Project "Skateboard"

PROJECT SKATEBOARD

Inspired: As I walked into school one fall morning I observed several students riding in on skateboards. I thought about all of the cool graphics on the boards and thought... I wonder if I could get some skateboards to paint...

The Connection: An old artist buddy from high school is a former pro-skater and a friend on Facebook. Through my fishing for boards, he stepped up and volunteered to help us track some down. Dave Nelson, of Secret Penguin, an 'experiential branding firm,' came through with some of his connections and put our boards in reach. Students did have to purchase the deck and in my first painting session, 56 of 58 students purchased skateboards. See www.secretpenguin.com for more information about this outstanding company.

The Speaker's Awesome Story: Dave Nelson came to school and shared his story. He explained to the kids that the name "Secret Penguin" came from his obsession with hiding a penguin in his art projects. Dave drew a beautiful picture for the students as he described his evolution from a professional skateboarder to a self-made designer and CEO. Dave began by designing skateboards for other pro-skaters that skated with on tour. Eventually Dave asked the people who put on the tours if he could take a shot at the marketing for one of the events. The skateboarding events had not been receiving big crowds, and after Dave handled and event, it sold out and a riot broke out due to people wanting inside. It was a huge success and thus Dave was asked to do more marketing for the skateboard tour events. Eventually the NFL called Dave and asked him to do a piece for them. Demand for Dave's designs, concepts and fresh ideas increased and thus the Secret Penguin branding firm was born.

The Project Breakdown:
** This project can be completed without skateboards. A simple long cut piece of paper will work. The concepts are all the same. 
 Students looked at a variety of skateboard designs, heard Dave Nelson's story and saw his design and concepts for a skateboard he created that was inspired by his daughter, Olive.  Dave and I then handed students a worksheet packet to help them brainstorm design concepts and ideas.   

THE CONCEPT WORKSHEET:

• Page one: In the first column, Students brainstormed concepts, characteristics, hobbies, and ideas that they felt they "stood for" or represented them. In the second column, they tried to think of 'styles' colors or images that would represent these ideas in an interesting way.
  
  
• Page two: Students picked their top 3-4 concepts and sketched images that they brainstormed in column two on page one. 
  
• Page three: I showed the students a variety of board designs, discussing dynamic vs. static lines and compositional arrangements, scale, pattern and a variety of principles that would help create a nice design with their images. - Students then had to design three skateboards on paper and color them. I interviewed each student to help them select the best concept design for them to be successful. 

The Preparation & Production:

Students lightly sanded their skateboards and painted them with two coats of a primer. While that was drying, they then drew the majority of their design on a large 24"x8.5" piece of paper. Students used carbon paper and traced the final design onto the skateboard. We used acrylic paint to complete the project. Students were shown how to create clean lines, smooth coats, blend colors and other techniques. 

 

The drying rack worked well for drying and storing the skateboards.

SKATEBOARDS by RUSSELL MIDDLE SCHOOL PAINTING STUDENTS

 

Handling Clay ~ On an Art Cart or when you don't have a pug mill...

the.clay.solution

I confess, this wasn't originally my idea, but it works well and I wanted to share it. In my classroom I have an area set up as "Clay Corner" with all the clay supplies. I teach a lesson in clay to 6th and 7th graders each 6 week cycle. I also teach pottery for 6 week sessions 3-5 times a year. We do not have a pug mill in our classroom.

I have instructed the students on how much clay to gather and walk them through the process on putting clay away. By the end of the first two days, kids are well educated and it carries through from 6th to 8th grade. One thing I've learned it, have a system, be consistent and it surely helps.

Here is my system:

GETTING STARTED:

 

• "Get Buckets"- gather up some old 5 gallon paint buckets with lids. Try asking your cafeteria staff if they have any of the sort. 2-3 works well for my classes and class sizes. I label two with "WET CLAY" and 1 with "DRY CLAY" (I also keep an extra bucket full of broken greenware)
• Then cut the clay into baseball sized pieces of clay using a wire cutter. 
• "Old Shirts" -  Layer damp shirts between stacks of the clay cubes you have made.
  This will keep the clay moist.
   

