Week 21 In Our Life

I know that I haven't been the best at updating what has been happening in our life lately.  Probably because too many good things have been going on.  So I thought I would share one of our weeks with you. You'll have to read about it in the layouts. :)  (You should be able to click on them to view them bigger.)

This year I really wanted to document our life. I am not completely caught up, but I am getting it done. After trying a thousand methods finding the one that I could actually do the Project Life Method has been the one that has clicked for me. Lately I haven't had much time to do anything scrapbook or designing related. When I have, all I've really wanted to do is record our story right now.  That is a good thing I think. Isn't that what it's all about anyway. Telling our individual stories.

Starry Night and Day

I loved the results of a lesson from Deep Space Sparkle when I first saw it. I decided to try it with my kids and another little boy that came to our house for art time.  We talked about cool and warm colors, looked at the use of lines in Starry Night and then had them choose if they the sky or land to be warm colors or cool colors.  This was their finished results.  My girls really loved this project.

We had such a fun time that we decided to do it with my summer art class.  Although we gave it a twist this time around.  We talked about how to create depth in your art work by having a background, middle ground and foreground. I encouraged them to also try to use warm or cool colors.  I used Starry Night to help them identify where his background, middle ground and foreground were. I also encouraged them to use lines in their sky to create movement similar to Van Gogh's Starry Night.    Here were our finished results.  I loved how they turned out and with such a great variety between the differences in skill and subject matter. (Sorry the colors are slightly off - trying to photograph these were tad more difficult.)

Here's how we made them.

1. Take a 12x18 piece of black construction paper and cut it so you have a 9x12, a 6x12 and a 3x12 piece.
2. Have the students draw their sky on the large background paper first. Make sure the designs they want shown are in the upper third of the background.
2. Have them draw the middle ground - hills, city, mountains, water, trees, animals etc on the medium sized paper.  Cut out the top spaces so it has more dimension and negative shapes.
3. Draw the foreground on the smallest paper. That could be waves, beach, a hill, grass, etc.

4. Fold the background in half so it'll stand up.
5. Fold the edges back about 1/4 - 1/2 inch on the middle paper, to make a tab that will wrap around the back of the large paper to staple it.  Fold it in half.
6. Do the same thing you did in step 5 only fold the side tabs twice as large as the middle tabs so that it will pop out in front.  Line the papers up and staple the tabs to the background.

We were able to get it down in within the hour art class, but we were pushing it with 11 kids. If you have a larger class, you might want to do it in stages so they have more time to do a really good drawing.

When I Grow Up - Self Portraits

Recently I started teaching some art classes out of my home to children in grades K-6th. Previously I was an art teacher for K-2 grades in Las Vegas.  It was something that I had thought about doing right after I was married. We had visited Beau's relative and his daughters were showing us their artwork they had created in an art class they were signed up for. It sounded like such a great idea to do private lessons from your home.  At the time I didn't know where to even begin setting up something like that. Life started happening and it got set to the side. (I ended up substituting for a boys lock down school instead... hmm how did that happen?)  

Now 10 years later I've started homeschooling and have seen how much my kids love it when I say it's time for art. They have some of their mother's blood in them. :)  I've enjoyed finding lesson ideas on the internet to try out with them and have found some inspiring sites from some awesome art teachers.  

I decided it might be fun to teach a few art classes to other homeschoolers and friends.  It would give my kids some more interaction with other kids and summer seemed to be the perfect time to try it out. So we gave our first class a go.

Our first lesson was imaginary self portraits. They were to decide what they wanted to be when they grew up and do it as a self portrait.  I used a lesson from Deep Space Sparkle.  I love her site. She has so many great ideas and lesson plans available. My summer art class has kids in it ranging from Kindergarten to Fifth grade.  That can be challenging to find something that will fit the different skill levers but when you do it's fun to see the variation.

The little first grader above wanted to be an artist. I love her finished picture with lots and lots of windows because "artists need lots of light."  After she finished her entire picture she had to add paint splotches to her painting on the face, hands and shirt, because "Artists get really messy and get paint all over them."  It's been a lot of fun for me to get back into teaching something I love so much. I'm excited to show off the rest of our art through out the summer.