Erin Davis Portraits

A very talented friend did this portrait of Josilin and Chance (one of the horses at RTS). Check out her website to see more of her work:

http://www.erindavisportraits.com/

Goofy Fish

2nd grade made clay fish with great results

Footprints on Our Hearts...

Kindergartners learned about their 4th element of art: texture. We looked all around and discussed various examples in the art room. Then I let them play with clay and explore the texture of it. They rolled out a flat piece approx. .5" thick, and stepped on it with their shoes. Next, I handed them a heart-shaped cookie cutter which they used to cut out an interesting section of texture. After I fired them to bisque they painted the hearts with acrylics. Volunteers and I put a spray varnish on them and glued doilies on the unfinished backs. They were carefully packed in decorated bags with shredded paper and sent home to parents with the following quote attached:

"Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts - we are never, ever the same."

Color Explosion Collages

5th grade selected images from magazines, then determined whether the emphasis was more on warm or cool colors. They created these collages with magazine pictures and contruction paper.

4th Grade Open Hearts

Students worked with positive and negative space to create balanced hearts with 3 dimensional cut-outs.

Artsonia

I've set up a student art gallery on Artsonia for parents & family to share their student's best artwork. I digitally photograph the best works from each class and upload them to this site:
www.artsonia.com/schools/GulfBreeze1
Headquartered in Gurnee, Ill., Artsonia was established in 2000 as an online kid's art museum providing free, educational resources for kids, families and schools to create art projects. Since its inception, Artsonia continues to integrate technology in the classroom, develop multi-cultural understanding through art and increase family involvement in children's education.

Picasso Portraits

3rd grade created self portraits after studying facial proportions, them cut them up and assembled them in Picasso-esque fashion. Medium: watercolor

Chinese New Year Banners

4th grade students were shown examples of banners which are hung traditionally in Chinese homes to welcome the new year. They studied Chinese characters for Luck, love, harmony,etc. and created banners with their own wishes for 2009. Medium: black ink, chalk pastels.

Van Allsburg Houses

Third grade studied Chris Van Allsburg, award winning illustrator of the Polar Express. They looked at his use of shadows and tendency to draw from different perspectives. Medium: oil pastels and tempera paint.

Kandinsky Circles

First grade studied works by Wassily Kandinsky, and discussed his use of shape & color. Medium: watercolor

2nd Grade Shoescapes

Students learned about surrealism, and viewed works by Salvador Dali & Rene Magritte. They were instructed to sketch their own shoes as accurately as possible. During the second session with them, I handed back the drawings told them they were now "Giant shoes for tiny people." They had to convert the shoe into some other object for these tiny people to live/work/play on. I told them this was the one and only time ever I would accept stick people.

Fifth Grade Watercolor

First project with my 5th graders. The ornaments were done with the "wet on wet" technique, giving them a glassy look.

Poincettia Perspectives

Still lifes by 4th grade. Medium: tempera paint, shaped sponges, sharpies and glitter.

GBE Kindergarten Silhouettes

This project took 2 class periods and some great helper moms to complete. Medium: finger paint, layered construction paper & finger paint paper.

Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival

November 4-6, 2008, Seville Square, Pensacola, FL - first show participating as an art teacher. Overall it was a great experience. Wish I'd had my students complete smaller pieces. They made a nice showing. Discovered that cellophane plus high humidity equals tight, torqued balsa wood sculptures. Glad I'd laminated the watercolor pieces!

Face Tessellations

This is the last project I did with my 8th graders at Holley Navarre before my move to Gulf Breeze Elementary. It was inspired by a great art educator Woody Duncan. We worked on it for a couple of weeks mid - October. They had a lot of fun with this project - had to design 3 half faces along 3 sides of a triangle. Then they had to figure out how many times to duplicate the triangle to end up with this shape. (Little bit of math!) They could color in any medium they chose.

Piet Mondrian

Finished our unit on Piet Mondrian. My yearlong students created a 3D stained glass sculpture, and my semester students created abstracts.

Monochromatic House

Students were asked to choose a black & white photocopy of a house they liked. They sketched it out on 18x24 drawing paper. When the sketch was complete, they created a monochromatic scale with their color of choice. Color was applied to the sketch using cardboard strips. They were skeptical of the technique at first, but realized they could achieve great texture results with it. Shingles, leaves, wood siding materialized using the monochromatic scheme and cardboard.

Element of Art: Value

I created a Power Point Presentation on value. It profiled American Landscape artist Charles Burchfield. These are 3 of this works. You can learn more about him here: http://www.burchfield-penney.org/ceb/

Color Lesson

This was the first project with my 8th grade art students. After reviewing the Element of color Power Point Presentation, each student was to create an original motif in 3 sizes. The largest was traced 3 times and painted in the primary colors. The medium motif was traced 3 times and overlapped the large motifs one time each. These were painted in the secondary colors. Where the overlap occurred became a tertiary color. Six small motifs were traced with no overlapping areas and each was to represent the tertiary colors.

A Work in Progress

I toned 2 canvases while we were in Tennessee. There was no plan. I tackled the blue & green one first. This mother looks tense. I'll fix that next.

Farm Trip

In June, we went to Mom & Dad's farm in Tennessee. These pictures include the fossils we found, some wildflowers, the pond on the hill, a tadpole with legs and a view of the barn.

Stippling

I've used this technique a few times over the years. I like the results, it can be very time-consuming though. Size: 10" x 15"

Palm Trees

This was for my mother-in-law for Christmas. My inspiration photo came from our trip to Bush Gardens. I wanted the painting to have an impressionistic style. Acrylic on canvas. Size: 16" x 20"

Pencil Quick Portraits

We used to have to draw each other in one of my drawing courses at South. Here are a few of my favorites:

Conte Crayon

Black, white and brown conte on Strathmore Charcoal paper. Size: 11" x 18"

Pen & Ink & Wash

Ink and watercolor wash. Size: 9"x24"

Crayons

I've always enjoyed coloring. Even today I'll pull out one of my daughter's coloring books and color for 15 minutes. It's a quick pick me up when there's no time for getting out supplies to paint. Strathmore drawing pad size: 12"x 18"

Charcoal & Ink Wash

These are a few I did in college. Size: 14" x 17"

Pen & Ink

This is an old plantation house on my alumni campus.

Pencil/graphite drawings

Pencil drawings from photos. Size: 9"x 12"