4Th Graders Begin Working on Their Portraits with Character

This week and the coming week all 4th graders will be observing and analyzing various portraits across time and trying to pull from these images a specific message or characteristic the artist was trying to portray.

In turn, each child searched for the one singular adjective that best describes them. Their home assignment is to list various "clues" they could add to their portrait that would make the viewer clearly identify a strong characteristic within the work.

A HUGE Thank You To All Families Who Have Brought donations

I am absolutely in love with my parents at Murch. I put out a list of items I need and the next day families are parading in the art room with bags and BAGS of goodies. Although I cannot thank you individually I wanted to send out a HUGE thank you to these families. Your support has a direct and positive impact on the art program.

On that note, here is my current list of trash to treasure items I need for the coming weeks...

* cardboard, any size

* meat trays

* Wooden pieces (for sculptures)

* flashlights that work

* tiles

* wooden boards

* yogurt cups

* old digital camera with charger (I am aiming to have enough for a class)

* old bedsheets (solid color)

* shiny paper of any kind

* old museum catalogs/postcards/calendars

My Conversation with 5th Graders About Watercolor

We have been exploring watercolors with 5th graders this week. Next week we will look at our explorations and pull some specific qualities we notice about this particular medium. What I noticed immediately was the level of calmness in the children while they painted and it occurred to me to ask them when was the last time they used watercolors. Most said years ago.

I encouraged them to get a watercolor set and added that it's a very portable medium. All they need is a sketchbook, a bottle of water and a watercolor set. They all seemed to like the idea. Their enthusiasm has made me shift my focus to painting and perhaps taking them on some outdoor painting opportunities once they gain more confidence in their skills.

I encourage you as a family to try watercolors. I do it at home with my 2 and 4 year old and they can go on and on for over an hour. They learn a lot about evaporation, color mixing, and it's miles better than crayons or markers.

I would love to hear about your adventures in watercolor!!!

Oh! and if you are a watercolor artist I cannot wait to get you in my room to share your craft fast enough!!! PLEASE come visit my kids.

Items Needed for Art

I have a lot of parents e-mail me asking me to clarify what their child needs for art. So here is a visual list. As a 100% visual learner I love visual anything.

1. Your child needs a large t-shirt that will used as a smock. Usually they work better than the plastic ones. These smocks stay in the child's cubby/locker and they come to art already wearing them regardless of what we are doing.

2. Each child will need to bring in 2 containers of wipes. These wipes are used to clean hands after painting, gluing, printing. If we were to wash hands we'd waste 20 minutes of our 45 minutes. These same wipes then are used to clean the tables which are often also covered in paint. They do not need be disinfecting wipes.

3. your child will also need a sketchbook or a booklet of paper with no lines. Preferably with pages thicker than a composition book. We might use watercolors in them so a regular notebook might not work. make sure you heavily label this for they will be needed each time in the art studio. The older kids can bring these back and forth from home for I will be giving assignments to complete at home. A old sketchbook with at least 40 empty and usable pages will be fine too.

Compass Designs

Next week in all 2nd grade classes we will learn about color "recipes". Each child will be like a chemist and create a unique new color by mixing their own combination of the primary colors and/or white.

This week we made a wonderful design of where these new colors will be painted.

We used a compass to make designs on an 8x11 card stock. Each child created a fairly simple yet beautiful design on their paper and then traced it with sharpie.

If your child has a sketchbook and a compass you could let them create their own designs at home. You could also explain how generally compasses are used with maps and mapping out routes. The compasses are sold at pharmacies, dollar stores and office supply stores if you do not have one.

Included is a video I found that extends this idea to other creative ideas. You might want to try this at home if you have your own compass. Remember though, what we made at school was a much simpler version of this. Nevertheless, if your child is very excited about the compass as a medium for art you might want to watch this and other videos to get them hooked! I am certainly hooked myself.

This could also lead to looking at Arabic art which has a lot of geometric patterns that interlock as well. To read about Islamic art and math go here.

Would love to hear about YOUR family's adventures with the compass......

1st Grade Pull Prints from Their Stamps

First I have to thank all parents who donated all the corks and made this project possible.

As you can see the corks were used as handles for our stamps. Each class pulled about 90-120 prints in 45 minutes. Each time they made a new print your child learned a little more about whether to apply more pressure, less pressure, more ink, or less ink to make their prints more successful. Next week we will be creating a class-wide project in which everyone makes a stamp and contribute to the whole.

Parents, please make sure your child has a sketchbook next week. They will be needing them to make initial sketches of their final designs.

To get a better idea of the process we used to make these prints you can view this video below: I did not make this video. I found it on Youtube and thought you might enjoy learning about the process.

