Winter Trees

Last week, Mrs. Wilson's students created these fun and colorful winter trees! Then I took a picture of it with my phone and created this awesome picture with the "Percolator" app I have. So COOL!

Georgia O'Keeffe flowers

created by our lovely third graders...

Wow...this marking period is flying by!

We have been very busy this month finishing up our fundraiser projects for Art to Remember. I always like to get them out of the way early in the year. This year they took a long time because of our shorter art classes...but they are fabulous. I'll post some of them below.


In the Memorial Art Studio, students have been learning about making choices. We also are working towards behaving like artists. We've talked about how artists like to experiment sometimes with new subject matter, new ideas, new techniques and new art materials. We have several different stations set up for drawing. Our stencil station is definitely the most popular...but there has been some amazingly creative ideas generated at this station, especially in the past week as we are working more towards completing works of art, rather than just experimenting.



Last week, many classes had an additional station added to their choice time. This is the still life station and students are learning to observe and draw what they see. They are also learning that as an artist, they can make decisions about what they include or leave out of their drawings, and many have added backgrounds and details that they came up with on their own.

This is a bulletin board where I have just a sample of our third graders' artwork inspired by the flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffee. I think these are amazing...and all so different. They really enjoyed working with oil pastels on this project.

You can see more on Artsonia in our school gallery! (Artwork will not be published until Thursday, 11/4/10).

One of the highlights of last week...I had one of my third graders tell me: "Mrs. Durocher, you inspire us to create great artwork." Totally made my day!

Russian Towers finished

The fifth graders at Robinson are also cruising along on their Russian Towers. After outlining these with crayon in several colors, students painted their drawings with watercolors (liquid and regular). They had a lot of fun blending the blues, pinks and purples in the background. I showed them how to paint the paper with water first and then add the colors on top and swirl them around.

6th Grade Design Trees

This week, some of our 6th graders are moving towards finishing up their tree drawings. To begin this lesson, I provided my students with several visual examples of silhouettes of trees of various kinds. It would have been ideal to venture outside to actually study and sketch the trees, but we are always so short on time around here. They got the idea though...their tree drawings were simply amazing...every one! Above are just a few of the drawings where I think some creative ideas are happening. Below are a couple of drawings. I wanted you to be able to see the great designs these artists are coming up with. So fun!
This lesson provided a great opportunity for learning about positive and negative space. When they are finished those trees really stand out against all the colorful designs!

Missing Camera

I had some stuff I wanted to post...but last week my digital camera was stolen from my classroom. I am very sad. I take pictures with it everyday...and it is weird not having it. Hopefully I will get a replacement soon...and I may use my personal camera in the meantime. Look for some posts later this week!

Work in Progress

Yes, it's the 5th week of school and we still haven't completed a project! (except for our mini-portraits). I think that is mostly because of our 30 minute art classes. But we are on our way. We started our projects for our Art to Remember fundraiser last week. Fourth Grade are drawing lighthouses in colored pencil, Fifth Grade are creating Russian Towers with crayon and watercolor and 6th Graders are making tree drawings and filling the negative space with marker designs. I thought I would show you some of the fabulous beginnings I've noticed!

Mural Finished

Well, this is our completed mural...at Bertha Robinson. We put it up earlier this week. It has just about every student in our school on it. Of course, we had some that didn't finish because of absences and a few didn't follow directions, so those weren't included. But, we really like how it turned out. It was hard to get a good picture of the whole thing because our hallway isn't real bright. I've included a few close ups too!

Some Photos from this Week

Alaina, Lailah, Alyea and Abbi are busy working on putting together the mural of all of our self portraits during their recess. It looks so cool when they are all together!!! (Robinson)

Austin tries out the letter stencils on his portfolio cover. (Robinson)

Levi drew a picture of a football helmet and a goal post! Great job, Levi! (Memorial)

This little guy (whose name I still have to learn) drew a picture of himself doing his favorite thing...playing baseball. I love it! It looks like that ball is coming right for me!

Just Getting Started

This week flew by! We've been having great fun in Art though. This week we finished up our portraits for the mural we are putting together (see previous post) and began our Art to Remember projects.

At Robinson, fourth graders are working on creating a drawing of a lighthouse, 5th graders will be doing a drawing of some Russian towers inspired by St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, Russia. And 6th graders are working on some amazing drawings of trees.

At Memorial, we are still going over procedures and reviewing rules and we are finishing up our portraits too. Second and third grade classes have started their Art to Remember projects this week and are eager to spend some more time on them next week. Next week, some of my third graders will be helping me put together the mural for Memorial.

In case you aren't familiar with Art to Remember, it is a fundraiser we do to buy supplies for the art program in our elementary schools. Our art budget is *very* small, our parents' support through Art to Remember helps to buy supplies for Art Class that we wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. Not to mention that Art to Remember has a huge variety of items you can buy with your student's artwork on it. New this year, and my all time favorite product, ever...a nightlight! We have it plugged in the art room so the kids can see it! They all want one!

I'm back!!!

Yes, it's been two years since I posted ANYTHING on this blog. Here's why.: because of cuts in our district, I was reduced to half time art and was also assigned half day kindergarten. I taught kindergarten and art for two years. It was a crazy time! But I am glad for the experience, really.

This year I am back to teaching art to all the 750 something kids DK-grade 6 in our district...and I couldn't be happier. OK...well, of course I would be happier if I had longer art classes (half hour classes back to back are hard to get used to) and if I had more money in my budget...that would always be nice. But really, I am looking forward to an amazing year! I am so excited about the possibilities this year holds for me.

Our beginning of the year project is an idea I got from this great art teacher's site...I've barely had 10 minutes in each class to have the kids work on it...because first days require going over rules and expectations...but I think they are loving the challenge of creating a "mono-chromatic" picture using only one color.