Art Advocacy

This is a great article defending the arts.

An Arts Education is Essential to Success

Grant Writing = Excitement...Anticipation...Wish Lists...Possibilities

Over the past couple of weeks I have been pouring over pages of information on screen printing machines and technology, have made phone calls to experienced artists and organizations and spent my time writing a grant for $10,000. Yes, $10,000! If this project is funded, myself and our tech ed teacher would receive enough money to set up our dream classrooms as far as technology goes, get to take our students on field trips to a printmaking studio, have an artist-in-residence come to our school, and create an in-house screen printing studio. I can't wait until the decisions have been made and to find out if our grant will be funded! It was certainly fun to create that wish list, but it will be so much more fun to have a classroom outfitted with such unique equipment for our students to create with...and now the waiting begins.

Sketchbooks

Who wants to waste a ton of their budget on less than stellar sketchbooks when the art room is crawling with paper - all kinds and colors of paper? So it is time to teach myself how to make my own. I'm going to go with the coptic or chain stitch binding method and have found a couple of good tutorials to demonstrate this technique. The best part is I already have all of the supplies, I can make it any size I want, the cover will be personalized and it can be as many pages as I see fit for each of my classes. Now to just be more consistent with having my classes use them...

Written and photographic tutorial

YouTube video tutorial

Pinterest

I found a new site posted by another blogger that is perfect for art teachers and other very visual people. I am always saving random pictures that spark ideas for projects.

Pinterest allows you to create collections of photos organized by categories. They are displayed much like a bulletin board, can be edited, you can search other people's boards for ideas, etc, etc, etc. I've got a collection for my 2D and 3D Design class, one for a photography project, one for ideas for my own home, products that I love, and this is just from looking for a little while this morning. I can already tell there will be many more categories added in the future.

*Don't be scared off by having to request an invite. Once you fill that out, an invitation is sent to your email and you are one link away from adding photos to your own idea boards.

Art Games and Drawing Software

Two of my favorite sites that can be just for fun but have the potential to teach further skills are The Art Zone and Kerpoof.

Going to the computer lab is often met with whining and complaining but most students want to go back another day once they get to play around with them. (Plus they know that one of my number one rules is you don't get your way if you whine or complain)!

The Beginnings of Blogging

I am an avid blog reader, but cannot say I have ever been very good about sharing or responding myself. I'm giving this blog a try to share ideas but even more of a reason is to have a place to pool all of my resources and give my students a place to locate everything they will need for assignments, further their creativity, and experiment with new ideas on their own. This year I have had the awesome experience of working with students old enough that I see the potential they hold in using their creativity in their future. Once they leave high school, everything I have documented for them on the school's website will be lost to them. My hope is that those that are interested will utilize this blog to further their studies, help in the creation of their own artwork, and share what they are creating as well. I find other art education blogs to be incredibly useful to help me come up with fresh ideas. Hopefully I can keep up with this blog as well as others keep up with theirs!