Mr. Mills Blog

First thing…I added some new programs to my download page. Blender is a 3D animation program and Pencil is a 2D animation program. They are both open source programs which means that they are free for personal use. Check them out…

Above, you will see some of the 3rd graders during their first trip to the Smart Museum as part of the Art in Focus project. After spending time with Mr. Brown and I learning about many visual language terms, they got a chance to show off their knowledge and learn even more from the docents at the Smart. Abstract and representational art were some of the terms we focused on this week while next week we will be working with the elements of art like line and shape. We want the students to be able to look at a piece of artwork and be able to talk about it intelligently and have an informed opinion.

The 4th graders began working on their self-portraits this week. While we struggled some with creating the grid, we had some great discussions about using your right brain to draw. While your right brain is the verbal part of our brain, the left brain controls how we see things and, essentially, is the artistic part of our brain. We have talked about being quiet during an activity like this because you want your right brain to do all the work. I expect there to be some frustration while creating these self-portraits but mistakes will happen. Like any other skill, it takes practice to get better. Drawing is one of those skills.

Above, you will see pictures from the 5th graders first trip to the Smart Museum as part of the Smart Explorers progra. (Yes…I practically lived there this week.) Since many of the students were part of the Art in Focus program two years ago, they were familiar with the museum, but reviewing never hurts. Like the 3rd graders, they have been enhancing their visual language and learning how to talk about art with intelligence. They spent time at the museum looking at the labels next to the artwork to learn what everything written on those labels actually means. Also, the museum has a video installation called Adaptations that was about to end that the students were able to view this week. Looking at video artwork is very different than looking at paintings and sculpture, so it was interesting to see how they responded to it.

As you can see above, the mosaic is coming along. Mirtes will be visiting the school four more times over the coming weeks to finish off the work. It is amazing to see how much progress they have made in what amounts to about three days of work. Now, that they know what to do, they are making even greater strides over each successive class period. Also, we are almost done with the monochromatic paintings. After finishing them up over the next few weeks, we will be starting a graffiti project.

Until next week….