Drawing Birthday Cakes

Last week was state testing week in AZ, and many special area classes were canceled. The few classes I did see were pretty tightly wound after sitting for hours at a time so we did some step-by-step drawings to get the creative juices flowing again... I dusted off one of my favorite drawing books by Mark Kistler and was inspired by his 'cake'.

The steps were simple, using an oval with straight and curved lines.

After completing a 3 tier cake, the kids added birthday candles. I took a few minutes to draw possibilities of how to decorate the cake to get them started - found a lot of examples online to get me inspired!

Then they were off and drawing, adding their own unique touches...

I encouraged them to fill the foreground with items you might see on the table next to the cake...

Color was added with colored pencil.

Not long after completing these, I received an email requesting food related artwork. The Food Services Department at district wanted work they could display. What perfect timing! So a few will be framed and hung in our district food services offices soon...

Happy Easter!

A blessed Easter or Chag Sameach to all my blogging friends out there!

Gearing Up for Annual Art Show

Late nights every day this week as I scramble to get projects ready for our art show.

I did a quick load of Wabi Sabi pots yesterday.

A few of the 3rd graders need to come in at lunch to finish glazing their coil pots...

while 2nd grade artists need to do the same with their effigy vessels.

Ceramic dragons were painted with watercolors so no kiln necessary - woo hoo!

And after all that, I have to select, mat, tag and fill my six-sided panel with an assortment of our 2D work, including some Blue Dog paintings.

Show opens on Monday, should have pix posted by the following weekend. In the meantime, you can click on '2011 art exhibit' in my labels section to the right to see last year's work!

Printing With Kinders

Gadget printing is so much fun!

On a 9 x 12 white paper Kinders practiced stamping with a variety of found objects: laundry detergent caps, forks, marker caps, film canister (how do I explain that item to this generation?)and other stuff I collect for just this purpose. They were to print in rows to get a feel for pattern and repetition.

After the practice sheet was finshed, they were to print on their painted fish shape papers. My plan was to re-create those patterns on the colored stripes of the fish.

My student artists had a lot of fun with these as well as extra experience with pattern. I'll post some of the finished ones in the days to come...