Book Giveaway and Student Work

The end of the school year is finally upon us.



I have been finishing my last residencies as well as an onslaught of Father's Day workshops.  Here is just a small sampling of some of the student work over the last few weeks.

Here are some DAD clay portraits that were done with Grade 3 and Kindergarten.

Calgary Towers done with Grade 2.

Toucans with Grade 5.

Mini gardens with Grade 4.

Air dry clay portraits with grade 7 & 8.

So as summer vacation approaches I am looking forward to having time to paint and try out some new projects.

Children's colouring books are not as popular as they were when I was a kid but adult colouring books are now top sellers.

There is something soothing about filling in all those empty spaces with colour and it can provide inspiration for new art projects.

Skyhorse Publishing has several of these books available.

I love all the patterns and immediately the wheels started turning about how I was going to attempt some of these patterns as a mono print or collagraph.

I also like that the pages are perforated so you can remove them easily and add them to your visual journal or put them on display.

Sample pages are provided at the front of the books to give you colour combo ideas.

The back of the book has colour bar space to try out these combinations before adding them to the designs.

Each book has 46 designs for you to colour.


I have 3 of these great books up for grabs.  If you are interested in winning one of these to enjoy over summer vacation please enter by one of the following ways:

- leave a comment on this blog post
- email me directly at thatartistwoman@shaw.ca
- like or comment on this post on my Facebook page

I will make the draw on Friday June 19th/15.

Good luck everyone and thanks to Skyhorse Publishing for sponsoring this great giveaway.

Gail

Student Work

It has been another whirlwind week, working at 3 different schools.

Here is some of my recent student work.

Frog portraits with Grade 3.

We used my usual drywall on cardboard and canvas technique. You will find lots of my projects using this same technique at this page.

They all turned out amazing, this is pre Mod podge, as they don't photograph so well after.

We also used my homemade goggly eye technique.

You take a glass gem, the ones that are flat on one side.  Trace around one on paper, add your eye details to the paper circle (iris, pupil) and cut out.

Glue face down to flat side of gem using Mod podge…..why podge you ask, because it's the only adhesive that will dry clear guaranteed. Otherwise you may get a cloudy eye.    I have 3 sizes of gems I use regularly, large like these ones, the standard ones that are about half this size, and these really small ones. All are available at Michael's.  The standard and small are also available at Dollar stores.

Here are some giant papier mache bugs that a grade1/2 class worked on.  I thought I had photos of the finished project but I can't find them.

They turned out fantastic.

I will definitely do these again.


That's all I have for you now.  Another 2 full weeks to go and then I'm officially done for this school year. ..whew!! It was a busy one. :)


Gail

The Tiny Seed and Student Work

Just finished another residency over the last week.

I have some pictures of the student's work at the end of this post.


One of the new projects that was completed was this one by Grade 1/2.

It's based on the Eric Carle book "The Tiny Seed".






















MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- substrate or background, we used 12x12" hardboards but you can use primed canvas, canvas board, cardboard
- blue, green, yellow, red, and purple acrylic paint
- recycled cardboard
- drywall filler
- wax paper
- tacky glue
- white paper, pencils, pencil crayons, scissors
- black pony beads
- computer generated text "From Tiny Seeds Come Big Flowers"
- Mod podge

PROCEDURE:

From the recycled cardboard cut out the flower parts.  Out of corrugated cardboard we have a stem, a circle for the centre of the flower, and a strip that will be cut into the rays for the sun.


Out of lighter weight cardboard cut some petals for your flower.  With Grade 1/2 I pre cut everything except for the petals of the flower.  (just because corrugated cardboard is a little hard for them to cut)

Put names on the back of your pieces.

Working on wax paper, coat your cardboard pieces with a layer of drywall filler on the front.


Set aside to dry, about 6 hrs.

Write student names on back of background.
Take your background and tape off the horizon line.  I tell the kids to paint to the tape and then 'STOP".

Paint top with sky blue acrylic paint.

Set aside to dry.

Now I forgot to get a picture of this part so I'm using one from another project.

Paint some papers with acrylic paint. We painted a yellow page and then added some orange circles with cups.  (You could also use toliet paper rolls cut into small sections)

We also painted some textured wallpaper red and used bubble wrap to print on some purple and pink marks.
We then painted some paper green and added some darker green splotches for our leaf paper.

When your drywall pieces have dried paint them as well.

Only one missing here is the piece for the sun's rays which I painted orange.



Carefully remove tape from the background and reposition so it is right next to the unpainted portion. It will be on the blue part.
Paint in the bottom section green.  Again I tell the kids when they get to the tape stop.

I forgot to take the picture for this but here is a similar project where we did the same thing.

When the pieces have all dried we can start to put is together.  I gave the kids white paper and asked them to draw a person or 2 looking up at the flower.  I pre cut the paper so they could not make their person too large.  They coloured them in with pencil crayons and then cut them out.

We cut out our suns and glued them into place.  We then cut out our rays. Cut the drywall piece as well.


Glue on the stem, centre and petals.  Use the painted paper to add leaves, extra petals, and grass.

Glue your person into place.


Finally we added 3 black pony beads to represent our seeds and added our text.

You can add a coat of Mod podge to seal everything and add that nice shiny coat.

Here is some student work. The glue is still drying at this point.

Here are some other projects we worked on.


An "All about me" collection done by Kindergarten.

Animal mixed media portraits done by Grade 3/4.

Great work everyone!



See you next time.

Gail

Christmas Projects

Well tomorrow is the last day of school and as of yesterday we had all the Christmas Projects completed.  Yeah!!!

A big thanks to my helpers, Ana, Colette, and Lori !


Here are some of the Angel plates Grade 1 completed. 

I did not get a chance to snag a photo of Kindergarten's Nativity plates but here is the original post.

Here are Grade 6's Poinsettias.  We have changed the design from my original post.  We use a chinet bowl as a base to hold the clay into position while drying. 

Grade 4 made these adorable wood Snowmen.

Grade 2 did the Snowman Family Portraits on canvas but I can't show you them because of all the last names. They were terrific though.

Grade 3 made the Christmas Houses. Here are a few I managed to photograph.

Grade 5 did the "We Three Kings" banners.

Great job everyone.


I still planning to post more last minute crafts if I get all my wrapping done.
See you soon.