I am excited to begin my 19th year teaching in the Harrisonburg City Schools at Skyline Middle School. The transition from Houston, TX to the beautiful hills of Virginia are sure to bring the beauty of the seasons, family connections from WV and Lynchburg, along with all the new artists I will be meeting in the art room this year!

My philosophy of art education is built of a strong belief in the POWER of art to be a form or communication for us all. Art is our visual voice and the elements and principles of design are our vocabulary to share all that is within our hearts, minds and imaginations. We will be creating masterpieces that directly reflect the Visual Art Standards of Learning in Virginia. In art we will learn about different cultures, artistic periods throughout history along with getting to know artists. Students will learn ways art connects across the curriculum to connect to math, science, history, social studies, and language arts. 

Students will be creating digital portfolios this year through the website Artsonia.com.
Student portfolios are kept private until parent permission is granted, and will help to highlight the skills and concepts learned through out the art course. I hope all parents and families will enjoy this new addition to the art program at Skyline and take a few moments to comment/ praise your young artists for their efforts.

Cardinal artists shared their creativity with a Visual Pun Ink painting assignment.
Students randomly picked names of real fish or birds and invisioned what charactaristics that animal might show to deserve the unusal names.
Many of the names were found through an Incredible Art Department Resource lesson by Don Stewart, Artist. I was thrilled to have made his aquaintance and purchase one of his images years ago and discussed with him what a fun my students would have creating their own visual puns! Here are a few of the names we used as inspiration: 

Congratulations to our Space Center Intermediate Artists who were chosen to represent our school in the district Rodeo Art Show held at the University of Houston Clear Lake.
Jake Mather 6th gr., Taylor Diggs 6th gr., Madison 6th gr., Yashodha Abeysingh 6th gr., Grace
Song 6th gr., Kristy Hoffman 7th gr., Jessica Bruno 7th gr., Victoria Basich 7th gr., Colton
Crader 7th gr.,  Sammantha Woo 8th gr., Kelsey Roebelen 8th gr., Kaleigh Baxter 8th gr., 
Michelle Cheng 8th gr., Caroline Curran 8th gr.,Tracy Ortega 8th gr.

Congratulations to all students for working hard and creating so many beautiful materpieces for our district show. It was very difficult for our judges to narrow down the great entries to just fifteen. You can see our online art gallery of work on Artsonia in our Rodeo Gallery.

Several weeks ago I was asked to help create a "Character" lesson plan for our school advisory classes. After doing a bit of research and thinking about the season I was drawn to a Character Counts lesson on Thanking Everyday Heroes. A simple request was then put out to all the teachers to have their students consider writing a thank you letter to our troops for Thanksgiving.
    The drawings and letters poured into the box and I was touched by the hearts of our students. As I packed up the letters and artwork I wanted to document some of the words and images to share with others and give hope for the kindness in minds of the youth today. Looking forward to our country's future I am proud of the students of Space Center for their kindness and recognition of the continued sacrifice by our troops.

Here are a few quotes from the students' in thanks to our soldiers protecting our freedoms:

"Everyone in this country is very thankful for you serving this country and letting us live in happiness, freedom and protecting us from terrorists and other bad people."

"Thank you for putting your lives at risk in order to protect ours."

"I know your family and friends miss you and can't wait until you come home."

"YOU are NOT forgotten. You guys are amazing and are truly heroes."

"You are more than superman, you are our real heroes."

In this season of Thanksgiving and with Veterans' Day just around the corner I hope you will take a few moments and send thanks to the troops who have given their lives in service to our country. We sent our letters to the troops through the organization "A Million Thanks".
I hope our messages of thanks will inspire you to take a moment and send greetings to a soldier.

Christmas/holiday cards and letters should be postmarked no later than December 1.
A Million Thanks
17853 Santiago Blvd. #107-355
Villa Park, CA 92861

Every year our wonderful Superintendent (just named Texas Superintendent of the Year) holds a Holiday Card Art Contest for district students. The art students at Space Center did a magnificent job in their entries and it was difficult to narrow the submissions down to just five to send on to the district level. I am proud of all students for your wonderful submissions and congratulations to the following students whose art will now compete at the district level to have their art made into Holiday Cards for Clear Creek ISD.

Students researched artists and were asked to find facts about the artist's life and understand the artist's style. The variety of artists was a pleasant surprise and showed the diversity of interests the student's hold. After the students returned with their artist we looked at a variety of Day of the Dead artwork for inspiration.
Students were asked to include five visual elements that would showcase the artist's life and work in their final image. A skeleton was brought in from one of our science labs for reference while students sketched out their design. The background is created on black paper with a niche shape to reference an alter.
The foreground will focus on the main skeleton created on a separate white piece of paper. Students collage elements together to create the finished piece. Students use a variety of materials based on their artist's style, their personal design.
Not only are students getting to honor one of their favorite artists, learn about a cultural tradition, and learn new techniques but they are starting to appreciate the artistic tastes of their fellow classmates and seeing how they can work and learn together in an art studio environment.

Our next exchange is a few weeks away and I hope many of you are already thinking about getting your cards ready to mail by November 5th. The next theme will be Art Parodies! There are lots of fun and humorous ways to be inspired by art throughout history. Just take a gander at a few I found on Pinterest if you need a little inspiration. Have fun and we look forward to seeing your creative interpretations on the masters next month. Make sure the students label the back of their ATC with their info & add the artist/art that inspired their artistic parody!
If you have not signed up for the exchange it couldn't be easier, simply sign up here and mail your ATC's by Nov 5th to Space Center Intermediate, we look forward to sharing a bit of fun with art history with you soon!

Last week brought a new addition to the art room at SCIS. It felt a little bit like Christmas meets a dream when our wonderful tech walked in with a Sympodium in her arms. The bundle of joy will bring a bit of a learning curve that I am excited to put to full use in the weeks to come. (A sympodium uses SMART technology to make the computer and demonstrations interactive.

As students jump into one and two point perspective drawings this week, I hope to give students a chance to interact and use the technology to demonstrate their understanding of drawing in perspective. Students will be able to label vanishing point, horizon line and demonstrate how to make shapes into 3D forms. We are all excited with the new possibilities of the interactive lessons with technology integration!       

SCIS 7th/ 8th grade students are working on a quick exercise in painting values in watercolor, learning about masking fluid while creating a self portrait.
Pinterest and other websites are a great resource for new ideas. I found a simple tutorial online and was reminded of a project I did when I was in high school using color mixing and value. I wanted to plan a project that would help students to understand the range of values that can be achieved with watercolor. Many were realizing for the first time how to add more water or less to attain a wide range of color value.

To begin we took photographs of the students and their photographs were simplified in a free online photo editor, Pixlr to create value layers.  First the photo was edited to black in white and boosted the contrast before applying the adjustment "Posterize".
The students drew and then protected the white areas of their portraits with masking fluid prior to painting the lightest area of watercolor wash in the color of their choice. After their initial wash of color students painted in the other values in layers of color on the surface. The final magic moment is when the paint drys and we get to remove the masking fluid to uncover the painting, Voila!
Check out our gallery of portraits!