Salon Des Enfants 2013

This was my last Salon Show because by this time I had decided to retire. I had such a great time with my junior high elective classes and watching them improve their skills. I was so proud of the work they did for the show. I will certainly miss that part of teaching, where I can mentor students who are exploring their personal creativity in art. (See Animoto below)

6th Grade Radial Designs

Radial symmetry is such a beautiful and simple design principle from a daisy or sun to a very complex design. Students created these designs without bothering with compasses or protractors in order to improve their skills at "eyeballing" the symmetry of the details.
Students watched a great video about radial symmetry on the SMART Board before we began. These students learned radial symmetry using sticky squares when they were younger so they had prior knowledge of the concept. (See Animoto below)

From Ordinary to Extraordinary Drawing

One of the things an art teacher tries to do is have students look at things from a different perspective. It may be a different viewpoint or just to put things together that they didn't think of. Students were handed a brand new #2 pencil to study and then were able to choose a bird that would be made out of pencils. These are the work of my Holy Family students from Whitefish Bay, WI. 

Getting to Know You Jr. High Wordles

As a getting to know you activity for my Jr. High Digital Art elective, I had the students make a list of their favorite things as a WORD document and then copy that into WORDLE. They were supposed to emphasize their name, use the snipping tool, and save to their folders. Additionally, they were to edit the color palette in WORDLE and place the design in their PowerPoint portfolio. (See Animoto below)

Artistopoly

Although Artopoly does exist, Artistopoly is geared as a fun way to work on visual recognition of famous masterworks and art styles. This is meant to be used on the Reaction Grid so it only existed virtually. I would give clues and the kids as avatars would run towards the correct section of the board. It was so much fun for everyone and they really showed visual recognition. (See Animotos below)

Stippled Drawing Work

Students were introduced to the technique of stippling this week. I played the video Hero using the Vimeo website. It shows a teenage boy drawing a picture of his father using this drawing technique. We also looked at a Frayer model of the word and samples of stippled artwork using SMART Notebook & the document camera. Students completed a stippled value scale and worked on an exercise using a teapot as subject matter. After doing the exercise, students chose their own subject matter and drew a light sketch they can follow for their stippled drawing. I will add pictures to this Animoto as the students work. (See Animoto below)

Low Fat/Sugar Free Edible Color Wheels

Color Theory usually involves colored pencils, paint, and other traditional art materials. I had known about an edible cell project for many years but the other art teacher at my school did this with her students and I decided that it sounded like a good way to teach tints. I did a demonstration and then each group used white sugar free frosting and food coloring to mix the colors in the color wheel. Low Fat Vanilla Wafers were frosted and arranged in color wheel order. This class will be painting color wheel designs soon so this is great practice mixing colors.(See Animoto below)

Jr. High Blended Shading Designs

Junior High students spent some time learning a value scale and had to complete a multi-gray scale done in ebony or 4B pencil before starting a design. Many of the students at this age are not used to keeping their hands out of the way when they are working, and they didn't quite get into the habit of laying down a scrap sheet to protect areas previously worked. We had no windows, nor could students leave the room to go outside, so spraying was not feasible. They did their best and most did grasp the idea of value and blending, though mastery wasn't gained in their initial pieces. (See Animoto below)

Getting to Know You Prezi

Students in the Digital/Studio Art Electives will use Prezi to create a Get to Know Me presentation where they will share their favorite things, goals, etc. This is part of the community building we will be doing. Today was our first day and I shared my 30 Things About Me presentation with them so they could also get to know me as a person. I look forward to really getting to know my students and create an environment where they can learn and explore their own creativity along with technical skills. Ms. Strehlow Prezi  (See Prezi below)

New Gimp Assignment for Digital Art Class

How2 fixurpix2

View more presentations from Noreen Strehlow

Jr. High Autobiographical Self Portraits

Students in the digital art class created layered self portraits using a photo cutout of themselves on a transparent background. Subsequent layers were a famous work of art and then four layers depicting special interests. Here are the first ones completed.

Jr. High Color Wheel Portraits using Gimp

I love doing this project so all my digital art students do it. It teaches so many digital skills and tools that by the time they are done, they can do many projects using Gimp. If they are lucky enough to have access to Photoshop in the future, they are able to make the transition without any teaching. (See Animoto below)

Andy Warhol Revisited - Jr. High Digital Graphics

7th and 8th graders in my Digital Graphics class visited the Andy Warhol Interactive website in order to explore variations in hue and saturation which were our two most recent vocabulary words. After getting a sense of what could be done using Marilyn Monroe as a subject, students learned how to resize and duplicate layers in Gimp and then explore the Hue/Saturation feature to recolorize their school pictures. A few who finished early got to do the same thing for a cartoon character. These students are learning many of the tools and features of Gimp in doing this project. (See Prezi below)

Let's Make Some Bling; a Gimp Tutorial

Although we couldn't afford Photoshop, I felt that students needed to learn digital graphic skills so I adapted a fun project using the open source program Gimp. I had done this with Ginger Baron's students at Lowell School and ACE students at Prep, so I knew it was a successful activity. By the time it was finished, kids knew a lot about graphic tools. (See video below)

Digital Art Elective: Web 2.0 - Wordles

Classes switched after our break and a new batch of students just started my first hour Digital Art/Yearbook class. Web 2.0 tools figure into graphic design work so we spent a little time exploring the Wordle link on my Portaportal. Objectives included 1) Listing favorites using WORD; copy & paste text into WORDLE 2) Exploring fonts 3) Exploring the layouts and 4) Using the edit custom palette feature. (See video below)

Minions and More Minions!

The Minion Challenge required that students create a 3D creature based on the movie "Despicable Me." I had done this with students at Lowell on the Teen Grid and it was a great way to show spatial reasoning and a mastery of building with the prims. (primitive shapes) They learn to move object on an X, Y, and Z axis. (See video below)