Faith Ringgold's Flag Story Quilts

Faith Ringgold is a famous African-American, female artist who grew up in Harlem, New York.  Her artwork is inspired both by her memories of helping her mother sew and craft as well as her experiences with painting in college.  Faith Ringgold combines sewing, painting, and text to create beautiful "Story Quilts."  One of her artworks, titles "Flag Story Quilt," combines vivd textiles in red, with newspaper clippings to create an abstract version of the American flag.  Here is Faith Ringgold's "Flag Story Quilt."

In this lesson, students created their very own flag story quilt by building a flag collage.  Students cut out paper from magazines, patterned paper, and plain paper.  They glued down their stripes to create the basic flag design and finished of their flags by adding abstract shapes to represent the stars.  Here is a student example of the flag story quilt:

Cactus Drawings

We had so much fun doing this lesson.  During this lesson, we discussed the cactus plant and other varieties of succulent plants.  Students learned about the type of environment cactus plants flourish (hot, dry, and desert like).  They also learned the importance of the cactus plants spikes (to protect their mosture from predators).  After looking at many pictures of cactus plants and talking about them, students were given step-by-step instructions on how to build their cactus drawing.  We drew the cactus with pencil on blue construction paper first.  Then we traced the cactus with white Elmer's glue.  After the glue outline dried, students filled int he cactus using soft chalk pastels.  To make their cactus drawings look more realistic, students created shadows with darker shades of green and highlights with lighter shades of green and yellow!

Chinese Scroll Paintings

During the second semester of the school year, I have the great pleasure of teaching an art enrichment course.  This class consists of hand-selected students from 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.  Students are chosen to participate in the class based on positive behavior and artistic skill.  The class is a real joy to teach, because with smaller nubmers and smaller classroom management issues, we can really have fun making art.  I also get to interact one-on-one with the students a lot, which is amazing!

For our first project, we learned about Chinese scroll paintings.  Students started by drawing a vertical composition (most popular designs included floral motifs such as a cherry blossom tree, landscape designs including mountains and rivers, and bamboo plants sweeping across the page in intense diagonals).  After students drew their pictures, they filled them in with watercolors (using wet and dry brush techniques).  Next, they picked Chinese characters symbolizing words that they thought suited their picture and drew them in the upper corner.  Each student "signed" their piece using a unique red stamp seal they created on their own by carving into styrofoam with a pencil.  Finally, they added a black bar on top and bottom to complete the scroll!  Aren't they beautiful?