September Art Blog 2018

Welcome to the Bacich Art For Bears Program TK-4th grade!

We are off to a fabulous start.  During our first art lessons of the new school year, we established routines and rules and practiced collaboration. TK- 1st grade students collaborated building paper sculptures, and 2nd-4th grade students worked on colorful, collaborative paintings. You may have seen some of these collaborative works of art displayed along the constructions fence on our campus. 

From sculpting and painting we moved on to our traditional beginning-of-the-school-year Art Journal activities. 

The Art Journal

Throughout the school year students will have the opportunity to use their art journals in a combination of sketching, note taking, and personal journal writing. Students reflect upon and evaluate their own learning. This allows students to place reading and writing in a context that is functional and personally relevant. 

One of the key lessons in our art program is that there are no mistakes in art. Besides being a means of recording, the art journal is a safe place for the student to express his or her thoughts and ideas in writing and drawing that is not corrected by the teacher, giving freedom for individual expression.

TK- 1st grade Art Journal activities: Elements of Art, Discovering Lines

Many people claim they cannot be artists because they "can't draw a straight line". Using the strategies of this unit "Discovering Lines" anybody who can hold a pencil can learn to draw. Drawing is basically a matter of close observation, breaking the subject into lines and shapes, and of course lots of practice. 

Sometimes the simplicity of a line drawing can say more than color - and the delightful animal drawings TK- 1st grade students drew do just that!  In creating these fabulous animals the students leaned to recognize and categorize lines and shapes, 

For their final pieces students transferred and carved their animal line drawing onto scratch foam. Students used the foam block in a relief block printing technique to print their animals onto their journal covers. 

2nd-4th GRADE Art Journal Making and Cover Prints  

The art of upcycling is to reuse (discarded objects or materials) in such a way as to create a product of a higher quality or value than the original. Second through fourth grade students upcycled brown paper bags to create art journals. Students were introduced to the basics of bookbinding, the process of physically assembling a book from an ordered stack of recycled paper sheets folded together into sections. Students learned how to sew their journals with the saddle stitch book binding method.

To embellish and personalize the front cover of their journals, students were working in a  vegetable print making technique.  Students used potatoes, onions, celery, fennel and mushrooms to create fancy patters or flowers, trees and plants.