To kick off the week before spring break, we decided to start with an eggciting .... Art Eggstravganza!

We bought just a few eggs and laid out a few suggeggstions in our Tuesday preseggntation.  Zentagle eggs, art history eggs and character eggs were all suggested starting points.

​Like all Tuesday Tables, the project was optional but we did have a good amount of participation. Check out these eggcellent eggxamples.

This is a really nice oil painting, don't you think? The photo isn't so great with the shine from the lights but once you get past my shabby photography, its a well done work of art.

So why the blog title, the good and the bad you ask? The painting is obviously good. I agree but what you can't tell from looking at the painting is that it is by Gracie, one of the AP Art students. You may remember Gracie from previous posts. Her concentration was photo digitization. Well she decided she didn't want to do digital photography. It was boring. so she decided to change her concentration.... with Three Weeks Before the Deadline! So, that could be bad. Stay tuned. 

Claude was rocking the pencil drawings so we gave him Prisma colored pencils. So he rocked the Prisma colored pencils so we gave him oil paint. Now he is rocking the oil paint. Good! A little too good. Like, how about you take AP Art next year good. And that is good.

​The Bad? Copyright infringement. Claude is gonna have to lose the copyright images and replace them with his own ideas and photo references. I think he is up for the challenge. Stay tuned.

This group of three has been developing characters for D&D. That's good. First, collaboration is always good. They're are totally engaged in the creation. They even brought me in on it. My character is 1/2 orc and a bard who plays music. He's an orc with a sensitive heart that writes love songs. 

The bad: Have anyone ever tried to explain the rules of this game to you? It's crazy amounts of stuff going on. The other bad is that I'm not sure if my sensitive orc is going to last very long. 

Our Table Tuesday was tie dye​ and, by student request, we also added reverse tie dye. What's that you ask? It's bleaching a dark shirt instead of coloring a white shirt. So obviously good when a student requests an addition to the Table. It's all student-directed after all.

​The bad: The smell of bleach. also, the smell of vinegar which is used to stop the bleaching process. so the art room smells like a pickle went for a swim in a community pool.

The Waterway Arts Association dropped off some art supplies and asked if we wanted to participate in an event to raise money for scholarships. They'd give us small, 5 X 7 canvases as well as paint and we'd paint on the canvases with the paint. Then they would sell the art and the money would go back towards scholarships for the students. So we took their art supplies ;)

This project (as are all projects) was optional (also cause there were only 15 canvases). Anyone who wanted to participate was free to paint on a canvas the subject of their choice.  

The art is on display April 29 to May 3, 2019 at Southwest Brunswick Branch Library 9400 Ocean Highway West Carolina Shores, NC, or you can check out our paintings right here -->

As always, there are a lot of different things happening here at South B. First  up, Isabella created an illustration in this month's issue of SchoolArts Magazine. Now she is a published artist. She famous! Click here to see the article.

Austin is trying his hand at oil painting for the first time. He went with a classic, ​Marilyn Monroe. 

Claude is rocking the Prisma colored pencils, learning to blend like a beast!

Mandy decided to try out this week's Table; pinatas. Dinosaur pinata in the works.

Trip is designing another student's character in his style. It's much different but still looks like the original character (which i wish i had an image of to show the similarities and differences.)

Natalie worked on an etching of the pier on Oak Island. I think she should enter this piece into the NCMA Teen's Inspired contest. The theme this year is 'Home'.

Gail is also working on a piece for a contest; the Patriot Contest. She is also trying out the Prismas.

I dropped my Popsicle on the floor and it melted. JK. Another pour painting in the works. 

This is our second year offering AP Art at South B. This year, we are offering both AP Studio Art as well as AP 3D Art, so that's cool. Last year we had 14 AP students enter and pass the AP Studio portfolio exam.  This year we have 12 students working on their portfolios.  Most have completed the Breadth section and have completed a good percentage of the Concentration. Here's a look at a few of the student's Sustained Investigations... 

​"My concentration is a series of original works of art symbols inspired by tribal art and patterns found in different cultures. There is emphasis on the darkness and also movement and balance. "

"My concentration is a series of animal shape-shifters living on an imaginary island. I've placed them in different positions/perspectives and backgrounds. Some of the animals are interacting with their human counterparts, all done in a mix of watercolor and colored pencil."

"My concentration is a series of Crow/Ravens. With each Image I started with a drawing/painting using traditional materials. I then imported those art works into Photoshop where I digitally edited each one. My projects depict the beauty of crows through their actions, such as flying patterns while exploring new techniques."

