"Street Art 101 at the NCMA Day 2"

We started today's adventure in street art creation by taking a tour of the museum. "What street art is in the museum?" you might ask. None, but there is still cool art that uses new materials and has street art qualities so off we went. 

I'm not sure if you can tell by looking at the picture but this work of art is a plane made out of lots of butterflies. 

Devorah Sperber's Mona Lisa made out of thousands of spools of thread. 

Funky colors and glitter!

When we got back to the studio, there was still some stencil cutting to do... but not much. so we went straight to it.

It wasn't long before some of the stencils were done so we headed outside with our spray paint. 

It is most important to always check which way the nozzle is facing before you start spraying. "Do I have paint on my face?" was a common question for the day. Answer was "Yes, and in your hair ,and on your shirt, and some of it actually got on your stencil."

Here are a few of the completed stencils.

She just finished spraying and is now pulling up the stencil to reveal the work beneath.

And here is the end result.

We also took a few moments to spray cups so we can do some cup rocking tomorrow.

This is a practice piece. Tomorrow, we'll take it to the fence.

See you then!

"Street Art 101" at the NCMA

Today was day one of the week long Street Art workshop at the NC Museum of Art with your host, Ian Sands. We kicked off the event by creating a drawing on a Post-it Note that represented us. Then we practiced the art of stealthily hanging our art in the Museum. 

"Stealthily", so as to not get caught... "in the museum" cause everyone should have a piece of art hanging in the museum... don't you agree? The piece above is affixed to the window overlooking the park.

Armed and ready. Here are the ingredients for our street art. The usual art supplies you'd find in any decent art supply store.. spray paint, paper cups, Post-it Notes, etc...

So what's on the agenda? Well, we plan to do a little cup rocking. You know, making graffiti in fences using cups. The museum has lots of fences and we have lots of cups. it's a marriage made in Heaven. 

And by planning, I mean planning. Here we are using printouts of what a fence looks like and drawing in the cups with magic markers.

A few of the plans in the works..

We even planned out how many cups we would need. This is a mustache ... or cupstache!

We also plan on creating a masking tape mural, a Post-It Note mural, some sidewalk art and of course... what Street Art workshop would be complete without.... spray paint stencils! 

So there was a lot of planning today. Everyone was working on something.

Check back tomorrow to view our progress!

Hey Apex High Art students!!!

I am the new art teacher here at Apex and am very excited to get to know all of you. Art and art students are very important to me and can't wait to see what you create this year. I am posting a picture of me (I am on the left), my son Rivers, my mom and Jeff visiting the Allegheny mountains in Pennsylvania this summer.

Please stop in and see me in trailer 11 when school starts.

Pins!

The only reason for this post is I wanted to put some photos of your art on Pinterest! 

Follow along at http://pinterest.com/iansands

A Little Recognition

Ms. Naif, an art teacher from California, came across our blog. She was impressed by the great art that you create and decided to share the blog with the rest of California. 

She posted several links on her state's Art Education Facebook page which I think was pretty neat of her. 

Thanks Ms. Naif!

Top 10 Artist I Told You About, But Maybe You Forgot

It's an art teacher thing, make sure we toss in a little art history with each lesson. We can't help it. 

Most teachers go the classic route with a little Da Vinci and some Picasso. However, if you've taken my Art History class, you know I think the Mona Lisa is overrated and well, let's face it.. Picasso was a jerk. 

I tend to go a little off the beaten path when sharing artists.... so who can blame you if you remember an artists but just can't recall his or her name? No worries, I'm here to help!

Here is my 2012 Top 10 List of Artist Every Art One Student Should Know...

#10. Andy Uprock: 

We haven't done a lot of cup rocking in the last few years. Primarily because it's so hard to get the PE teachers to let us use their fencing. Still, I tend to slip in an Andy Uprock video when I get the chance .. mostly cause I like the music that goes with the video.

#9. Buff Diss

Buff Diss is cool cause of his use of line. Plus, masking tape is a hard medium to work with since you can't really make curves. I know we looked at this guy's work before we created our masking tape murals.

# 8. Christian Faur

So a guy opens a box of crayons and figures out he can make art using them. Nothing special there until you see how he uses them crayons. Great artists to reference if you're doing something stupid like trying to make expressive self portraits out of Skittles... but who would do that??

#7. Jennifer Maestre

If we did any art that used pencil, I'm sure I showed you guys this artists. I like how her pencil sculptures look organic, like sea sea urchins. Organic is also a good journal word cause that guy on the clay video says it like 100 times!  

#6. Noma Bar

It's a dog, eating a cat, eating a mouse.. Oh! I see it! Yes, and what you see is great use of positive/negative space. Understanding positive and negative space comes in real handy when making stencils. Remember the threshold filter in Photoshop?

#5. Theo Jansen

Besides the fact that he is crazy and thinks these things will "live" on the beach, I like the way this guy says his name.. with that cool accent. 

#4. Ennio Marchetto

IDK? Did I show this guy when we did the textile (shirt) project? Any excuse to show this guy cause he is so freaky and like a train crash.. you know you want to but you can't turn away.

# 3. Patricia Piccinini

You know the artist you wanted to forget about but then I bring her up any way?  Piccinini and I both like hybrids. My Zonkey is cute and her ... whatever that is... is cute, right?

#2. Terry Border

Might have shown him when we were taking about forced perspective and using the cameras??? Not sure how but I worked Terry's art into class because his stuff is just so darn funny. LOL!

#1 Sjors Vervoort

I don't even now how to say that and not sure if it's a girl or a boy but it doesn't matter. What matters is how this genius artist incorporated both painting and animation into one of the coolest stop motion videos ever!

And, cause I'm the bestest art teacher ever.. here is a link to that very video!

Who should be on next years list? 

Comments welcomed!

And the Winner of the Prang Giveaway...

So I entered a lesson plan for the Teaching Palette June Lesson Plan Collaboration and Prang Giveaway and guess what..... it won!

This month they gave away four Prang Art Marker Master Packs, which include 200 washable Prang Art Markers! 

So see that box above, that will be in Trailer 11, how exciting, yes I know!

Now, guess which project I entered...

The Skittles Expressive Portrait Project! 

Yes, all those skittle are coming home to roost in the form of a large box of markers.

Check out the winning Lesson Plan here or see all the other lesson plan entrees here.

iPad Art at Apex High School

 This year we will be adding a new feature for both Art One and Computer Art... drawing on iPads. 

So far we've got two drawing apps installed. First Layers. If you've not drawn on an ipad yet, this is a good app to start with. It's easy to use but still has some of the advanced features of the more detailed apps. See my first attempt at illustrating with Layers here.

The second app (pictured above) is SketchBook pro. This is a serious drawing app with custom brushes, layers, stamps and a host of other tools like transform, text, etc.. you can read more about Sketchbook Pro here.

There will be a stylus available for each student. to use. This makes it easier to draw than using your finger. 

Meanwhile, if your looking for a fun app to draw with at home that is as simple as  box of crayons, check out Art Set. I might add this fun tool to our list as well. More about Art Set here.

 

In our always continuous effort to improve the Computer Art class.... more Adobe Illustrator! 

Quick and easy Adobe illustrator CS4 tutorial demonstrates how to take a hand draw image and convert it to vector and then turn that image into a symbol which can be repeated and manipulated at will. Basically, create the image above in less than 4 minutes. How very exciting! 

Watch the video tutorial here-->

Drawing to Symbols in illustrator from iansands on Vimeo.