Visual Journals 5 Weeks: Cover Design (Picture HEAVY Post)

Time to dive into those visual journal assignments I was talking about a while back.  I am giving visual journal assignments to my Studio Art, Art 7, and Drawing & Painting classes.  (You can read with more detail the idea behind these, as well as check out the rubric I am currently using to grade them here.)  Basically, every five weeks, each class has a total of 3 assignments that are due to me.  I will not accept them late (they do receive automatic 0's if they are not handed in by the deadline).  Students in each class have the deadlines and the assignments for the entire school year all mapped out in a document available to them on the Google Classroom, so there are no excuses.  Plus, I have made Fridays "Visual Journal Friday", giving students the opportunity to work on these in class with the materials available.

Aside from the vague description given for each journal assignment, students must use mixed media and their assignments must be a two page spread.  I have my two studio art classes' assignments due on the Friday before the end of each marking period, and then I have the Art 7 and Drawing & Painting students' assignments due on the last Friday of each marking period (though I post that they are due on Thursday instead, just to give a little wiggle room).  These assignments are meant to be open-ended, allowing students to think creatively, problem solve, and experiment...basically many of the ideas from Choice Based Learning or TAB programs.

The first three assignments were a cover design, a name design on the inside cover (that somehow had to have a self-portrait of the student...and by that, I meant not a selfie, and not necessarily a drawing of their face), and something called Mind Map.  More on those in the next two posts.

Here are a whole bunch of the cover designs.  The covers were challenging because my students had two different types of sketchbooks...the black, hard cover ones and then spiral bound.  The black ones are notorious for becoming unglued at the binding, but unfortunately, all of the sketchbooks I ordered never came in and I had to fall back on the stash I had stocked up on in previous years.  (Yes, I supply sketchbooks to my students.  If I don't, they bring in Dollar Store sketchbooks that don't have enough pages and fall apart within weeks.)  Depending on the cover and depending on what they chose to do, some students had to gesso the covers, some glued drawing paper on so they had a surface to draw on, many painted, and some collaged materials together using acrylic gloss or matte medium.

Underneath each image, I'll give a brief description of what the student did to achieve their cover. :)

This student glued down some drawing paper, drew the geometric forms with pencil, and then use acrylic paint over the top paint negative space, creating his initials.

Acrylic gloss, newspaper, and tissue paper.  Then the student used washi tape to write "Art" and also dripped colored India ink onto her collage, blowing it with a straw.

Marker on drawing paper to get the black lines, and then she collaged tissue paper over the top with acrylic gloss.

More acrylic gloss and tissue paper.  A bit of glitter too.

Duct tape, green masking tape, and marker.

Tissue paper, acrylic gloss, and painters markers.

Newspaper, tissue paper, and letter stickers.

This student masked off the front cover with tiny strips of masking tape to paint the galaxy diamond with acrylic.  Then, the back cover, she mimicked the galaxy.

Acrylic paint...she used masking tape to mask off the chevron, and then painted the anchor and words.

Masking tape and marker.

Collage over the top of an acrylic background.

This student had an amazing marker design drawn out and taped to her cover.  She then took magazine clippings and taped them over the top.  Unfortunately, I think she went a bit overboard because she covered up her marker design a bit too much, but either way, it's still interesting to look at!

Baseball fan...obviously...tempera and Sharpie.

Gesso background, masked off trees / drawn stencil used for deer head, and then splattered painted with acrylic.

Spray paint, acrylic, oil pastel...

Spray paint and masking tape used to mask off the letters.

Another spray paint with masked off letters.  Also used oil pastels to write his name and "journal".

These two covers came from my Drawing & Painting class.  I guess I didn't make it very clear to them that it had to be front and back for their cover designs, so for this assignment, I let them do just the front cover.  On the left, she collaged together magazine clippings, and on the right, she did scrapbook paper and then created a dress for a croquis using tissue paper.  The girl on the right is also in my Fashion Design class, and since posting this, she has added to her cover to make it more mixed media.

A student who went overboard with the acrylic paint and texture rollers (the paint is super thick!!!), but ended up with a really cool feeling visual journal!

Another Drawing & Painting student...chalk, collage, marker...

Acrylic background and washi tape words.

