Oceans of fun with painted paper!

 Painted paper has OCEANS of applications!! This summer, right before we went back to school (the first week of August which is still summer!!) I taught this fun painted paper/collage lesson with our on-site extended day program (Tiger Club). I painted the ocean wall years ago, when I had all that free time before kids and marriage. It is kind of a landmark in our building, but it was designed to be an interactive wall several versions of the curriculum ago and we created sea creatures and added them every year when 1st grade studied the ocean. I decided to revive a new version for some summer art fun!

SO...after I wrapped up a week at the Tennessee Arts Academy, I was so fired up about painted paper I couldn't wait to try it out. Here is a picture of Laura Lohmann in action at TAA!!

My "Tiger Club" kiddos are always willing to be my lab rats so I headed over there to test the waters! Here is what we did...
First we painted two papers each, some did more until the paint was gone. No water just mats to clean the brushes on...it was awesome!!

 

Aren't they awesome!!

 

The next day, we created our amazing fish! Cutting and gluing and sharing all the beautiful papers. No one even freaked out about not having THEIR paper.  Once they finished I had made "water" with craft paper. The dow rods I had fit perfectly into the plastic ceiling hooks so I made a pocket of folded paper at the top of the craft paper with the rod through it. The kiddos brought their finished fish straight to the paper for display. Once they were all finished and layer out on the papers I taped them in place and snapped the rods into the ceiling hooks in about five minutes! They looked pretty awesome!

Our school year is in bloom with radial flowers by 3rd grade!

 We are off to an amazing start this year so I wanted to show off some of these amazing flowers created by 3rd grade artists. This is one of the lessons that I learned from Laura Lohmann (Painted Paper) at the Tennessee Arts Academy (or as my husband calls it "Art Teacher Art Camp").  After learning about radial symmetry and learning how to paint without water, they created these amazing flowers. I love how very different each one turned out, just like the artists that created them!

I'm BAACK!!

It is amazing that it has been almost 18 months from my last post, but when my dad passed one year ago January, it was just everything I could do to keep my world spinning. Some things just fell to the back burner and I guess blogging was one of those things. Scrapbooking too...geez..I just finished getting 2012 in the books. So now I am picking up where I left off and gearing up for a fabulous new year.
So, what made me dust off my keyboard and get back to blogging? The 2015 Tennessee Arts Academy!! What an exhausting and inspirational week!! I learned so much from the amazing Laura Lohmann and Jim McNeill who taught our elementary studio classes.

There was a message thrumming through the conference which surfaced with each speaker and performer that repeated, "Use it or loose it, use it or loose it." I hear you universe via the TAA. I will make some art today (other than a teaching sample), I will use my imagination for me just because I can. I need to push myself past the "4th grade" style of drawing that I employ at work. I saw this idea that Laurie Gatlin was working on in the secondary classes and LOVED it!! It's a doodle calendar! Great right? And the best part is that if you miss a day, you just do a double the next day. I think it's worth a try!!