Ms. Edwards' Art Room

My own artwork has developed in theme and style since I graduated from Haverford college in 2003. During college my oil paintings consisted of still life paintings often incorporating flowers, self-portraits and sometimes butterflies. After college I did mostly self-portraits in pencil or charcoal. I took a few night classes in oil-painting and worked on my still-life painting skills. I also did my first painting from a photograph and I have done paintings on commission. After taking a collage and mixed media course for my Masters work I have expanded into the world of collage. Currently my oil paintings are based on butterfly wings I inherited from my grandfather. The painting are either direct representations of the colors and patterns of the wings or abstract landscapes I have found.

This is a fifth grade project which is a collaboration with the physical education department. Students learned about the technique of contour drawing and practiced on their shoes. Using this slow, line drawing technique students practiced until they were confident with the new technique. Contour drawing combines close observation with slow line drawing. After the students drew a final draft on white paper, color was added through tissue paper squares. Students overlapped tissue paper and added water to get the colors to bleed onto their paper. We talked about color theory and what happens when different colors combine to make new colors. The students could choose to use a color scheme of warm or cool colors or experiment with all of the colors. The finished product will be displayed in the gym in two different sections. One section will be the shoes that are appropriate for P.E. The other section will be footwear that is not appropriate in P.E.

This fourth grade project combines different watercolor techniques for a background with observational drawings of animals. Using a photo of an animal to draw from, students created a large drawing as the subject of the piece. We experimented with four techniques of watercolor painting. We learned about wet on wet, crayon resist, dry brush and the use of salt to create texture. Using some of these techniques students made decisions on how to artistically create a background environment for their animals. Using foam stickers students placed their animals on their backgrounds. The results were beautiful and exciting!

This is a fourth grade project I started teaching last year. This project helps me to get to know my fourth graders and gives me an idea of their basic art skills. The art term we learned through this project is overlapping and how to make our hands look like they are being overlapped. We also talked about creating interesting compositions in each hand using different colors, shapes, and lines. Check out some of their finished work!

WELCOME STUDENTS!!! Art at Hopkins started off a bit differently than other years. This year we started by creating our art for the Square One Art fundraiser. As always the students did an excellent job and there were wonderful results. Fourth grade students have finished their first project and fifth graders are working steadily on two different projects. The next blog will show some of their work. I am looking for donations of recycled materials like newspapers, magazines, papertowel rolls, egg cartons and anything else !! I am excited about the art we will be doing this year so stay tuned for new posts!!

This is a new 5th grade papermache lesson. The fifth graders learned about the history and craftsmanship involved in carving wooden Oaxacans. Oaxacans are carved animals painted bright colors and decorated with many designs. Oaxacans are made in Mexico. The first step in this project was sketching out the animal they were going to build from recycled material and papermache. Because some Oaxacans are imaginary animals, students could draw a real or imaginary animal. After going over some basic building techniques, the students built their animal form. We added 2 layers of papermache and then painted them. The last step was decorating our animals with designs and patterns. The results were quite amazing.

This is a brand new 3-d lesson combining information from the 4th grade Wellness curriculum and papermache sculpture building techniques. The lesson started out with a brainstorm of all the different shapes that germs, viruses and bacteria can be. We also looked at photos of magnified germs and bacteria. Using tissue boxes decorated with germ creatures as inspiration, we drew our own germ monsters. Starting with a basic shape we added multiple eyes, eye stalks, horns, spines, tails and hair. We started building with recycled materials and added 2 layers of papermache to make it smooth. Then we painted and decorated them. The students had great fun going through the bins and bags of random materials collected throughout the year. They came up with some fabulous creations!!