This is the End

In the words of Jim Morrison, "This is the end, beautiful friend, the end, my only friend the end.
I can’t believe that another school year is almost over.  Why is it that when you want the time to speed
up it seems to drag, but when you need more time, you blink your eyes and it’s gone?  Don’t get me
wrong, I am looking forward to summer vacation. I have a long list of things that I need to get done,
places that I want to visit, and people that I want to spend time with. I’m ready for a few weeks of down
time.  My niece, who loves art is going to spend some time with me this summer. I'm a little nervous,
since she informed me last night that she 'prefers first class' and things at my house are decidedly 'coach'.
That and she pretty much eats nothing but carbs and I haven't let them in my house since sometime in
early 2017. If I can keep another young hooman alive, we'll spend some time painting and being crafty.
I really am looking forward to it. I have a lot of fond memories of spending time with my Aunt Loree in
the summertime and I hope she can look back at our time together in the same way.

Like so many other teachers, I am just exhausted right now and summer vacation promises
some me time and renewal. It just seems that I really over-planned this school year and just didn’t
have time to get things done that I thought I would be able to do.  I wanted to try out sewing with my
students and that didn’t work out and I am really disappointed with that. I didn’t feel confident that the
personalities in my classroom could handle working with sharp objects (needles) and there is no way
to get around that when you are sewing.  I might try to do it as an extension activity next year where
students that are done with their main projects can try new things if they want to in my make-shift
Maker Space in a little corner of my room.

I’ve already started thinking about the next school year.  I’m not going crazy but I am thinking of themes.
This year, we focused on ‘The Jobs that Artists Do’  and looked at professions beyond what middle
schoolers think about artists. They aren’t just old, dead guys that have paintings hanging in museums,
but that nearly everything that we come in contact with has been designed or somehow touched by an
artist.  For next year, I am thinking of focusing on ‘Artists and Social Issues’ where we will focus on the
impact that artists have on certain issues, movements and the world. We’ll look at how artists inform us
about their culture, tell stories and create inspiration.  I also want to expand my maker space and offer
more free studio time in my classroom where students can explore and try things on their own terms.

But that is next year.

In the meantime, here’s a sort of gallery round up of a few things that we have been working on this
semester that I don’t think I’ve shared:

This was one of my favorite projects. We were inspired by my little Bob Ross Funko Pop figurine. I
took some ideas that I had seen on Pinterest and a couple of art teacher groups that I belong to,
changed them around to work for my needs and lo and behold, we had an artist biography project that
was actually fun to do.

                           

I found some old scratch board in a drawer and I didn't have enough big sheets to go around
so I cut them down and we did a sort of positive-negative space examination of bugs.
This was not as successful as I would have liked. The styluses that we used for scratching the
designs were breaking left and right and we all got frustrated. In the end, I quit asking them for as
much detail as they were originally going to put into their work but these turned our pretty nice.

You know how an art teacher knows when a project is successful? The kids start asking if they can
take the project home before they've even finished it. (I usually hang on to their work until the end of
the year) AND they ask if they can do another one. I called this one 'Draw Me a Song' and my
intention was to give them some freedom to pick a song lyric OR a poem (original, or one that they've
studied in their ELA classes) in hopes that the subject matter would keep them interested and
motivated. I gave them a week to bring in a song or poem that they wanted to do.
ART HOMEWORK! OMG! MizzzzzSmiffffff! I told them that it had to be appropriate for school and
if they didn't bring one in, then they would have to do one of MY songs. Which were all Disney lyrics.
We talked about how to alter your everyday handwriting to make into a more interesting font and
how the layout and placement of words can create a more visually appealing art work. We talked
about emphasis and space and even replacing words with symbols. Which came in handy when you
ran out of room because you didn't plan for space very well. I particularly love that one of my students,
who speaks limited English, did a song in Spanish. Thank goodness for Google Translate.

Sometime this year, I really don't remember when, all the art teachers got together and met with the
Sax/School Specialty rep and did some fun projects and learned a lot of new fun things that we can
try out with our kiddos. It's one of those professional development days that I am so grateful to be an
art teacher. What did you do during your PD day? Ummm, we looked at data and blah, blah blah,
ZZZzzzzzzz. What did we do during our PD day? We made stuff and did a paint pour. I've had a
couple of examples of what we did on a shelf in my classroom all year and my kiddos were begging
me to let them do it. So, we did.

We have just one class day left until testing starts and then the 2017-2018 school year will be over.

This was the day that I lost control of my 8th graders.  They were trying on all my hats and hula hooping in my classroom.  Sigh.  I guess they were making memories.  

Sydney often draws my portrait but this is one of my favorites.  Me and a bulldog.  I guess that sums me up pretty well!

Hopefully after a couple of weeks of rest, I'll look back on this school year fondly. Until then, I hope everyone's end of year goes smoothly and successfully. I wish you all a wonderfully restful summer and I look forward to sharing my classroom with you next year. See you in August!

