The world's best grade 6 grad portraits!

These are my FAVORITE!! For grade 6 grad, our school always does some kind of self portrait project with the students. Last year, we did pop art style self portraits. This year, using an idea I adapted from The Lost Sock Blog, students made avatars on www.faceyourmanga.com, which they printed and used as references to draw their portraits onto cardboard.

Just to give some perspective on how big they are:

Here's a quick summary of the way we did it:

• design an avatar using faceyourmanga.com, and print it out
• draw the avatar onto cardboard, using pencil
• trace all pencil in Sharpie (this is a must - even though it will get covered in paint, you need to have dark lines to see them again after you've painted on them!)
• paint with tempera paint (use acrylic for whites and light colors so that they show up well!)
• wait until paint is dry, then retrace your Sharpie lines
• use chalk pastel to add detail (cheek color, highlights in hair, shading around nose and chin, etc.)
• cut out using Exacto knife

Voila!

I just love them. Cardboard was an amazing surface to work on - it soaks up the paint beautifully and gives rich, inspiring color. I love them!

Three more weeks left of school! Many changes ahead, I can't wait to share them all here!!

Canvas Tipis - grade 6

For the past two years, my homeroom class has been a grade 5/6 class. That means a lot of my grade 6's this year were actually my grade 5's last year. I did this project last year with the grade 6's, and this year, the new grade 6's were so excited to get their chance to do it!

Part of our social studies curriculum for grade six is First Nations Peoples and European Explorers, which is pretty much the best unit possible for art projects. Our first big project, after studying First Nation's habitats, was to make tipis.

I have a go-to tipi template, which can be found here. Students each get a copy of a tipi template, and then we spend some time in the computer lab, where they research First Nations symbols. Students are given about a hour to draw out their plans, focusing on symmetry, placement of symbols and color choice.

Once they have finished their rough draft, they are given piece of thick canvas material (I bought this canvas at an estate sale for probably under a dollar, and it was enough material for two years of tipis!) They tape their paper tipi template to their canvas, and cut it out.

Students then used Sharpie and acrylic paint to recreate their designs onto the canvas. Black Sharpie is used to make the base of their designs, then colored Sharpies are used for the small details. Larger details are filled in using acrylic paint. The paint thickens up the canvas, making it really sturdy - perfect for their tipis!

I had a donation of old binders, which I cut apart and we used for the base of their tipis. On top of the binder, students built a base using bamboo (purchased from the dollar store) and plasticine. Then, they stretched their tipi around the base, and used a hot glue gun to attach it.

Next came the really fun part - decorating their tipis with absolutely anything we could find in the class! Students used anything - paint, shells, rocks, yellow powdered tempera paint, fabric, plasticine, wire, etc. As with last time, this project was a HUGE success!!

They're just so beautiful. I'll be posting soon about our next First Nations project - wampum belts!! Can't wait!

Holton Rower Paint Pour art!

I am SO excited to post about this that I am not even waiting until they are dry.

Today, I had 15 kids away for cross country. I still had 18 kids there, but it was great because I was able to do an art activity that I normally wouldn't take on.

Inspired by Holton Rower, we did our own mini paint pour art projects!
I've seen re-do's of this project floating around the internet, but much of what I did was based on the supplies that I had available to me at the time.

A few weeks ago, my husband brought home 20 identical circles of drywall that he cut out of a ceiling when he was installing pot lights. These became the base for our Holton Rower projects. On top of the circle, I glued a styrofoam cube that I cut out from a large sheet of styrofoam.

We talked about colors representing emotions - what colors could you use to represent certain emotions. We talked about what red, purple, yellow would represent, etc. Then, we broke out about 40 colors of acrylic paint (50 cents a bottle!) and started POURING!

The results were just incredible.

In about a week, once they are totally dry, we will take them off of the pie plates (not sure what will happen to the paint around it - will it harden?) Maybe we can slice it off with an exacto knife.

These were done with grade 5/6 students, in about an hour.

I'm soooooooooooo excited about these!!