High School Bulletin Board: Art Connects

Here is a new board I just created for my classroom. I call it the Art Connects board because it shows how all of the elements and principles of art and design connect in art.

Candy Corn and High School Art Projects

That's right..I caved.  I bought some candy corn even though it is still August and candy corn is more of a fall thing.  Oh well, it was delicious!

Well I hope you have had a great week!  Sorry I have not written on here in an entire week but I was crazy busy with the first week of school and our open house on Thursday night.  I was at school until 9 pm Thursday!  I think I am going to have some wonderful classes though so I am excited for that!  

I have been working on getting my students ready to start their first project on Monday.  My intro to art students will be doing a project that kind of resembles a patchwork quilt.  Here are some examples from previous years:

 

 

 Basically students divide an 18 x 24 piece of tagboard into a 3 x 3 inch square grid and draw whatever they want on top for their subject matter.  I then have them use at least five different art media (paint, cut paper, colored pencils, marker, pen, etc.) to create an artwork that shows contrast between their subject matter (positive shape) and the background (negative shape).  We just learned ALL about the Elements of Art and Principles of Design so they will also have to make their artwork balanced, unified, show movement, pattern, etc!

Sorry to bore you with lesson ideas!  I am officially in school mode!  I have not done any art for myself this whole week and I am starting to miss it!  Hopefully next week/weekend will be a little calmer!

Meanwhile I am keeping myself sane with music (as usual) such as this lovely song by  Ray LaMontagne.  

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!  I will try to write more next week:) 

Art Bulletin Board Ideas

Wow...very exciting title to my post.  Sorry!  Since school is almost back in session I have pretty much been living in my classroom.  Today I spent the majority of my time working on the bulletin boards in my classroom.  Since my school (and every school it seems!) is on a tight budget, I had to purchase my own bulletin board paper!  My favorite thing to use is colored wrapping paper.  I love Hobby Lobby's huge rolls of fun patterns.  However for my bulletin boards I stuck with white and blue as my main colors.

Here is the start of one board:

Elements of Art Board:

I  painted the entire border with gold, silver, white and turquoise tempera paint.  It took forever but gives the border some depth I think!  The elements are all made from some lovely stamps I bought.  Luckily I had a student stamp out the elements for me last year so I didn't have to do them again!

Here is my Principles of Design board.  It is hard to see but I listed each principle and put an artwork next to the principle that illustrates it.  I am going to be adding definitions next to each principle as I go over them with students in class.

Notice the Romero Britto artworks I have hanging above the board?!  Kids LOVE his art!

 Here is where I keep most of my supplies.  This bulletin board was kind of a pain to do because I had to stand on the counter and staple the paper onto the board.  Keep in mind I am 6 months pregnant!

Check out all of the NEW labels on my supplies!  So fresh and clean to start the year:)

Lastly here is my Old Guitarist  by Picasso bulletin board.  I just got this poster from amazon and wanted to make it a focal point in my classroom.

Well that is about it for today.  I better get to sleep because I have meetings all day tomorrow, a dentist appointment and dinner with a lovely friend!  School officially starts Wednesday.  I hope I am ready:)  Meanwhile, I am listening to this song by David Gray constantly on my ipod.  I am in love with his voice and he is one of my favorite artists to listen to especially around the fall.  Also check out this song by Florence and the Machine.  You might recognize it from the Eat, Pray, Love commercial.  The video is definitely creative and interesting:)

Well have a great evening!  I hope to write soon.  The next couple of days are going to be a bit crazy!

UPDATE:  Hello!  I just wanted to post some more bulletin board ideas for anyone interested!  Looking at my blog statistics I have found this post to be one of my most popular:)  For all of you teachers out there here are a couple more ideas:

 Animals in Art Bulletin Board

This bulletin board is made up of past student artwork and color printouts of animal art.  I have found that borders are super important in the overall aesthetic of a bulletin board.  I use construction paper and usually paint on top of it to make it more interesting.  For the zebra pattern I just made copies of a zebra printed folder I had and placed it around the bulletin board to unify everything with the sign.

Color Theory Bulletin Board

For this bulletin board I hung up some of the creative color wheels left over from previous years and included vocabulary such as the primary, secondary, intermediate and complementary colors.  I also used the space above the bulletin board to display a poster by Kandinsky and paintings that display the use of complementary colors.  

 Other bulletin boards from previous years:

Black and white pattern is actually tissue paper I bought at Target!  Cheap and easy way to cover space!

A more simplified approach...Matisse inspired also!

 And if you really have time....

I hand painted this bulletin board and had students create cool leaves if they finished their project early.  

I hope some of these ideas were helpful...I will continue to post more as the year goes on!  If you would like to see my class blog click here for project ideas.

Back to School

Do you like my wall of faces?  This is from my classroom at school.  I have these horrible steel doors in the back of my room and decided decorating it with crazy, fun art portraits would be a nice way to cover up the blandness of the doors. (Do you notice the little red face in the bottom right?  This is from my red cup drawings from last year.  One kid didn't want to draw so this is what was turned in to me...oh my...)

Yesterday was the first day I went back to my classroom all summer.  It felt like I had never left!  Oh summer how I miss you already!  I got some work done but still need to do a ton!  One of my main projects is to make my bulletin boards look fun and cool.  I think I am going to buy some colorful wrapping paper and tissue paper to dress my boards up a bit.  With all of the budget cuts my school is facing, they seemed to have gotten rid of the large rolls of paper I used to use for my bulletin boards:(

I will be sure to post my fun and cool new bulletin board ideas on Monday:)  If you have any ideas I would love to hear them!

Have a great Saturday:)

Blue, Green and Yellow Tree

Newest artwork in my etsy store!  

So how are you today?  I am pretty good.  Just a little stressed out because school starts a WEEK from today!  Ahhh!  I really don't mind teaching, I actually love it at times!  I am just not looking forward to waking up at 5 am!  Oh well, at least I have a job where I get to help kids make art all day!  That reminds me, I need to work on my classroom blog.  I have been such a slacker all summer!  Well, I am off to get some work done for school!  Have a lovely day:)

Ordinary to EXTRAordinary

Happy Saturday! Hope everyone has had a pretty restful New Year weekend!  I know for me it is going to be pretty hard getting up very early Monday morning for work.  I have been sleeping in until 8:30 every morning (it feels so good to do this!)  To get myself back into the work mode I recently updated my school blog with some of my student's artwork.  If you get a chance please check it out here.

I have the best students this year and am so proud of them:) It has been kind of hard to update both this blog and the school blog- but I am trying!

Have a lovely Saturday!

Red cup drawings

Hope everyone had a wonderful Monday! I just wanted to share some of my drawing students'red cup drawings. They are pretty cute and wonderful:) I gave each student a red plastic cup and had students study the highlights and shadows that were on the cup. Students used colored construction paper and colored pencils. They really turned out very fun:)

Well I must go and paint..have a lovely rest of your Monday!

Classroom Blog

(Drawing done by one of my students!)

Hello! Just wanted to share my newest project that I am working on! I am currently working on a blog for my art classes this year! I started last year but then got totally sidetracked when I started my masters program! Now I have a little time so I resumed the classroom blog.

Here is the link if you are interested:
PHS Art Room

I would love for you to check it out and see what we have been up to so far this year!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend! It is absolutely gorgeous here and a perfect day to be outside! Too bad I have loads to do for school! Fun stuff though... just working on ideas for my classes.

Have a great day!