If you do this at home...I would love to see what you make!!!!

3rd grade: We begin our cloth collage of DC landmarks

We are using the skills gained from the last 2 weeks to now start on our cloth collage of a DC landmark. Each child found large shapes in the buildings and cut out matching and proportionate shapes. Next week we will cut out details such as windows, doors and chimneys.


This project would not be possible without all the parent donations of cloth swatches.....The kids decided they will create a pillow from their final collages.

Creating a Culture of Sketchbook-ing!!

If you are in grades K-5th, I'm sure by now you have gotten the notice that your child needs to bring in a sketchbook for art.


My goal at Murch is to create a culture of "sketchbook-ing". The sketchbooks will be used for anything from journal writing, scrapbooking to sketching.

I teach the children that artists are not the only people who carry around sketchbooks. Thinkers, architects, designers, writers, and just about anyone who values their own thought process carries a form of one of these.

Sketchbook-ing or journal writing, teaches that all great ideas start inside one of these raggedy notebooks and grow, grow, grow to become complex set of ideas.

I teach the children in class that in our sketchbooks we do not erase. We allow ourselves to make mistakes and learn from them. That way months from now we can look back and assess our own growth.

One-point-perspective with 5th graders

We have some awesome future architects in the 5th grade class. We started our watercolor/drawing unit learning about proportion and one-point perspective.

Parents, click here for a great tutorial on one-point perspective. http://www.olejarz.com/arted/perspective/

You will love doing this with your child. Such fun!

Work by Anna Joos (5th grade)

Work by Henry Lent (5th grade)

For parents who want to continue this lesson at home here's a great live tutorial. enjoy!!

4th Graders Learn about human facial proportions

4th graders are working on a drawing unit where the culmination will be drawing a proportionate self portrait.

Standard Facial Proportions:Here are a list of standard facial proportions. Try them at home!

• The eyes are halfway between the top of the head and the chin.
• The bottom of the nose is halfway between the eyes and the chin.
• The mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin.
• The corners of the mouth line up with the centers of the eyes.
• The top of the ears line up above the eyes, on the eyebrows.
• The bottom of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose.

We used magazine images to sketch a proportionate human face.

If you want to do this at home with your child, here is a great video to show you how. Enjoy!! bring the result to class to show me!!

3rd Graders Create Building Collages

Children in the 3rd grade classes at Murch have been practicing creating collages based on photos of building. We learned that to create a collage we start with big shapes and then add the DETAILS with smaller shapes. We learned that DETAILS in this case were the windows, doors, and chimneys. We later cut out our buildings and added them into a community.

Kids used photographs of buildings to create their houses.

2nd Graders create color wheels

2nd graders create color wheels using the 3 primary colors.

Welcome to the art room...

Welcome to the art room....here are some images of the room....

We have a vocab wall.....one per grade....
Here are some artwork created by the pre-K.
Everything has its place!
The sculpture center is where sculptures are stored and are set out to dry.
More art on the walls.
Your art responsibilities.....
Some painting explorations created by 2nd graders.
Storage of work to be completed...and the top is another sculpture area.

Prinntmaking Warm Ups in 1st Grade

1st Graders have begun their printmaking unit with a simple stamping activity. Next week we will create personalized stamps using scratch foam.

We used these simple patterns and "read" them using assigned movements for each shape.

Oh How Many Marks Can This One Little Brush Make?

2nd Graders started their painting unit learning about the two different types of painting brushes (flat and round) and explored all the different types of marks even one brush can make. We viewed various famous paintings and made informed guesses about what possible ways each mark could be used for in a painting.

This is a poster about brush marks that hangs in the art room.
An artist exploring various types of marks her round brush could make.
This artist made some thick lines using pressure on his brush, and made some dry brush marks. Dry brush marks make great grass in paintings.

5th Graders Use One-Source-Lighting to Create the Illusion of 3D in Their Drawing

We began our drawing unit drawing simple solids using professional ebony drawing pencils. The solids were placed in a room with one source lighting coming from one direction. In order to make a successful 3D-looking image they had to have 3 very important ingredients on their drawing:

1. an accurate shadow

2. darks, lights and medium tones created through crosshatch technique.

3. The drawing had to be visually accurate to the viewer.

Kindergarten Kids Work With Clay and Clay Tools

Students in Kindergarten are exploring clay and and clay tools.

This artist used her tool to cut the clay into pieces.
Some artists used their tool to make interesting marks on their clay.

One artist made a snail and showed her classmates how to do one too!
We came to learn that sometimes it's easier to use your elbow to flatten your clay.
This artist is ROLLING his clay on the table to make a snake.