animate!

The kids from our Tuesday class made drawings for an animation!
Each child invented a character. They drew these characters as a "first frame" to begin a sequence within the animation. This character was then passed on to someone else to copy. The copy then passed to someone else to copy the copy. With each copy the drawing changes -- sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically. By looking at all the drawings from the first to the last you can see the character change and move around the page.

Brendan shot small video files of each drawing in the order that they were made and used iMovie to animate them. You can watch the final piece by following this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp6iYBS4dvs

For privacy -- videos are unlisted on YouTube. They are unsearchable and can only be found via this blog. Please enjoy!

totem poles

Over the last month the kids worked on making totem poles! First we looked at images of totem poles for some inspiration. Each child chose a creature and began working on it's head by paper-macheing a balloon and using cardboard and tape to add some three-dimensional features (such as wings, eyes, a wolf's nose, a crown, etc). We needed to apply two layers of paper-mache and then gesso for a base. Then the kids were ready to paint the colors and patterns. The only thing left to do was stack the heads!

Ranger and Smith's heads waiting to dry...
Xavier's dragon gessoed...
Elena painting her eagle...
Max painting his eagle...
Wolfie's dragon in progress...
Grey working on "a crazy one"...
Jack's guardian owl and Leo's eagle ...
Max's eagle...
Dash's bird...
Left totem (from top to bottom):
Silas = wolf
Gigi = woman
Dash = bird
Ranger = spaceship
Ethan = owl king (with crown)
Xavier = dragon
Jack = guardian owl

Right totem (from top to bottom):
Elena = eagle
Wolfie =dragon
Smith = person/knight/owl
Grey = a crazy one
Max = eagle
Leo = eagle

the artist is me!

Today Smith is drawing New York City on one half of his paper and on the other half he's drawing a beach he traveled to for the winter recess.

Smith: This is the water and this is a building and I'm drying off. And this is my mom coming up because she was swimming... Now I'm going to draw the city, but I'm not going to paint it -- but why not?... I'm not going to put a boat on my picture because then people would think I rode in a boat and I did not... This is the Empire State Building. I thought it might be the other building --

Bianca: The Chrysler?

Smith: Yep, but it's too big... I'll draw a plane because I rode an airplane... I'm using an artist to draw because the artist is me!

WINTER BREAK DRAWING AND DESIGN CAMP

During our winter break camp students were asked to think about about elements of design, such as composition, line quality, scale, value, and pattern. They were given a variety of unusual materials to create with, including old newspaper layout tape and letraset letters and patterns, fountain pens with india ink, carbon copy paper, vintage encyclopedia pages, and dayglo paper. The kids were fascinated by these materials and made some truly captivating work.
We also discussed foreground, middle ground and background, and the idea of things in the distance getting smaller. The kids were then asked to copy an animal/landscape image while thinking of these ideas.

exactly real, kinda real, and definitely not real

Wolfie: What is Grey drawing?
Grey: This is definitely not a real thing.
Wolfie: I'm just gonna draw ordinary things.
Smith: Look at my jet and it has jets coming out of it!
Wolfie: Look what I did! I did the real circle parts on the wings.Smith: Look! Someone's sitting in it!
Grey: A pilot?
Smith: No, it's a truck-jet.Grey: What?
Smith: Nothing. . . Look! It's shooting into the air like a real jet-dog does!
Wolfie: I'm drawing the exact same thing [the toy-plane that I see]. First I'm drawing red cause that's the basic part of it.
Smith: I'm keeping the color right and kinda not right. I'm gonna draw this like real life -- like I'm on the sidewalk!
Wolfie: Look my lines got destroyed. My other lines just blended in with the colors, but look! That line got destroyed!Grey: I'm gonna cover up everything and see how it is. I want to turn that paint a color!Wolfie: What is that?Grey: I don't know. I'm just making something ... I made grey! I made my name!




***

watercolor alien

Ellery: Look, it's an alien from a different planet. Planet Septune. It's holding...well, I don't know what it's holding, but in it's other hand it has a magnifying glass. It needs a magnifying glass because one eye is really damp.

Grey: What does "damp" mean?

Ellery: It means really black. It means ruined. It means rusty.
Grey: Is it just a robot?
Ellery: No, it's actually an alien.

Grey: Well, then why is one eye really damp?

Ellery: Because all my aliens have that. ... I can make it shooting a blue laser out of its eye. See?
Ellery: ...What are you drawing?

Bianca: Who are you asking? Grey or Elena or...?

Ellery: I'm asking myself.



***

making mountains

That's a giant shadow. I'm gonna make a little mountain down here. there I go. Look! Look!
[in corner of page] I'm not finished until the whole paper is filled! I wanna be done . . . no I'm still working! I'm putting a little mountain between the two big mountains. Oo! Oo! I have a long space up here -- I can put a long skinny mountain. It's the tallest mountain you ever saw because I'm using up the whole paper and the paper is very long.
This one's really cool. I choose this one because it's blue and blue's my favorite color. And I like snow. That's the big shadow. See the big shadow? Oo! I like this! And see that mountain over there? It really looks like a real mountain! Not this one over here -- that was an accident -- but this one [real mountain = the smudgy violet area in corner]!
Oo! I still have a couple space. This is a tiny mountain that's going to become a giant mountain. I always blow off all the dust.