One of my few Drawing & Painting students who did the front and back.  She laid down acrylic string gel for texture, painted with acrylic paint, and then splattered the white.  I believe she plans on doing more with this but ran out of time before the deadline.

Another Drawing & Painting student.  His design is really quite awesome.  He was trying to show how ideas look on paper versus how ideas look in his head.  We went round and round with each because I felt like he should have outlined the paper and books to make them stand out more.  Originally, it looked unfinished when he handed it in, especially with the beautiful bubble at the top.  It's hard to see from this picture, but he went back in and added pencil shading to the brain in order to connect the pencil book to the brain.

So, as you can probably tell from these, quite a few students didn't understand the concept of mixed media, nor did they seem to put a huge amount of effort in, but I can tell you that I am EXTREMELY happy with these!  Even the ones with seemingly little effort are more effort than sketchbook assignments from previous years.  The students are really enjoying these, they like that I give them Friday's in class, and with our next set due the first week of November, I've already seen some amazing ideas on paper!  Students were definitely having a hard time with the first batch of assignments because they were worried they would mess up, do something wrong, or it wouldn't be up to my expectations.  However, I think they are getting more comfortable already and feeling a bit more creative!

Post #2: Visual Journals 5 Weeks: Name Design

Post #3: Visual Journals 5 Weeks: Mind Map

1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 2

Here they are...our finished crazy pumpkin collages!

Some students elected to add crazy eyes and mouths to their pumpkins to create jack-o-lanterns while others decided to keep them simple pumpkins.  To finish up the collages, I passed out white drawing paper scraps for students to create eyes, mouths and as some did, moons to add to their collages.  I passed out a piece of brown art paper for them to make stems.  Once these were all glued on, students added a few more blades of grass from their green paper scraps and they were all finished!

1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 1

Once again, I'm changing it up this year for 1st grade.  This year's group of kinders and 1st graders are a bit lower developmentally and behaviorally than in the past, so I have to start a bit simpler this year.  For our first project in 1st grade, we are reviewing basic color theory (primary and secondary colors) as well as talking about what a landscape is.  To tie it into the fall season, we are incorporating pumpkins!

This project has turned into a three day project.  It probably could have been squeezed into two, but the students were actually taking their time to cut and glue the pieces that I didn't want to rush them!  Here is what we did in the first two days.

On day one, we reviewed the primary and secondary colors.  They learned this in the beginning of kindergarten last year and periodically reviewed it through the year.  Each student received three pieces of Manila tag board and wrote their names on the back.  I held up yellow and blue paint, asked the students to share at their tables what color they thought those would make when mixed, and then went around to each student and put a squirt of each color on their paper.

The students then had to mix the paint on their paper while painting the entire thing.  This was also a great review right out of the gate on how to paint properly with tempera paint...no banging the brushes on the side of the water container (wipe on a tissue or paper towel), periodically dip your brush in water to help make the paint spread easier on the paper, etc. etc.  We repeated this until we had painted an orange, purple and green paper.

Purple is always a hard color to mix.  I found that when the students used the fluorescent blue and red, the purple was really pink, which you can see in the pictures below.  With another class, I gave the fluorescent red and regular blue tempera and the purple turned out darker, like my purple in the picture above.

On the second day, I demonstrated how to cut thin, tall rectangles out of the green paper to make grass.  I had students glue a row of grass onto the purple paper.  Next, I asked them to cut out a small, medium and large pumpkin out of the orange paper.  We discussed a little bit about how pumpkins can be different shapes...not always perfect circles...to ease their minds about not being able to cut a perfect circle.  We glued these on next.  (If I had more time with the students and had thought about it sooner, I would have incorporated the book, Spookley the Square Pumpkin...it's a super cute book and there is even a cute, video version of the book.)

Lastly, I asked students to cut out more grass and I showed them how to put grass on top of the pumpkins and behind them to make it look like the pumpkins are sitting in tall grass.

I don't usually start the first project of the year in 1st grade with paint, but I must say that I am extremely happy with the results so far.  This project doesn't require detailed painting so it's a great way to review how to paint with tempera from last year (no banging brushes, swish to rinse, no bad hair days, etc.).  It's also an awesome review for scissor safety and for using dots of glue instead of globs. :)

Lots of students asked to be able to put eyes and a mouth on their pumpkins.  Since 99% of the school population in my district does participate in Halloween events, I can and will allow it.  I won't require it however, in case someone doesn't celebrate Halloween or simply does not want to add eyes and a mouth.  I even had a student ask if he could make the eyes on his pumpkin yellow so that it looked like a glowing jack-o-lantern!

