Cartoons and clippings

pulled from a Reader's Digest magazine, years ago

  I was cleaning out an old box of 'stuff' today and found these items.  I thought I'd share them with you.

The two quotes above both remind me of very specific things.  The first, reminds me of the time, after carefully telling a 2nd class who had drawn cats in preparation for painting, that we were going to begin our paintings by painting the background.  In our next class we would paint the cats.  I circulated the room and found one student, on the autism spectrum, who had painted a whole side of his paper brown.  I asked where the cat was and he flipped his paper over and there it was!  I had told him to paint the background, and he took that literally and without knowing why, he painted the BACK of his paper.  It was a good lesson for me, reminding how I had to choose my words, demonstrate, and make sure my instructions were clear even to the most literal of my students. 

one of the cats from this project

The second quote above reminds me of the wonderful 'fauve fauves' that my 3rd graders painted when we were learning about Matisse.  They had learned that the word 'fauve' means wild beast. 

And now for a couple of cartoons....
Keep in mind that the two pieces below are just old cartoons and not meant to represent any particular point of view.  I'm sharing them with you just for fun!

 

Decisions... Say Yes to the Mess?

Oh my.  I've been struggling to decide what workshops to offer at my state conference, and submissions are due by the end of the month.  I put the question out here on the blog and also on Facebook, and most of the people who answered were not from NY state.  I hoped for opinions from people who would actually attend, but I appreciate anyone who expressed their thoughts!

So here's what I've decided so far:
I'm going to teach a Friday After Dark workshop on Sheetrock Carving - relief carving and intaglio.
I've done this successfully with my 6th graders for several years.  The only photos I can locate are of the cartouche carvings, but in other years we did African-inspired mask designs, layered landscapes, and more.

I'm teaching a hands-on Saturday workshop that I'm calling 'Oh What a Relief! Fabulous Tooling Foil!'  This is another material where I've been particularly proud of the work my students completed, and a couple of Facebook responders expressed interest in this. Again, we've used various design themes over the years to keep me from getting bored!

But, as crazy as I am, I want to teach one more, during the day on Friday.  After all, since I'm retired, I feel like it's time to 'give back'.  But this one won't be hands-on, since I already have the other two.  Several of you out-of-staters suggested perhaps papier-mache, but I taught two papier-mache workshops last year (one how-to, and the other hands-on), and thought maybe it deserved a break.

 

  So I've come up with a title idea, but am not sure where I am going with it.  

Here's the working title:   'Say Yes to the Mess'.  What do you think?  

 

  My idea is that some art teachers avoid working with certain materials due to fear of mess, especially if they work on a cart.  But I feel as though art teachers have a responsibility to offer the mess, the tactile experience, and there's ways of dealing with multiple materials and cleanup that make it not so difficult.  What do you readers think?  Is this a workshop that you think will be worth offering?  Any suggestions on what I should include?  I'd love your responses, no matter what part of the world you live in!

 

 

Thanks!