Snowballs!

Have you ever heard of the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert?  It's about a family of snow people and pets decorated with everything under the sun!  
In art, first grade Lincoln students created their own snow people through tracing and cutting a snow person form and decorating a background with snowflakes (we threw a little math and symmetry in there, of course).  


Once the forms were ready, they applied their creativity and imaginations to decorate their snowmen.  They used everything from colored papers, gift wrapping materials, buttons, sequins...everything we could find!
They turned out to be quite a unique community of snow people.  They are currently congregating in the main hallway.

Lincoln: Me & Abe

Lincoln’s first and second grade students recently performed cheerful animal themed songs for their concert in February.

On display were some precious and well executed self-portraits as well as the student’s interpretation of Abraham Lincoln!

They learned how to draw Abraham Lincoln by allowing me to take them step by step through the portrait drawing process.

After they had completed their President, I demonstrated how to create a simple self-portrait.  Students personalized their drawings by adding their own hair, clothes, and jewelry.  The pictures were outlined in black sharpie and painted using watercolors. They are currently on display just outside the gym.

Stunning Still-Lifes

The talent of Ravinia students never ceases to amaze me. Third grade students were given the challenge of creating a composition using items in a still life. Since the theme of the year is "Pop Art", I used items that our culture finds common and popular; a teddy bear, piggy bank, Tinkertoys, and Coca-Cola.  
The drawing took over two weeks to complete and another two weeks to color with colored pencils and paint. 

We discussed the importance of finding curves, corners, and identifying lines to assist us in our drawings. I told my students to "forget what you're drawing and let your eyes tell you what to draw-not your brain". 

The final products were colored using colored pencils that were meticulously mixed to create the actual colors of the objects they viewed. We discussed the importance of hatching and cross-hatching and how it works to fill the colored area. They are proudly displayed in the third grade hallway and by the Tree House.

Cake Update

Mrs. Sabin and Mr. Finedore's classes took a break from making cakes to work on their beautiful mandalas for the 4th and 5th grade show.  I thought you'd like to see what they have done to make their cakes!

We began by making a mold of them using take-out bowls.  We plastered the forms together and when they were finished they looked like this:


Students put a plan together for a theme for their cakes and had one week to put on the base coat of paint and a second week to add painted details.
The following week they made Sculpey clay figures and forms to hot glue onto the cakes and decorated paper place mats with images that reflected the theme of their cakes.  They wrote about their cakes to explain the theme for the viewer.

In all, each cake took around 6 weeks to make.  More than your average baked cake, but this one will last for years!

District 112 Expressions annual exhibit

District 112 Expressions 2014

This exhibit represented a selection of kindergarten through eighth grade art work created by students in North Shore School District 112.

The exhibit was on display from

February 18th through February 27th at

The Arts Center of Highland Park

1957 Sheridan Road, Highland Park

District 112 student musicians performed for our enjoyment.

We were proud to share a small sampling of the outstanding work produced daily in the district schools with the community.

Artwork will be returned through school following the show.

                                                               

Mmmmmm...Donuts!

Ever wanted a delicious donut to last forever?  Well, these do!  First grade students hand molded and detailed donuts out of clay.

Once they were fired they were carefully glazed and embellishments were added before they went on display.  You can find them in the display cases by the Ravinia front office.

Printed Warhol Pop-Flowers

In 1970, Andy Warhol released a series of silkscreen prints called Flowers. He diversly colored a repeated image so each series of flowers had a different look and feel.

Second grade students applied the same concept to their compositions. They used block printing ink and rubber flower molds to print different combinations of colors on papers. When dry, the flowers were trimmed and placed into a textured paper vase.

If...

What if hummingbirds told secrets?  What if music could be held?  What if lightning made rhinos?  Sarah Perry posed these questions to us in her creative and original book, If... We used this book as a platform for a discussion on creativity and imagination.  
We discussed her ability to draw outside of the plane of the viewing surface with images running off the page.  Students were asked to create 3 "If..." scenarios and chose their favorite to recreate using colored pencil and watercolors.

