Spiral Paintings

Spirals are everywhere; from the tiniest organisms to the largest galaxies. 1st Grade students at UMS created these vibrant paintings after viewing a series of images of spirals seen throughout nature (including snails, hurricanes and fiddle-head ferns). On day one of this lesson, students drew a spiral and used it's shape to guide the direction and movement of their paintings. On the second day, students finished painting and embellished their spirals with colored oil pastels. These 1st grade artists have demonstrated immense creativity, color sensitivity, and expression through movement.

Drawing with Toys

This week, Second Graders are beginning to blend observational drawing with imagination and writing in a rigorous (but fun!) art lesson. Students looked through a box of small toys and selected a few to put together to create a narrative scene. They wrote a sentence about the scene and followed with an illustration drawn from observation. Many of these pictures ended up being pretty humorous... (above is a video demonstration by yours truly)

Using our Imaginations to See

If you are interested in fun and easy drawing activity to activate the right side of your brain, I've got just the one for you! Take some strips of tape and place them randomly on a piece of paper. Turn your paper around until you "see" an animal or creature in the tape. Then use a pencil to outline the animal; you can add more details with colored pencils and markers.

Why is Drawing Important?

I just wanted to share this video because it really aligns with my thinking. We all appreciate the arts, but it's important to think deeply about why we appreciate them, and why we need them...

Autumn Floor Drawings

Today, students began drawing from life. This is a term that means drawing by looking at objects; closely observing the shape, texture, line and value of objects while trying to copy them through drawing.

We used items collected from natural areas as subject matter (twigs, rocks, shells, roots, flowers, leaves, etc.). Students selected one natural object at a time from the various trays of displayed materials.  Then they placed their object on a large sheet of paper and tried to draw their object the way they saw it. It's much harder to do than it sounds, but these kids rocked the challenge and had a blast doing it. We used charcoal, pencils and pens for these drawings.

At one point, one of our second graders tried to borrow a shell from another students' paper until she realized it wasn't a shell...it was a drawing of a shell. Can't get more accurate than that!

Community Helpers

1st graders began to apply some new drawing techniques today through studying images of the vehicles that help our community. We began with a warm up to practice noticing different types of shapes and lines. Following that, we observed photographs and graphic pictures to help guide our drawings. We focused on police cars, ambulances, rescue helicopters, and fire engines. Kids can draw very accurately when they've got good instruction and support!

Mr. Antonicci, artiste extraordinaire

We had a surprise visitor join Ms. Hughes's art class this afternoon. Mr. Antonicci jokes sometimes that he isn't a good artist, but I beg to differ! His self-portrait is pretty accurate, don't you think?

At UMS, everyone is an artist!

Next week we'll add a watercolor background and explore how our color choices
might suggest a mood for our self-portraits.
Get ready to paint!

Summer Art

I hope everyone is having an exciting and creative summer. I know I have! Summer is a great time to recharge artistically for me. Here are some pictures of some of the paintings I've been working on for the past few weeks. These are all acrylics on canvas. Ask me in August about Acrylics and I'd be happy to share more information about their qualities and capabilities

At the Intersection of Battery St. and Maple St.

Poker Hill Landscape

Red Mountains

Route 15, Jericho, VT

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Gyotaku: Japanese Fish Printing

This week at UMS we are continuing our studies in printmaking by learning about the traditional Japanese artform known as Gyotaku (meaning "fish print"). Gyotaku began in the mid-1800s as a way for fishermen to record their catch. Before selling their fish at the market, they'd make a print of the fish using ink and rice paper. Here's a video of contemporary artist, Naoki, discussing his Gyotaku process:

Here are some photos of Mrs. Davis' class trying it out for themselves. We used rubber fish!