2 Soul Sisters Art Ed Blog: Bringing you fun, fresh art vibes for the classroom! Packed with inspiring lesson plans, creative projects, and easy tips to spark your students’ creativity. With colorful pics and step-by-step guides, we make art teaching a breeze. Check out our TPT and Shopify Store for more unique lessons—come vibe with us and get creative!
Middle School kids always dig ✌ this project. It is simple and the results are always cool 😎.
Directions:
Day 1-The kids drizzle rubber cement on the paper.
Day 2-The kids paint with watercolor. Obviously, the darker colors give a bolder effect.
Day 3-The kids rub the cement of the paper. The kids complain 😣😭😧😢 and say that the rubbing is hurting their fingers. As one of my retired teacher friends always says, "Baby👶,Baby👶,Baby👶!"
Ever heard of Kelsey Montague? (for info, click here) Kelsey started the "What Lifts You" Campaign to provide people with the opportunity to share more about what inspires them. The wings are so fun. Everyone likes being part of a piece of artwork. When we were waiting in line for a photo op, Miss Kentucky was standing in front of the wings with her beautiful sash draped across her black, glittery jumpsuit.
True Story...
So what inspires 2 Soul Sisters? How about a trip to Nashville, TN, to do art with a lot of art teachers?
Hope you get lifted up today and FLY LIKE AN EAGLE!
Do your kids have trouble cutting? Using glue? Ya know a dot is a lot! Well, I had some left over painted paper. We decided to have the students cut 20 hearts in varying sizes. They had to glue them down and connect them with lines somehow. After all of those steps were complete, they had to add patterns on the hearts.
This lesson was more skill based to let my art students practice the basics of cutting and gluing.
You could put several different spins on this lesson.
I was looking for a video to close out this blog post and ran across this one. Yes. I do love Violent Femmes. Hearts remind me of LOVE all different types of love!
1969
Rene Magritte was an interesting artist for middle school students to study. Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist artist and became well know for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. We have posted on Rene Magritte previously, for posts, click Here.
To introduce the kids to Magritte, I shared a brief history using this video.
Directions:
I told the kids that I wanted them to create a painting in the Rene Magritte style.
First, we painted the background clouds with acrylic.
Then, the kids came up with ideas for their Magritte project.
I printed off tons and tons of pictures for this project.
We had to consider lots with placement and photos.
I was very pleased with some projects, but others were a little too sporty. Art teachers, you know what I am talking about?
Maggie used a picture of her jumping on her horse🐎. Notice how she turned her horse🐎 into a unicorn.😁😁😁
Sports...
Sports...
Seriously, this child is addicted to her cell phone.
Guess what? Sports...
Like sports?
And Sports...
Maybe we should do another SPORT?
Cheerleading is a fun sport. This is Corey McCants. He is being thrown by the cheerleaders. Corey is a pretty cool guy. Corey McCants Info, click here. Corey was on Catering Wars. He has mega-talent!
I like baseball.
Basketball and Football.
Soccer.
Basketball and Tennis.
In honor of Maggie's horse, I think "Flying Horses" by Dispatch is a perfect way to end this post.
Have you ever heard of Iris? If not check her out. Click HERE for Iris Scott website I let my middle schoolers watch a video on her via Youtube. It is a lot harder than it looks. Give it a try these are a few from Q4 on my spring wheel session.
Though most of us have some experience with finger painting, it
is usually a hobby left back in pre-school along with nap time, but Iris Scott has resurrected it in a beautiful way.
After deciding to dramatically decrease her cost of living so that she
could find time to paint every day, she moved to Taiwan and did exactly
as she planned. But one day all of her brushes were dirty and she
needed some yellow flowers, so rather than go outside in the
excruciating heat, she used her fingertips and reached that a-ha moment
that this is what she would do for the rest of her life. Wearing
disposable gloves, Scott uses her fingers with oil paints on canvas to
create vibrant, textured paintings with movement and depth. Her
Thailand Collection was just on display at Cole Gallery in Edmonds, Washington. We hope that you will enjoy our interview with Iris Scott after the jump, then see more of her work on IrisFingerPaintings.com and Facebook.
VN: Do you find finger painting easier than using brushes?
IS: Definitely. I’ve been doing this for three years and it just keeps
getting easier. The benefits of finger painting is that I don’t have to
clean all that surface area created by hundreds of bristles in a paint
brush….instead I just wipe my fingertips clean with a paper towel. I
can switch between colors faster without the pain of traditional brush
cleaning, plus I can paint with more than one point of contact. So the
process is really just far faster than traditional brush painting…..I
don’t understand why it’s not far more common?
VN: Tell us about your upcoming show (where, when, what to expect).
IS: My upcoming solo show opens on March 18 at Cole Gallery in Edmonds,
Wa. Edmonds is a lovely little seaside town just North of Seattle. We
will reveal the Thailand collection as well as a few new Seattle pieces
on opening night and the show will run one month long.
VN: What advice would you give to an artist at heart who can’t seem to find the time with work and other obligations?
IS: My advice to an artist that just can’t find time to work is to MOVE.
Yep change your location and cost of living. Cost of living is the
biggest obstacle to overcome. Move to a part of the world that you can
afford to live a whole year and just paint. Chances are you’ll make
great leaps in your artistic abilities if you dedicate that much full
time to the skill.
VN: What brought you to Thailand?
IS: The promise of colorful scenery and interesting painting ideas. I
went to Thailand to go shoot ideas and bring them home like one might do
on a Safari.
VN: Do you still teach?
IS: I left teaching 3 years ago once the sale of my paintings could support me.
VN: Where are you living now?
IS: I’m from a small town just outside of Seattle.
VN: When did you get into art, making a living out of it?
IS: I really truly dove into full time painting while living in Taiwan 3
years ago. The cost of living was so low that I could afford to just
take a year off and paint around the clock. Once I started painting
more than 40 hours a week I was able to improve drastically and began
considering the feasibility of turning painting into my profession.
VN: What is it that you like most about oils?
IS: That they dry very very slowly.
VN: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about you?
IS: I will leaving the US again to go on another “Ideas Safari” on March
20, this time to Nicaragua. A little bird named Ooi told me I would
find lots of painting concepts and colors in that part of Central
America. Armed with a digital camera and an experienced travel
companion I will return by May. Hope to have the Nicragua collection
complete by August 2013.
On behalf of Visual News, we would like to wish Iris Scott safe
travels to Nicaragua and look forward to seeing the highlights from her
trip after she completes her newest collection.