RECYCLING FOR 'TOMORROW' or later hours:
 

• Students are instructed to use their scrap clay to 'stamp' gather any remaining bits of clay on their desks. They then get to 'wedge' the clay by stamping it into a square. 

• This square is slightly smaller than a tennis ball. 

•  One method I do often is I have the students add their square to the first square on the back counter. (Sometimes this can create distraction, so I assign a student to gather all the squares) Then we simply keep adding the squares together and "wedge" them into one large square.  This a good activity for the restless and those that clean up or finish early.

• Finally, I take the large cube of clay and start the process all over again. I cut the clay into the sizes I want, or slabs. I take the used clay and layer it in between damp t-shirts. If the clay is especially dry, I use the dry clay bucket and keep the shirts pretty damp. (Watch clay on the bottom as all the water seeps that way, the bottom of the bucket should be lined with a shirt.)
• If the squares the kids make are a good size and not made into one giant square, I will just recycle them that way. 
• THAT'S IT! Works quite well for me! I hope it helps you too!

Art Teacher Lesson Plan Tip

During a new lesson, I start typing up the steps we go through each day. I make this my lesson plan in Word format on the computer (you can hand write too). I make notes on the day ***Reminder: Tell students they need to "blah blah blah," with things I notice that need to be tweaked.

For example:
Day 1: Show power point presentation of _________. Hand out and have students begin practice worksheets of __________. *** Remind students to use a ruler

I continue this each day until the new lesson is complete. I save the electronic file and print out two copies. One copy I rubber cement onto the back of my example artwork I created. Then I send it to be laminated. This way it can never be separated from my example. I put the other copy in the file with the lesson and all of the parts, handouts, worksheets, examples etc. So I have one copy of the day to day lesson on an example and one in the file. I've attached a copy of the Zentangle lesson write up.

I find this is a great tool for continuing a lesson if I'm sick and need a sub. :)

If you do anything similar to this, please share what you do! I'm always interested in ways I can tweak what I'm doing! 

Laminated Example Front

Laminated Example Artwork Back with Lesson Attached

Close up of Word Document Write Up

Zentangles with 6th Graders

Inspired by pinterest...

I took photos of the children a few days before starting the lesson. Use a white background when taking the profile photo. Use photo shop to create the silhouette or other photo editing software. I had the silhouettes printed on large 11x17 paper at my office. The day we started the lesson we talked about the elements of art, line, shape, form, value, space and some principles such as pattern and rhythm with the use of a power point. To finish the class, I had students trace them on the light table on 12x18 paper. Students also practiced creating patterns based on some examples on a worksheet I created for practicing the zentangle designs.

I assessed the students designs and discussed some more options, ideas and things to stay away from on day two. I also equipped each table with some step by step zentangle pages I got from various sources on the internet including pinterest. These helped a lot! Students outlined their pencil silhouette with black sharpie. We then started dividing the background into large sweeping sections. Students then began creating Zentangles in the sections using ultra fine point sharpies and regular sharpies to fill in areas with black. After a few days of working, we decided the final step would be to fill in the silhouettes with black. I did experiment with adding watercolor in a wash and tie-dyed fashion to the background. That looked cool too. We didn't do that to our final project due to time needs for our short time together.


The final results were great! I made suggestions for students to add details to areas, add more contrast by adding blacked out areas and finally to spend a little time sharpening and cleaning up various lines. The turned out GREAT!

Aspen Tree - Winter Scene & Recycled Art

I was inspired by our chance of a snow day and only had a few days left with students. We wanted to get some kind of painting completed and I love doing things with the extra magazines and muddled newspapers in my room. I took the "Aspen Tree" project in a new direction. Let me know what you think. We did have a snow day, and the project was simplified (We didn't add any extra branches or extra snow banks.) Lesson plan took approximately 4-5 days. We painted newspaper with watercolor to create the blue background. Students made a collage using white and/or light blue pages in a magazine and modge podged to create the snow bank and torn newspaper background.

My First Blog

I'm going to start trying to post and share some art lessons and some of my own art via this blog. I hope you find it interesting or helpful. Enjoy!