Portrait Proportion Video Link

Click Here to visit the Portrait Proportion video for today's art class!

Valentine Animals

CLICK HERE to visit Mrs. Cartmill's Youtube Channel, and learn how to draw a Valentine Animal!

Kings, Queens, and Circle Looms

The kids finished a big weaving unit recently. We spent the holiday season finger weaving. Finger weaving is a HUGE deal here at Sonora. If you want to learn how, click HERE! After Thanksgiving we started weaving on painted plates. These turned out beautiful, and the kids really enjoyed the calm process. To learn how to make a loom on a paper plate, click HERE!

We spent three weeks weaving the middle of our looms. 

First and second grade has been talking about the Middle Ages! We've been looking at paintings and learning about how artists mainly made art about bible stories and kings, queens, and knights. We did self portraits of ourselves as a king or queen. We topped them off with sparkly crowns and jewels. They turned out GREAT!

Way to go, Sonora artists!

Gelli Printing

The Sonora art room received a $1,500 grant from Springdale Education Foundation to purchase a class set of Gelli Plates and Gelli tools. 
The students learned about line, composition and design while we had a BLAST printmaking with these new plates!
The pictures speak for themselves

 

Thank you, Springdale Education Foundation!

Homemade Sketchbooks

We hit the ground running in art this year! Most other art teachers would call me crazy for painting the second week of school, especially with my brand new 1st graders, but we did it! (and the kids did a fabulous job, most classes cleaned up in under 5 minutes)

This year, we are making our own sketchbooks. This project is AWESOME, because it allows us to use the amount of paper we want, it gives us individualized sketchbook covers, cuts cost where I bought composition notebooks last year, and the kids get to create in the process. WIN, WIN,WIN, WIN!

The second week of school, we painted the covers using just a 18x12 sheet of colored construction paper, paint, and big brushes (I have also seen these done with old file folders, which might be more durable, I just don't have 700 at hand).

 With the younger kids, I limited the color palette to mostly cool colors (blue, green, pthalo green, lime green, yellow, and white) so that they could mix and experiment without it turning brown. They turned out really lovely!

This week, we are stuffing them with 20 sheets of white paper, stapling the spines with a heavy duty stapler (a normal stapler will staple 10 sheets of paper just fine, but not 20), and reinforcing the spine with strips of colorful, patterned duck tape. (I had a lot of fun picking these out for the kids!)  I am also cutting a 3 inch strip and putting it in the center of their sketchbook cover so the kids can write their name and teacher code with sharpie. 

*While they waited to be called back to my table to put their sketchbook together, they created a self portrait for the first page of their sketchbook. 

These are super fun, super simple, low cost, and I can't wait to use them this year!

Update on the Year

We have been working hard on a number of things this year- from symmetry self portraits, Rousseau inspired tiger paintings, Van Gogh Starry Nights, and friendship villages, paper sculpture, and now hand knitting. Art has been a blast!


We studied the artist, Henri Rousseau and learned about his "dreamy" paintings. We then made our own brightly colored, dreamy tiger habitats.

We did a unit on self portraits. 1st and 2nd created their own portrait schema's.

3rd, 4th and 5th created "Symmetry Selfies" using digital media, and pencil. 

We learned about the Cave Paintings of Lascaux, France and did some writing, too!

Second Grade learned about volcanoes in science, so we integrated the unit into art! Students researched different volcanoes from each continent and did a presentation to their peers. We sculpted animals from their volcano's region, and got to explode them at the end. We even made the front page of the NWA paper!

We learned about the artist, Vincent Van Gogh, did opinion writing, and painted our own Starry Nights. 

Right now, we are learning to finger knit (2nd-5th) and weave (1st). The kids LOVE this! They have chains at the end that they can make as necklaces, bracelets, or headbands. They have been making them at home and wearing them to school. 

It is so exciting to see how students are growing and learning this year. Thanks for stopping in!

Sketchbooks and Start of the Year Goals

One of my goals this year is for each student 1st through 5th grade to have a sketchbook of their own in art. This is a huge goal for a few reasons.

I had to buy around 650 composition notebooks from Walmart, get them to school, and find a good way to store them so that the kids can easily access them. 650 books=32 boxes! That's a lot of boxes, and there is one little me. The possibilities were endless! 

Below you can see, it was an even bigger challenge than anticipated loading the boxes into three shopping carts by myself and hauling them across Springdale in my little car to Sonora and unloading again. (The boxes did not revolt, however.)

We will be using our sketchbooks to draw preliminary drawings for projects, sketch and brainstorm ideas, practice the elements and principles of art, and write artist statements and art observations. I am excited about being able to implement literacy into the art room! I believe every subject, from art to PE, can be cross curricular and serve to move students forward in their education.  

Yes, I only see the kids once a week for 40 minutes, but it is worth it for them to be expressive through their writing as well as their art. That is part of being an artist! 

Getting the sketchbooks organized by class- I am BIG on organization!!

Students will be able to find their sketchbook organized by teacher in a shelf system marked with their teacher name. 

Another new edition to the art room this year is Arkansas Art Common Core Curriculum. The Springdale elementary art teachers met over the summer at a seminar at Crystal Bridges to refine the vocabulary and come up with a power standards sheet for each grade level. We are really excited about this, because we know exactly what our students will be learning ON ONE SHEET!  I have

attached them
below for you to look through to see what your child will be learning in art if they are an elementary student in Arkansas. 

 Some new visuals around the classroom!

Students will see which vocabulary words they have mastered

We will start with a drawing unit this year

The line is starting somewhere new this year! Watch out students!

Looking forward to another great year!

Mrs. Cartmill