Zentangles - Thank you Maria and Rick

My new found joy!
I have been tangling for a while now. ....my little notebook at airports and waiting lounges.
I introduced students in Year 5 to the benefits of doodling and then went on to showing them how to tangle. They worked in groups to create a large mural of Zentangles. It was close to the art show that they started work on this so we had it on display as a "work in progress".

Aboriginal art

I found this lesson on another blog. It was a teacher from Australia who got her students to make the 'tic- tac- toe' game with the aboriginal dot art along the sides.
I found some felt squares in my room and decided to use those, so that it is a permanent keepsake for the kids.They looked at aboriginal dot paintings and the symbols that are used. they also made counters of clay with the symbols on them to play with. I had as much fun as the students in doing this.

Notan - a lesson on positive and negative space

Nōtan  is a Japanese design concept involving the play and placement of light and dark.This use of light and dark translates shape and form into flat shapes on a two-dimensional surface. Nōtan is traditionally presented in paint, ink, or cut paper, but it is relevant to a host of modern day image-making techniques, such as lithography in printmaking.
Year 4 students watched a video on you tube. A very good explanation of the process of how notan is created. They all understood what they had to do without much explanation from me. I believe the challenge for them was in retaining and keeping safe all the tiny bits of paper they cut.

Pop art portraits

An introduction to Andy Warhol and Pop art - a lesson that also emphasized the principles of repetition and symmetry.I took photos of the students that they used later to make multiple tracings.

Who Am I?

Students made masks of plaster gauze to use on an artwork that personified who they were.I had posted earlier about the creation of the masks. Some great critical thinking is seen in these works.

Another one from Pinterest - using melted crayons. I linked this technique to Seurat and pointillism. Students used candles to melt the crayons and dot their artwork. Worked well for some . Some others held the crayon for too long near the flame that the wax would melt and put the fire out!!
This was a group activity and very successful.

Yaacov Agam  is an Israeli sculptor and experimental artist best known for his contributions to optical and kinetic art.Agam's work is usually abstract, kinetic art, with movement, viewer participation and frequent use of light and sound. He is also known for a type of print known as an Agamograph, which uses lenticular printing to present radically different images, depending on the angle from which it is viewed.

My students in year 6 created their version of an agamograph. 

Students made vertical 1" markings on two papers. They painted two different scenes on these. Then, imagine the shock on their faces when I said to them that they had to cut their paintings along the markings made! The cut strips of paer was then, pasted on a third one to achieve these results.