Scratch Art, Texture, Spirit Balls, and A New Blog!

We had a lot of fun in ATC class this week when young artists applied their sgraffito skills to Scratch Art ATCs! Students began by brainstorming ideas and doing practice drawings on plain paper. Once they decided on a design, each artist set to work scratching away the waxy black surface to reveal a colorful, linear work of miniature art.

Sadly, the batteries in my camera died after taking only a couple of photos, so there won't be many pictures of student art this week. But the photos I DID get are amazing! Don't you just love these beautiful little masterpieces?

Ceramics I students created "spirit balls" this past week. If you want to know what a spirit ball is, ask your little ceramic artist! Photos will be posted here after the first bisque firing.

Albrecht Durer's Hare, 1502. Watercolor and gouache on paper.

Meanwhile, in Explorations in Art class, 

the week's lesson was all about:

Rough, smooth, sticky, pointy, scratchy, bumpy, soft, wet, hard, dry, silky, spikey, fluffy, scaly, slimy: These are just some of the "texture words" that students came up with. 

Edgar Degas' Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen Years, c. 1879-1891. 

Yellow wax, hair, clothes.

We talked about how artists use texture to convey feeling--how, through the use of visual texture, they create a mood for their work and give the viewer clues to figure out what's going on.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze's Broken Eggs, 1756. Oil on canvas.

Students compared various works, and discussed how the artists used texture to tell us about the lives of the people depicted in the works. Let me tell you: There are some very observant young artists in the Explorations in Art classes!

Thomas Gainsborough's Mary, Countess Howe, c. 1763. Oil on canvas.

We also identified that some artists put tactile texture right into their works of art. For instance, Vincent van Gogh is well known for the impasto of his oil paintings:

Vincent van Gogh's Landscape with Ploughed Fields, 1889. Oil on canvas.

Often, his works have such heavy impasto that the viewer doesn't need to get terribly close to see the texture!

Hans Holbein the Younger's Anne of Cleves, c. 1539. Parchment mounted on canvas.

After our discussion about texture, students did their own texture project. Some chose to draw their own unique texture picture. Other students browsed magazines and cut out samples of texture and then drew those textures on paper. And yet others chose to take crayon and paper, and go on a texture-hunting expedition, using the crayons to take texture rubbings.

A sneak peak at Miss Stacy's Blog reveals a jar full of buttons!

And finally, for all of the students, teachers, and parents who've salivated over the yummy smells wafting down the hall from the kitchen, I have some exciting news to share. Miss Stacy started a blog, called HSC Kitchen Classroom, to share news from Cooking & Sewing classes! There are already some recipes posted, and photos from Sewing class, so be sure to stop by her blog regularly. 

By the way, those "Double Lime Coolers" really hit the spot! Yum!