IPad Art: Owls & Zentangles!

I am having so much fun with the iPads in junior high this semester. I love how much amazing fun & learning opportunity they provide! I've had 5th-8th grade use the Brushes and Sketchbook pro app for their zentangle patterns & symmetrical owl projects.

The zentangle patterns from my previous post were created first with sharpie on paper. Then we snapped a photo, uploaded into our brushes app and colored away! (Carefully of course) The zoom feature allowed room to color neatly to keep our designs precise and orderly. Here are 8th grades final results:

Project 2 using Sketchbook Pro was to familiarize ourselves with the symmetry tool. We created contour outlines of cartoon owls, keeping with our "Flight" theme this semester and preparing us for our oil pastel owls for project 3. (Sneak peek below)

Here are next weeks sneak peek--our intro to realism using oil pastel on gray paper....Stunning!!!

Fly

School is back in session for my artists in k-8! We are stoked to have been blessed by a brand new 55" LED TV, nice new tables, & of course student iPads in 5th-8th grade!  The year is already set up for amazingness. 

     This year we are going to take off and soar into the art theme of "Flight"! From origami owls to birds eye view drawings, we will explore how artists, cultures, and people use the concept of flight in different ways. Our opening project was the origami dove, for our school installation wall. 

I love using the rainbow, or color wheel, for obvious reasons-it's so pretty! But I also like the idea that color comes from light, and as God gives US light, we become full of vibrant life and color, soaring in who He made us to be! We are all going to fly together this semester in the art room, while being original, courageous, & wild!

Owls...

1st grade did an incredible job with their owl drawings today! First we learned the color wheel in its entirety from primaries, secondaries, and even blending some tertiary colors! The next week we got out the sharpies and drew an owl together step by step right on top of the grid. They look fabulous!

August Art Show!

As school kicks back into action, a few select young artists of mine participated in a local youth art show called ArtStart, hosted by CRA of Pompano Beach. I chose 15 of my art camp students from my art on the beach group during the month of June. From mermaids to starfish and lighthouses, our pieces looked amazing along side Studio Spade artists and Pompano Beach Middle School. The event was a great success! There were local student musicians, yummy food, snow cones, and even a cartoonist! We were honored to be apart of a fun local event to honor our creative young talents. Thank you Susan Kores for organizing this great evening!

Barn Quilts

I decided to transition out of origami birds and butterflies and into more geometric concepts in art: Quilts! I googled the American folk tradition of barn quilt painting back in the early 1800s and found a great lesson for rotational symmetry!  

Enter 2nd-4th grade. I reviewed diagonal folding and how to split shapes to find other shapes! Ex: split a square diagonally and find a triangle, rotate a square 45 degrees and find a diamond...We played with folding our papers so that our square sheets always came to perfect rotational symmetry at all 4 corners.  Next we learned about lines and points. Wherever a line ends or intersects another we find points! They connected their points and selected 3 colors of any dry material to create these:

Next week I'm going to have them split a square on several colored sheets and make a quilt block collage! Stay tuned...

Black & White...

Since our introduction to Our iPad apps Sketchbook and Brushes, junior high has been exploring manipulating a photo of their black and white sharpie drawings. It all began with the zentangle. Basically a weird word for patterns people create and publish on a website called zentangle.com. They can be intricate and interesting, especially the scroll illusion and 3D effects the kids can create with them. Here are our sharpie patterns before uploading on the iPads...

The results after coloring in using the Brushes app are stunning! I will post after my students are able to use their email feature to share their work.