Summer, summer, summertime!

Wishing you all a happy and CREATIVE summer... See you in the fall!

Lower School Art Camp!

I just finished my week of Lower School Art Camp, and boy did we have fun! It was a week of colorful, messy, arty goodness that resulted in many beautiful projects. Here is a quick recap...

Students used a high-fire stoneware clay to create bird feeders. They rolled slabs which they wrapped around paper towel rolls, added holes for perches and for little birdy beaks to get seeds... After speed drying them in the sun for a few days, they were fired once and then glazed with beatiful high-fire glazes before firing again. Dowel rod perches and string for hanging were added to create the final pieces!

 I didn't get many pictures of the process of this next project, as I was busy helping out with this big endeavor myself! Campers created paper mache vases using two bowls (a wider one for the base and a smaller one for the neck) and a balloon. Later, once their layers of paper mache had dried, campers painted them with acrylic paint and created tissue paper flowers for inside:

 I showed campers how to create symmetrical radial designs on 6x6" sketch paper and each camper made three different designs of their own. They later transferred their designs onto 36-gauge aluminum and used tools to emboss them. Black India ink was painted onto the surface of the embossed metal and later buffed away using steel wool. My counselors used wire to hang the three pieces together and added small craft mirrors to each one to create the final decorative wall hanging:

 Another project we did was glazing bisque travel mugs for Father's Day, and making cards to go with them. I didn't get any pics of the kids working, but here are few of the finished mugs:

 I totally LOVE how this next one turned out... we created multimedia renditions of Van Gogh's painting Starry Night based on this lesson I found online. Looking at the original as inspiration, campers first painted the starry night sky using acrylic paint on 11x14 canvas boards, making sure to mimic Van Gogh's short brush strokes and painting style. For the foreground and middle ground, campers used oil pastels on pieces of navy blue (for the mountains and villages) and black (for the Cyprus tree) construction paper. Again they used Van Gogh's strokes to create their own scene. The papers were glue to the canvas and voila!

 As is the tradition in my Art Camp, we tie dyed our white camp t-shirts to create the coolest camp shirts on campus!  

 Campers created these large colorful fish kites using wax resist- crayon designs painted over with watercolor. Streamers were added at the end...

This was a really fun lesson that we did on the last day of camp. Campers went outside and collected 10 leaves of various sizes and shapes. We used printing ink to layer prints of the leaves onto blue paper (using 5 colors- green, yellow, brown, gold and lime). Later, campers made line drawings of branches and birds and then added watercolor to them. The pieces were assembled to create these darling little artworks!

 

 And last, but not least, no week of Mrs. Kamp's Art Camp could be complete without an ice cream sundae party! YUMMMMMMM!

Cardboard Collagraph Quotes

Collagraphy is a printmaking process in which materials are applied to a rigid surface (such as paperboard or wood), essentially creating a raised surface that will be inked and printed (unlike the kind of relief printing we do in fifth grade, where we carve into the plate). Many different materials can be used to create the raised surfaces/textures such as sandpaper, leaves and other natural objects, yarn and glue, etc. We used foam (not the colorful craft store foam, although that would work... we used thin white foam sheets that are usually used to scratch into for printmaking with younger kids) on chipboard for ours. For this project, 8th grade students were challenged to think of a quote, poem or saying that was personal or meant something to them, or that they just really liked. They were asked to write their quote using a font and letter arrangement that would reinforce its meaning. Students cut their letters out of the foam with scissors and Exacto knives:

Since printing always creates an image that is backwards from what you see on the plate, we had to make sure our words were glued down backwards to get a correctly oriented print. We accomplished this by coating a fresh piece of chip board with a spray adhesive and pressing it onto the arranged letters.... followed by a coating of acrylic medium to keep the chipboard from soaking in too much of the moisture from the printing ink and deteriorating. Students then chose colored inks that also "reinforced" their quotes and inked their plate before printing them on the colored paper of their choice:

We worked on this right up until the last day, and here are the prints of those that finished...