It's The End of the Year (and I Feel Fine)

People.  I know. I've been away so long.  I'm sure that all 2 of you that might follow my blog on a regular basis may have thought that I have dropped off the face of the earth but I alas, I have been here.  Still doing art projects, still taking pictures but being a really, really bad blog host.  It seemed like everything got in the way, coupled with the fact that the ease that I have felt in the past uploading photos straight from my phone to this blog has become an ordeal.  I apologize for the pics down there that are sideways but as they say (or do they?) better late than never.

These sneakers are one of the last projects that we did in MizzSmiff's art room this year.  It was kind of a culmination of several things that we learned this year and I think that most of the kids did a spectacular job.  This year, I showed my kiddos tricks that artists use to make their artwork better.  While a lot of it was tedious and I thought that they were going to kill me when I made them do value scales over and over, I reminded them that artists never stop practicing their craft just like athletes never stop practicing their sport.  I shared a lot of my own experiences when I was in High School and College...learning techniques and doing what my teachers and professors asked me to do  (Mr. Tepper, I am looking at you) in order to become a better artist.

Humility is not a trait that comes easily to most middle schoolers who think they know it all.  Just sayin'.

I shared a lot of art that friends of mine, artists in their own right, are doing.  Harry, you are a God among men.  My kids marveled at your pencil portraits and you made teaching them how to draw using a grid for proportion a little easier when I showed them that you still do it that way.  Tony, your amazing paintings of contemporary athletes and sports had my kiddos enthralled.  They learned that art is a viable career.  Tommy, your incredible background paintings opened up a new world to them that they had never considered and they are now looking for your name at the end of some of their favorite cartoons. Rada, I showed them your neo-expressionist paintings and portraits and well, I need to get you in my classroom next year.  They want to meet someone who had a dream and has done his life, his way, outside of the box.  I showed them work by friends of mine that are architects, interior designers, art directors and photographers.  I showed them pottery and textiles by folks that I have met along the way.

I hope that throughout this year, my kiddos have learned that art doesn't have to be just a subject that we have to take in school.  Art is a part of our lives that can follow us all the way through.  We can appreciate it or we can make art, long after we leave school and it makes our lives better for it.  I hope we learned that art has always been a part of society and that we can learn so much about our past by looking at the art that was done at the time.  I also learned that I have a lot of amazingly creative friends and for that I am truly blessed.

Tomorrow is the last day of school and as always, I let my kiddos come down to my classroom to collect all their artwork that they have worked on, and I have held on to, all year long.  Usually, I'll get one or 2 to come down and pick up their stuff, the rest of it being left to collect dust in my  closet because I mostly don't have the heart to throw it away.  Today, I had more kids come to get their work than ever before. I hope that says something about them appreciating and valuing what they do.  I found an oil pastel still life in the closet-from-Hades done by the oldest brother (who is turning 20 shortly) of one of my sweet 6th graders (she is the last in a long line of her siblings to pass through my classroom) and when she came down to get her work, I gave it to her to give to him.  I hope he gets a chuckle out of it.

So, these sneakers.  We started out drawing some simple pictures on a grid, just transferring them from one grid to another.  I had several pictures for them to try, from flowers to violins and showed them that, by using a little viewfinder (we called it a window) that had a small 1/2" square cut into it, we could block out the big shapes and focus on the small ones.  As usual, the whole ruler, measuring and drawing straight lines made me want to jump off a cliff, but once we got past that part, they learned that by isolating the components of a drawing, and focusing on tiny parts we can make a picture that is in scale and has a level of detail and proportion that is correct like nothing we have ever done before.  The look on some of their faces when they realized that their shoes 'turned out right' was priceless and made all the "No, that is the cm side of the ruler" and "So, okay, you kind of have to line the ruler up on those little marks you made so the line is straight" comments worth it. Once our sneakers were drawn, we isolated an area for emphasis and colored that in and then did the rest of the shoe and the background in shades of gray.

I think they turned out great.  I had to convince quite a few of them to let me save some of them to display in the office over the summer.  I promised they could have them in the beginning of next year.  Which I am not ready to talk about yet.

Have a great summer, y'all!

Summertime, summer-time, sum-sum-summertime!

It's here!  Summertime!  Part of me is wondering where the year went and part of me can't believe we finally made it.  Our state testing was rather late in the year so I had my 4th quarter students about 2 weeks longer than I have in the past.  This gave us time to do some catching up and a little bit of assessment toward the end of the quarter.

The last project that we did was a bit of a test.  I reminded my students of the concepts that we explored this year, some way back in September.  I put containers of sea shells on their tables, along with some photographs of seashells and challenged them to fill their pages with drawings of the shells.  I gave them free reign but asked them to show me what they remembered about value and space, drawing from life, drawing from other sources and a few other concepts.  The only thing I asked was that they show me value in grayscale, using pencils only.

This is what they came up with.  I think it is safe to say that we are all dreaming of long, lazy summer days.

I took these pics with my iPhone, so I apologize that they aren't the best quality

.

I love how they are all different but they also all fulfilled the requirements of the lesson.

I have been trying to figure out how to embed a PDF document here so that I could share my Summer Art Challenge with you but so far, I have not been very successful.  In the meantime, here are a couple of screenshots of the challenges I came up with this summer.  Lots of kids took one so I hope to have a bunch of stuff turned in when school starts back.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful, creative summer and that all of your summertime dreams come true!