Product Review: Roylco Moving Eyes Portraits

All righty, let's get some blog articles written here!  Now that we are done to the last four full days, two half days, and one 1/4 day of school (I'm not counting or anything...), I finally have more free time on my hands now that my high school students are all taking their NYS Regents exams instead of being in class.

Back in February, a Roylco representative contacted me and asked if I would like to try out a product for free in return for a review of it on my blog.  Of course, I said yes!  Who doesn't like to get free products?  I decided to try their Remarkable Art: Moving Eye Portraits.  Unfortunately, I was unable to incorporate these into any regular classes this year, however I did try them out with some Extended Day kids as an after school project.  These students were mostly 4th and 5th grade, all girls.

The first thing I did was pull out the assortment of faces that come with the kit, and laid them out for the students to pick from.

Next, the students colored the eye balls their color, and we folded them and taped them to the back of the portrait as the directions told us to.

I pulled out all sorts of things for the girls to use.  Scrap paper, gems, pipe cleaners, buttons, etc. etc.

These are their finished products from the project.  The girls that participated did have fun and took a couple extras home.  They wanted to make portraits of their siblings!

So, here is my review.  I'll give you the positives, the negatives, and how I will use the rest of the product I have left next year.

Positives

There is an assortment of faces, both shape-wise and skin color-wise.

On each portrait, the cardboard has lines scored where the nose and mouth should go.  It's good having the face laid out like that for younger students, especially when you're trying to teach them proportions.  This might be a good introduction to self-portraits with younger students...something to get them to see where the nose goes compared to the ears before they try and draw their portrait themselves.

The eyes look cool!  I'm not exactly sure that they looked like they were following us, but having them recessed back a little in the eye sockets makes them look more interesting than drawn on the same surface.  

This kit gives your students the ability to be extremely creative with what they use to create hair and such.  My girls were a little more set on getting them done than really thinking about how they could have been more creative.  Though, I think if you were to incorporate this in class as an actually project, you can do a little more leading up to it to encourage the use of mixed media.

Negatives

The face shapes and colors are limiting.  Even though i was only working with about eight different girls when we tried these out, they were complaining that they couldn't find a head that really looked like theirs.  I almost feel that this project would be a little more beneficial to older students if the faces weren't colored in.  Bring it down to the very bare minimum.

The directions for the eyes are a little unclear.  The way the edges of the eye piece fold they would stick out from the frame if you placed the eyes in such a way as to leave a little gap between the top surface and the eye piece.  I think that's how it has to be put together in order to make it seem like they are "following you", but the folds don't quite match up right to do it properly...at least not without some cutting.

This is definitely something that is meant for younger students.  The age on the package says for 5+ yet the girl on the package looks like she is a 3rd grader.  I don't like to give my older students something that is already "half-done" for them to complete, at least in class.  (After school crafts are a different area where I will sometimes make considerations.) 

Next year, I plan on trying out the leftovers I have with my 1st grade students during a portrait unit.  In the past, I've done Roy G. Biv collages, so i think this might be a cool thing to incorporate with that project, just to see what they do with it.  

You can purchase these kits from eNasco for $18.30 a box, which has 32 portraits total, or directly from their website for $19.99.  For an extra curricular program, craft club or even a regular classroom teacher, this is something I could imagine them purchasing (especially if they aren't confident in the area of arts and crafts!), however I feel like this is not something art teachers would or should spend their budgets on.

If I were ever to do something like this with older students in class, they would not be using this kit.  Instead, they would make their own from scratch.  In all honesty, that's how I tend to use some Roylco products.  For example, my 6th graders designed stamps this year (post coming soon!) for countries they were researching in Social Studies.  Roylco has a stamp kit that you can buy.  I bought one a few years back and instead of having the students draw on the stamps (which is how they are meant to be used), I simply have them use the originals as a pattern to trace their stamp.  That way, they can alter the edging if they choose to.