Statue of Liberty

One of our third grade classes was ready to have their Statues of Liberty spray painted last week. Here are some photos of the progress.

Gelatin Printmaking

When I came across this blog post on Pinterest, I was a bit intrigued. Admittidly, it took me over a year to get back to it and thoroughly check it out. I am in love with this process! There is a product called Gelli Art that mimics the gelatin printmaking technique, but I have too small of a budget to invest in those. Enter gelatin. Notice I didn't say Jell-O. I used Knox Gelatin, which I found at WalMart in a box with four packages in it. I used two cups of boiling water and all four packets of gelatin to create one cookie sheet of gelatin to play with. When I do this with students, I plan on using disposible tins that I already have on hand. They are brownie pan sized. After mixing the gelatin, I poured it into the pan and let is sit overnight. The next morning I had a flexible, rubbery surface for printmaking.

I like the lesson that is found on the blog post linked above, so I decided to try that one. Luckily, in Wisconsin in October, there are plenty of leaves to be found! I inked the gelatin with black ink and layed the leaves out on the gelatin, vein side down. Time for the first print. This one will give students an image focusing on the negative space.

Negative image, next to the printing pan.

Next, I removed the leaves. Most of the ink around the leaves was removed with the first print, but the leaves blocked off an areas with a great vein pattern. Once the leaves are removed, I created the second print. I LOVE these! They are simply stunning!

Pulling the second print.

Side by side; negative and positive space.

Negative space.

Positive space.

I plan on having the students mount these side by side. We will look at some Andy Warhol prints and talk about dyptichs. I love that there are so many concepts in this one, simple project! Students will be learning printmaking, negative/positive space, Pop Art, and dyptichs!

Post-It Mural



I thought about saving this post until our Post-It mural is complete, but that won't be until April and I figured perhaps someone out there may also be inspired by this idea, so here's where we are right now:

I have been completely inspired by a blog post that I came across while searching for images for a presentation on Andy Warhol. Despite finding the video on YouTube, I cannot get it to load into Blogger, so you can find the post, with a time lapse video of the Post-It note mural they created here. I am so inspired, that I have decided to create my own Post-It notes mural with my students! Their image was Pop Art, and it works really well for this techniques, so I decided to stick with Pop Art.   Pop Art is one of my favorite styles, so it's amazing it's taken me this long to decide to have an art show with a Pop Art theme.

To begin, my student teacher and I chose an image. We decided we wanted to go with something from Roy Lichtenstein, as I thought his comic book style would not only interest the students, but also work well with the pixelation we needed to create. While searching, we came across his painting, "Sunrise," and we agreed that that's the one. Mrs. Leland (my student teacher) pulled the image into PhotoShop and used a filter to make it appear in squares. Each square represented one Post-It note. Because we are doing this with elementary students, we decided to transfer that image into Excel to make the squares more obvious to the kids.

Transferring the image into Excel. Each square is one Post-It note.



Finished the transfer! It took me about 3 1/2 hours and is eight pages to print!



It's going to be AMAZING!

Close up of the Excel spreadsheet.

Our plan is to tape roll paper together to make a canvas large enough to accomidate our image. Together, we'll draw out the squares on the large paper. We have an atrium, which is where it will be hung for the art show. It is also where we will work on it. The plan thus far is to have grades 3-5 work on it once during their art classes. I have all of those classes before lunch, so the paper can be rolled up when the last class of the day is done with their contribution.

Artist of the Week

One of my students is in Artsonia's artist of the week contest for her Dot picture! Please go to this link and vote for her daily through Oct 6th. Her name is Karin, and she is in the PK-3 age group. Thanks!


http://www.artsonia.com/aotw/vote/0/19892813

Big Reveal

No one guessed correctly! We are making mini Statue of Liberty figures. This one is still missing the tissue paper fire in the torch, but you get the gist of it. These will be on display along with some drawings of American Gothic for the 2nd and 3rd grade art show/music concert in November.