Art: Explosion Day

Emma: First, we used oil pastels. 

Olive: We used the oil pastels around circles in our painting. 

Charlotte: We used watercolor to make it explode.

Art: Mindfulness Painting

The girls have started a large work that will use almost every medium in the studio before it's finished! Today, they painted with tempera paint. They painted around circles and within circles.  They painted around circles until the circles connected making a new shape like when friends join together to play.  The girls connected the paint rings around the circles to the core value "mindfulness" because everyone is included! 

Art: Observational Drawing

The girls practiced drawing what they see and they imagined a tiny, very slow ant walking around the edge of the object being observed. This time they drew pumpkins.  We discussed briefly that the pumpkin they see in their mind (orange, round, green stem, and maybe a face carved into it) was different than the pumpkin they see with their eyes.  Because the ant walks so slowly they had to draw very slowly to record every up and down and swirl around of the contour line. Their eyes were tired, but they did a great job! What can they draw from observation in the home? Outside? 

Art: Back to the Islands

Awhile back the girls crafted islands out of clay working with various forms and textures.  The islands are out of the kiln and ready to paint.  They have some many imaginative stories tell tell about their islands: places to hide, places to run, buried treasure,  hidden houses, and magical pools.  After painting, they will make a map so you can find your way around! 

Art: Patterns & Printmaking

The materials for this project are right in your own home: food coloring and papertowels.  The girls folded a paper towel 3x the "hotdog way" making a narrow rectangle.  Then, they "flip-flop folded" it into a small rectangular nugget.  Next, they dipped the paper towel into red, yellow, or blue food coloring (diluted with water) just until the color ran towards their fingers.  The paper towels stay folded for a bit between newspaper.  Their patterns will be revealed next class when they will add another layer of pattern with printmaking techniques.  

Art: Play with Clay Day

The girls were very excited to discover the physical properties and possibilities with clay. It's cold, it's wet, it's gray, it is smooth, it makes my hands dusty... were some of their comments. Then, when we talked about what you can do with it, they said: break, pinch,  poke,  twist, slam, and roll. We named the list: "Things you can do with clay that you can not do on the playground."  After a few minutes of exploration, the girls were given a challenge to address texture and form.  Could they make a smooth place, a bumpy place, a piece that stands up and a place that holds water.  Here are some of the ways they discovered...

Art: Analyzing Our Own Art with Oreos and Buttons?

After completing their organic shape compositions inspired by Elizabeth Murray,  the girls recreated their works using the app called Faces iMake.  This app has a great library of visual imagery in categories like fruit and candy.  They matched shapes, patterns, and colors to rebuild their original composition. They also figured out how to layer shapes on top of each other to make new, more complicated shapes.  This exercise helped draw their attention to positive shapes as well as the negative shapes in the form.  Negative shapes are the shapes in between or the background.  They described small, closed negative shapes as places to hide and large, open shapes and spaces to run.