will have the staff draw a simple object four times.  They'll paint the background one color, and then paint the objects four different colors.  I'm basing this project off of this print:

Draw the flowers...

Dab green paint in the background, and then add some black to it.

Paint the flowers four different colors, then add some tiny, black petal lines.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

...to be continued!