On FIre For Handmade is featuring A Crafty Arab as it's weekly Zibbet Featured Shop

 

I am so honored and full of gratitude (we say alhumdullah in Arab for it) to have A Crafty Arab be picked at the On Fire for Handmade featured Zibbet shop.

I will also be featured on the home page slider and What's Happening Now Section.

Please do head over (the link is in my shop name above) and show them so hob (the Arabic word for love).

2nd Grade Art Lesson: Matisse Art Shapes

We are concluding our 2nd grade art lessons focusing on the 7 elements of art by talking about shapes.

We had spent the year going over all seven of them here: Line Shape Form Space Color Value Texture*.

There is never a better artist to talk about shapes then Henri Matisse, the cutout king of shapes!



Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

I started by asking if anyone had ever heard of Henri Matisse, the famous French artist who was told he couldn't draw by his art teacher?  There were a few that had heard of him, but no one had been told the story of how he taught himself to be an artist. 

Mr. Matisse started his life in northern France then moved to Paris to be a lawyer. When he was 21, he got very sick and went home to get well with bed rest at his moms.

She got tired of him in bed all day, so she gave him paint brushes and paper and told him to get some art in. 

He fell in love.

When he got well enough to go back to Paris, he decided that he wanted to be a painter and enrolled in art school.  But his teacher told him he wasn't very good and should stick to law.

Hentri Matisse Reading Girl

Mr. Matisse disagreed, committed himself to learning art, making friends with artists like Vincent Van Goh, and within five years he had an art show where someone from the city purchased artwork for the government.  I bet that teacher was glad he was wrong!

Mr. Matisse loved art so much, he did it night and day.  But when he got to his 80s, it became hard for him to hold a brush, so he picked up scissors and paper and began to cut.

Henti Matisse Cutouts

He referred to this new medium of gouaches decoupes as 'painting with scissors'.  He created fun whimsical and geometric shapes and played around until they became something he was happy with.

When his arthritis became so bad that he could no longer hold scissors, he directed his assistants to cut out the shapes he wanted.  Mr. Matisse continued to make art his whole life.

Henri Matisse Jazz

Our lesson consisted of taking construction paper and cutting it into fun shapes. Then we traced the shaped onto lined paper and colored them in.

Cut outs and trace ins help with fine motor skills

We used rulers and pencils to line our paper, then went over it with Sharpie to make them darker.

We used contrasting colors to make our artwork really pop.  Contrasting cards are opposite each other on the color wheel (red/green, yellow/violet, orange/blue).

We would be creating artwork inspired by Mr. Matisse's underwater series.

Here are just a few of the masterpieces.  (Tip - If you do try this lesson, give yourself two hours.  As you can see, none of the kids completed their artwork, but that just means more art on a different day!)

Here are a few more tips:

Make sure to add Sharpie before you color.

Have a few pieces be larger than your hand.

Color all of one color first to help keep track.

When we finish up the lesson, I'll post the completed works.  Stay tuned!


*(The earlier lessons are not linked because I had not started taking my camera to school.  I will see if I can update just the lessons at a later date)

Women's Wellness Weekend - Spring 2015

I had so much fun on Orcas Island this weekend teaching at the Women's Wellness Weekend Retreat at the YMCA's Camp Orkila.

My crazy, Friday, ten hour drive to get there is best seen through my Instagram shots.

As many past readers of this blog know, I love this retreat because it gives me a pause from my loved ones around me.  Those include my fantastic husband, my beautiful daughters, my supportive family, and my kind and giving girlfriends*.

It's my time to unwind, but also do what I love to do most: pass my love of art to others..  I traveled to the WWW to teach a quilling class. 

I took all my own art supplies and inspirational displays. After a speedy breakfast due to a lazy Saturday morning, I had everything set up for my two classes in the library.

There were lots of happy students:

A few close ups of their masterpieces.

 Sregrubmah (hamburgers spelled backwards) to you!

Stunning earrings on their way to the jewelry table for finishing.

Happy Birthday card to a little lucky boy.