"My concentration is a series of digitally manipulated photographs with appropriated from iconic movies and TV shows. Friends who share a common interest are the models for my photos. The photos incorporate juxtaposition by exchanging props and settings in contrary an unexpected ways."

The photos posted here are samples of experiments created as Graci explores the techniques she will use for her final concentration pieces. 

There was a big fight in the art room. Luckily I caught it on camera. Ok, JK. Actually, this week we took a look at Proportions with a focus on using foreshortening. There were some questions about how the arm might look if held in a certain position so we posed and took the photos for a reference. 

This piece, still in the works, is another example of a student trying out foreshortening. It's a tricky concept but can really enhance the figures our students are drawing. More dynamic posses result in more dynamic works. 

Along with the basics of proportion, 71\2 heads tall and foreshortening, we also took a look at the muscles. Understanding the muscle in the human body and how they work can help a student to better understand how the body moves and bends which helps the student draw better figures. Here is a sketch a student decided to draw in order to better understand the muscles.

Meanwhile, for those not at all interested in drawing the figure, our Tuesday table was Marbling. Marbling is fun but is also sort of messy. Half the fun comes from not really knowing what your final piece will look like. 

The experimentation with different colors and different methods results in different results on the paper. Once you start, its sort of addictive. Needless to say, a lot of marbling happened this week.

As always, the choice of what to accomplish is left up to the artists. So it goes without saying that there were students who wanted to go in a different direction. Like the drawing above. Its a sketch from observation of some paper clips. One of the AP students is working on it as part of her Breadth portfolio. (unfortunately, the glare from the light made for a poor photo)

He had never created a silk screen but was interested in learning how it worked. 

They are working on a ginormous Tweety Bird using complimentary colors. This is actually a project they developed from last week's Concept, Appropriation.

This is funny ;)

We ended the last day of the 2018-2019 semester with a field trip to the Southport Woman's Day Art Festival. This year, due to the hurricane back in the fall, the festival just happened to fall on the last day of the semester. In fact, it wasn't even a regular school day. It was actually an exam make up day. This made everything a little tricky but we worked it out.

So what's this Woman's Day Art Festival thingy all about? Well, its kind of exciting! Students who entered work into the exhibit are invited to the Southport Community Center for a luncheon. Yum, food! After the luncheon, winners of the art contest are announced. Winning students receive a certificate, prize money, a ribbon and if they one first place in their category, their work moves on to district and then state!

This is Pasty with her first place entry for charcoal. And look, her granddad showed up to the event. And she won. And its a portrait of him. So that's pretty cool. But even better, not only did Pasty's piece win best in charcoal, it won Best in Show! Congratulations!

We managed to get a photo of all the first place winners. All of these student's work will be going on to district and hopefully, if they win at district, on to state! Good luck!

The next day was the first day of the new semester. This means all new class and all new students. Since it was a Thursday, I didn't want to start with a new Module. That can wait till Monday. So I decided for my Intermediate class to offer a fun two day challenge. Create the skeletal system for a cartoon character. 

This one day challenge actually will lead quiet nicely into our Monday Concept, Artists Steal. It also is a great way to introduce the Standard, I Create, along with the introducing the Learning Target, 'I combine an inspirational source with my own ideas'.

Time on Task is an interesting concept. Traditionally, students are expected to work on our schedule. The expectation is that students will begin working as soon as they enter class and end work when the bell rings to leave. As teachers, we often try to accommodate the time on task concept by assigning projects with due dates and other related methods. However, there is an issue. Artists don't always work this way.

When Kaitlyn said she wanted to produce an abstract marbling painting I wasn't sure what to tell her. Creating  marbleized paper using shaving cream was about the extent of my experience. So I said what any TAB leaning teacher would say..."OK, cool". I'm sure that wasn't as much help as I thought it was but it was fine by Kaitlyn. She had been reading up on different techniques, watching YouTube videos and collecting a plethora of pins on Pinterest. Now she was ready to experiment.

Kaitlyn started small, working on 4"x 4" canvases. She experimented with different paint thicknesses and tried several different mediums including gel and white glue. The idea was to created different consistencies so the paint would flow together at different rates.  I mean, I think that's what she was doing. Either way, it worked. Since then she has moved on to much larger works. Like the one in these photos.

The above image may look a lot like a digitally manipulated photograph. However, it's not. In fact, it's not a photo at all. Instead, it a traditional work of art that has been digitally altered. It's part of a series Naomi is creating by experimenting with Photoshop. 