Mandalas

In the Spring of 2013 Mr. Campbell and Mrs. Steckel received a grant from the 112 Education Foundation to purchase 5 new tenor ukuleles and lead the students in a lesson in textile design through designing a batik.  Under the instruction of Mrs. Lorenz, Mrs. Steckel's student teacher, students learned the history of mandalas and how to make a batik using a glue resist technique.  


The word "mandala" is from the classical Indian language of Sanskrit. Loosely translated to mean "circle," a mandala represents wholeness, and can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself.  

Students used a compass to create their circles and colored their designs using colored pencils. They were asked to base the theme of their mandala on themselves using iconography representative of themes in their lives.  They traced over their design with special gel glue.  

The next week, they painted the mandala with fluorescent acrylic paint.  

Mrs Steckel took them to the laundromat to wash and dry them. They were used as a display for the 4th and 5th grade show.

Visit http://www.papermandalas.com for child-friendly mandalas to print and color.

District Office Display

Every month of the school year the board room at the district office displays artwork by students of different District 112 schools.  February is Sherwood and Ravinia’s time to shine.

Kindergarten Arctic Hare

Arctic hares are incredibly stealthy and clever.  They are known for their ability to camouflage during the winter months by shedding their blue-gray fur and growing white fur to hide in the snow.

They eat berries, bark, grasses, and moss that can be found in the area surrounding the Arctic tundra.

They generally live in groups ranging from 20-300 hares and travel in packs.  This offers protection to the group.  Generally, the arctic hare searches for food within a one-mile radius of where it lives.

Kindergarten students made arctic hares by exercising specific fine motor skills including tracing, cutting, coloring, and drawing.  They learned how to draw 6 pointed snowflakes and embellish them with repeating patterns.  

Matisse Still- Life Painting

First grade has been working tirelessly to create beautiful flower paintings inspired by the artist, Henri Matisse.We discussed “The Purple Robe and Anemones”, painted in 1937, and used it’s vibrant colors and content to inspire the vases and flowers the students painted.

 

We began by drawing a vase, the table, the flowers, and the wallpaper sections.

After the entire picture was outlined in black marker, we spent a day painting in areas with solid color.

The next day we discussed the wallpaper and simple geometric designs-not symbols. Students completed their paintings by filling in their wallpaper using only one color per color sections.

The final touch was outlining the entire painting with black tempera paint to clean up rough edges produced in the painting process.

Louise Nevelson Sculptures

Born Sept. 23, 1899/1900, Kiev, Russia — died April 17, 1988, New York, N.Y., Louise Nevelson was a Ukrainian-born U.S. sculptor. Born in Kiev, she moved with her family to Maine in 1905.  She studied at New York's Art Students League and with Hans Hofmann in Munich (1931). Her early figurative sculptures feature blockish, interlocking masses and found objects that anticipate her mature style. By the 1950's she was working almost exclusively in abstract forms. She is best known for the large, monochromatic abstract sculptures of this period, consisting of open-faced wooden boxes stacked to make freestanding walls. Within the boxes are highly suggestive collections of abstract-shaped objects mingled with pieces of architectural debris and other found objects skillfully arranged to produce a sense of mystery and then painted a single colour, usually black. She is recognized as one of the foremost sculptors of the 20th century. http://www.answers.com/topic/louise-berliawsky-nevelson

Second grade students examined and discussed the life and art of Louise Nevelson.  We analyzed the piece pictured above entitled "Case with 5 Balusters".  Students engaged in a discussion of her composition focusing on her choices of materials and paint.  Then they chose five items of identical shape and arranged them on a piece of

They chose 5 more after this first step.  The reasoning behind the two groups of shapes was to pay homage to the 2 groups of 5 identical shapes Nevelson chose for her composition.  After the 10 shapes were glued to the cardboard, students  used many different shapes to fill in their compositions, making them both formulaic and abstract compositions.  They are currently on display  in the first and second grade hallway and by the Treehouse.