Another Gimp Photo Alter with poem

After watching this video and thinking about a very emotional dream I had about my dad the other night, I got inspired to alter this photo using Gimp.  It is really a great program.  Here are the tutorials I watched that really helped me get started.
Gimp Tutorials

 

Art Room School Website-

I've been working a lot to get my school site ready for me to use next year.  I have had an art school web site for several years now, but it wasn't until last year that I really decided to start organizing it to really help me with my lessons and instruction.  Most regular classroom teachers use their site to post lessons, homework and to communicate with parents.  I used to think the main purpose of my site was to have parents, students and my principal see what we are working on.  I got the impression that I was checking my site more than anyone else, so I decided that it would be my 'hub' of lessons and resources so that during any given class, I could click on my webpage and have all the things I needed to teach that lesson in one place.  So that is one of my many goals this summer; to have my website organized as my curriculum map and use it to help me with lessons, instruction and planning.  ;)  Here is the link.  Feel free to browse and give me some constructive feedback!  Thanks
http://teachers.stjohns.k12.fl.us/wardley-j/art-links-to-my-favorite-web-resources/?preview=true&preview_id=54&preview_nonce=ec2a04fea7

MY NEW FAVORITE ART SONG- Art - Small Potatoes - Disney Junior Official

MY NEW FAVORITE ART SONG!!!!!!  i LOVE It more than Art is everywhere.....OMG I am embedding it in my back to school powerpoint!!!   <3  <3

Art Show

                                             
Our Art Show was great this year!!!  Artome is a fundraising company that facilitated the art mounting and set up.  They sell the framed artwork to parents on the night of the art show.  This was our first year trying it as a fundraiser so we only sold around 50 frames.  Hopefully next year, we will sell even more!!

Here are some photos from the show, including my Starry Night Dress that I painted the night before!!!!

 

 

More Digital Art - Flippy Flops

In an attempt to 'catch' up with a lot of happenings that I just did not have time to blog about at the end of this school year- one of the digital art projects that turned out really well was the digital flip flops using the Elements of Art.  Some students even did theirs on paper.  Basically k-2 used the free and awesome Sketchbook app to draw two 'bean' shapes for their feet.  Then they drew the straps.  After that, I asked them to choose an element of art to focus on as their design for their flip flops.  Of course we had a lot of Minecraft designs but there were also some very creative ones as well.  Here are some digital and paper versions as examples

 

 

Digital Elementary Art!!!

Name Design using Gimp

This summer has been so busy but productive.  I began my St Johns County Leadership Internship with our Arts and Foreign Language Coordinator.  I assisted him by working with other high school arts, music, and dance teachers to develop their course curriculum maps using a new template.  It was great to work with other arts teachers but the part that had the most impact was talking to and going through the curriculum and standards with the middle school and high school digital arts teachers!!!  Since I began teaching at the first digital school in our county, I have been striving to incorporate more digital art on the the elementary level.  I have acquired many art lessons using iPads, but starting last Decemeber, our 3-5 students began using laptops instead of iPads.  The only program I even attempted to use was Microsoft paint, which is very limiting and frustrating.   The middle and high school teachers, of course use the Adobe Suite and Photoshop programs, which I know would not be in my art or school budget.  So I started playing around with some other programs and really got into using Gimp.  I went through several tutorials and made some great projects that could be adapted to elementary level but I was not sure about getting permissions to actually download the program.

My son- with text and custom brushes

Then I discovered Paint.net, which virtually does everything Gimp does with a few exceptions (grow/shrink layer option)  and it is a program that is already accessible to my students!!!!  So I am SOOO excited to have students start using the program next year and have decided that I am going to try to have ALL students keep a DIGITAL portfolio in addition to a real paper one.  And I was going to request that students bring a spiral notebook to keep in class as their art journal (and technology back up plan- you ALWAYS need a tech back up plan:))

So here are some of the digital art projects that i played with.   Please comment below about how you use portfolios or if you have successfully integrated digital art into the elementary curriculum.

Name Design using Paint.net

This one is a little creepy  - its the Frozen look from a Gimp Tutorial

Summer and Garden!

Summer is here! Yay! Although I have to admit, I really don't feel 'finished' organizing the art room or my storage room. But unfortunately I may not get another  opportunity for quite some time....like pre planning in August maybe?  Since the last day of school for teachers, we have had an EOC or End of Course Exam Item analysis meeting that was quite tedious and lasted the entire day.  We piloted the exam that we wrote test items for earlier this year.  The EOCs are required for Florida's teacher evaluation system.  We only had time to review and correct the items on the kindergarten test, most if which were statistically deemed too easy.  I guess this meeting was such a challenge because 1. It is difficult (impossible) to write a multiple choice item to test a performance based subject like the visual arts 2.  We all know that this test is of no benefit whatsoever to students.  We were told that the county could not afford or have the time to assess students using portfolio or or alternative methods.

We also had training on Office 365 at my school for all the pilot digital school teachers which was great! I love google docs and found out that office is allowing for similar collaboration on projects and documents.  It was great.  We also want to become Cerrtfiied by common sense media by teaching five digital citizenship lessons this year, so we were coming up with plans for that.  

Outside if school. I have been busy trying to paint and fix up various things around the house to get ready to possibly sell it and find something with more space.   I have painted the living room and kitchen so far....but I still need to paint the bathroom. I also need to do some major purging/organizing in the garage.  Fun times!

I also am a working on my two small gardens in the backyard.  I have added several plants and veggies and am excited to see their growth.  I know there is some type of vine fruit or veggie growing on he flowering side(melon or squash) and finally some cilantro! Yum