​Naomi starts by creating a drawing on newsprint paper. Sometimes she uses charcoal, other times she uses markers or other traditional media. Once she has created the drawing, she photographs it and imports the image to the computer.  From there, Naomi begins the manipulation process in Photoshop. She will change modes, make adjustments, arrange and transform and apply filters until she has created something entirely different. For example, the image above is a manipulation of the drawing of the bird with the triangles below. She will also create between five and fifteen different versions before she settles on one she likes. 

Time on Task: 
Naomi's schedule is much different than Kaitlyn 's. Though she on occasion works on a larger scale project that may take several days, her preference is to create daily projects. Each day, Naomi creates a new drawing. She then imports the image into the computer and spends the rest of the class time manipulating that image. She will continue the process until the end of class. The next day, she starts the process over all again.

Patsy is currently working on a series of portraits of children she has interacted with through mission trips to ​Guatemala. The drawing are completed in charcoal which gives Patsy the ability to create rich contrast in her work. In her early drawings, Patsy created the portraits without backgrounds, allowing the focus to fall solely on the subject. recently, Patsy  has been experimenting with background imagery.  By uploading photographs to the computer, Patsy  has been able to print these images directly on charcoal paper allowing her to draw with charcoal directly on top of the photos.

More recently Patsy has been collecting flyers, maps and other images associated with her mission trips to Guatemala. She plans to incorporate these images into the backgrounds, similarly to how she did with the photos. for example, he middle image below is a pattern Patsy  created in Photoshop of Guatemala's national flower the White Nun Orchid.

In an Open Art Room, students are allowed to pursue the artwork they wish to pursue. Each student is an individual that produces individual work. Since they all work differently, they require different schedules. Time on task shouldn't be an across the board scheduling routine. Time on task is individual too.

Jo Jo was at it again, creating a new, interactive bulletin board. He incorporated his STEAM skills by wiring Christmas lights to run off of batteries so the fire marshal would approve his sign. The concept is simple. There are sticky notes and a pen on a string. Take a sticky note and write your New Year's resolution! Below are some examples of the sticky notes that students wrote.

Next semester we plan to fully implement the Learning Target concept. What's that you ask? Well, let me explain. Previously, we have asked students to consider what they accomplished by selecting a writing prompt based on the Standards.  While this is very beneficial in regards to reflecting on the work the student has accomplished, it doesn't capture the student's initial intent. That's where Learning Targets work!

Learning Targets ask the student to consider what they intend to accomplish before they start working.  Furthermore, the Learning Targets, like the coordinating reflection prompts, align with the Standards. 

Since we were only introducing the concept, we decided to start with only a few select Learning Targets. Students were asked to select one Learning Target from the list that would align with their next student-directed project. Here is a look at the limited list we provided, followed by several examples of students work and the targets they selected. ​

Appropriation is taking two objects and combining them to create an original piece. For this project you will combine different things that inspire you in order to create a new, unique work of art. Check out artists like Jamian Juliano-Villani. ​

This project is all about improving on something you already are good at. For this project you should consider a material or a skill or technique that you are good at and seek out ways to get even better. You might consider following a YouTube tutorial. ​

This project is all about trying something completely new. For this project you should consider a material or a skill or technique that you have no experience with and learn how to do it. You might consider following a YouTube tutorial. ​

For this project you will work with other students to create a work of art. It’s all about learning how to work together which can be both challenging and rewarding.  ​

"I Create: this piece was inspired by an artist on social media. I’ve drawn one of their characters in my personal style..."

We offered two new Tables in the New Year, Candle Making and Rock Painting.

Though we looked at several different candle making techniques, the students selected to try the string dipping method. They each took a wick and dipped it into the hot wax. As soon as it dried, they dipped it again.. and repeat. After a while the wax forms a candle around the wick.

Inspiration for the rock painting Table was based on The Kindness Rocks Project. The Kindness Rocks Project is all about paiting rocks and then leaving them in places for people to find. There is even a chapter of The Kindness Rocks Project on Oak Island.

Every teacher faces quirky days like the day before Thanksgiving or winter or spring break. Kids are hopped up on candy canes and anticipation. It's hard for them, and for us to stay focused. So what do we do? We plan a quirky day challenge!

​In the past, our students participated in Hand Turkey Tuesday and the 12 Days of Photoshop. This year, the day before spring break we thought it might be fun to have a little egg decorating contest. So we brought in a bunch of eggs, yes, real eggs, and gave each student and egg to decorate. We had three categories, zentangle design, character design, art history design. ​​