Mural week two

 Houses from left to right by Jonathan (brown), Keyana(pink), Ryshaun(red), Alex(yellow), and Juavonte (blue)

 Lashamere, Yahsyah and Kiara do some fix-ups

 Day time:

 dusk to night-time:

 House by Kenya

 House by Yahzyah

Cold Hands, Warm Hearts

After making textured painted paper using warm/cool paints, 7th graders made a collage using their painted paper.
Artwork by Lashamere and Yahzyah

 Artwork by Keyana and Tyree

 Marvelles and Mikayla always take the art projects in their own very unique creative way.  Marvelles drew an actually human heart rather than using art shape.  Mikayla's heart has a face and the hand is over the eye.

 Artwork by Kiara B

Ndebele in "Da" Building

The Ndebele (pronounced "in-da-belly) African Tribe is famous for their colorful geometric house paintings.  7th graders designed their own Ndebele house design. 

Unfortunately, a couple months have passed and I forget which students did many of these.  If it is yours, leave a comment and I will include your name.  Thanks

Artwork by Johntaye

Artwork by Kiara B

Artwork by Yahzyah

Artwork by Crystal?

Artwork by Mikayla?

Artwork by Lashamere

Tree Silhouettes

I was so proud of the 7th graders' trees. They went above and beyond what I could have expected with these stunning tree artwork.
Artwork by Crystal
Artwork by Marvelles (I wish he had finished cause he has great details in pencil that we can not see)
Artwork by Ellusion and Lorraine
Artwork by Kiara B and Tjena
Artwork by Lashamere and Cartez

Miro's Motifs

7th graders studied the Spanish Surrealist Artist Joan Miro. Miro's "Chicago" is a large sculpture found downtown across from the Daley Center.

They looked at Miro's Constellation Series and found some of his motifs (a distinctive feature that is repeated in an artist's work).


We discussed surreal and abstract art (abstract art=from your imagination; surreal art= using your subconscious). They began their piece by closing their eyes and making three "squiggles". Next they added some of his motifs. They used pastels, crayons, and markers for the color.

Artwork by Johntaye and Shakeyah
Artwork by Mikayla and Kiara B
Artwork by Deja
Artwork by Tjena
Artwork by Ellusion
Artwork by Crystal and Lashamere
Artwork by Jamerah and Cartez
Students were encouraged to use their imagination and find things amongst their squiggles. Cartez was very good at this and found a dragon/monster type creature. He went around the room helping other students find things.

Back to Drawing!! Grades 4-8

We are back in school! Our first project was decorating the cover to our sketchbook. This year's group colors are orange, purple and green. Every class had the same guidelines of wavy line in middle, box on the wavy line, sun by their name as well of a zig-zag line, spirals and other shapes. Even with the same guidelines, everyone's unique style shined through!!
On the back side they had option of free draw and writing their name in different styles. Here are some of my favorites:

Sketchbook Covers by Kiara B, Crystal, Marvelles and Tatyana

Sketchbook Covers by Yahzyah, Deja, and Lorraine

Sketchbook covers by Jevon, Kiara R, Brianna, Indiya

Sketchbook Covers by Kori, Tysean, Juavonte, and Emonie

Steps of the Mosaic

Making a mosaic has many many steps. If you look at my previous post, you will see that we worked with clay to make mosaic fish and sea creatures, but that is only the beginning. To make the mosaic, first the 3rd and 4th graders glued down their ceramic piece. Then the other grades helped by placing down tiles around the fish. We put brown and black tiles on the ocean floor and blue and green tiles in the sea.
None of the tiles in the picture below are glued down yet. We were still moving things around to decide how we wanted it.
Now we started gluing! Wear gloves while working with liquid nails. I had liquid nails stuck on my hands for a few days.
Kiara was smart and wore gloves.
After everything was glued (which took A LONG time) we put grout in between all the tiles. The mosaic is FOUR PANELS large!! I hope it will be installed this summer.
Ms. Elleby painted the fish on the panel you see below.
I painted the two fish on the second panel.

Playing with Bendaroos

Ice Cream Sundae by Fajah


Shark by Kiara B and Snail be Lashawn. I didn't mean for it to look like the shark is eating the snail, but it turned out that way by chance.

Guitar by Mark