Snowflake charm on it's way as a mother's day gift

While there, I went on long beach walks, gazing at Waldron Island under a beautiful blue sky.  I spent quite a bit of time around the marina center, looking for the snazzler, As a mother of snazzler winners in the past, it will be hard for me to come home with my head hung in shame on Sunday. But I'm sure a stop at the Donut House in Anacortes will fix everything.

Natch, someone else found it first!

Over the weekend, I was also blessed with a message, painted a landscape watercolor, and took a seasonal walk with a staff member where I learned that if you bend the top leaf of a salmon berry cluster, it turns into a butterfly.

Fold the top leaf over and you get butterfly wings (thanks Kelli!)

Please do look up your local YMCA and sign up for the next retreat.  I promise you won't regret getting away "to escape, cleanse and refill" as so eloquently said by yoga instructor Christina.

*If you do fall into my kind and giving girlfriends category in my life, I tease about you not being there.  To be honest, I'd love to see more women I know attend this beach heaven we have.

If you are thinking about it, here are just a few things that were offered this weekend: kayaking, hiking, field trips, archery, riley, karaoke, needle felting, yoga, giant swing, jewelry making, s'mores social, pottery, knitting, guitar, herbal tinctures and so much more. 

2nd Grade Art Lesson: M.C. Escher Form Pyramid

2nd Grade Art Lesson: M.C. Escher Form Pyramid

For my art 2nd grade lesson today, we did a project that incorporates M C Esher's work.  We discussed the transformation of 2 dimensional art to 3 dimensional art through form, one of the 7 elements of art.

We are spending the year going over all seven of them here: Line Shape Form Space Color Value Texture. 

I started by asking if anyone knew what form was?  One little hand shot up with an answer of cylinder, which is correct.

I then showed the kids a piece of flat paper and explained it was 2 dimensional.  However, by curving the sides, I was able to make it 3 dimensional by giving it the form of a cylinder. Artists use form to create sculptures and 3D art. Form names include: cylinders, cones, spheres, cubes, pyramids, and prisms.

I then shared a little history about Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898 – 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher, who was a Dutch graphic artist, known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. His artwork featured impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.


M.C. Escher 1929 self-portrait

He visited Alhambra, a castle in Spain, in 1922 and was mesmerized by the repeating patterns, converting them to tessellations in his art. 

I showed slides of Moorish tiles, like the one above he must have seen, to explain his evolutions of style from taking repeating patters that included moons and starts, to adding plants and animals.

M.C. Escher Lizard/Fish/Bat (No. 85) 1952

I then showed more slides of his work that started to incorporate movement, giving it a sense of fluidity.

M.C. Escher Swans 1956

 

He took this a step further by adding humans that lived in their own separate lives, unaware of the other humans around them, but caught in an endless cycle of movement.

M.C. Escher Relativity, 1953

M.C. Escher Belvedere 1958

After out art history lesson, I moved on to what we were going to create.  I gave them a pyramid print out I found online.

I asked them to draw a design that is the exact same on each side.  They had to do this by first choosing one color and drawing the exact same thing on all four sides.  They then choose another color and do the same.  Once the pyramid was colored, they would get scissors to cut along the solid line.

The complete project will have four exact sides, which continue into the next side, into an infinite loop.  I also pointed out that they will have finished pyramid sculptures at home* that were made from a single sheet of flat 2D paper.

(*I decided to let them glue the tabs to close the pyramids at home because I wasn't too confident that they could get them there safely.  I told them to keep the pyramids fat in their take home folder, but once they got home, they just needed to add a tiny bit of glue or tape to the tabs to close them up.)

Here are a few samples of their masterpieces.

 

Till next time, be creative!

(Not) Disney Frozen Cereal

Happy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day" target="_blank">April Fool's Day</a> 2015!<br />
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Followers of my blog know that this is a favorite holiday of mine. <br />
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I must admit naughty&nbsp;things have happen in the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.acraftyarab.blogspot.com/2014/04/happy-april-fools-day-2014.html" target="_blank">past</a>&nbsp; However, this year was the first year that my children have also joined in on the fun.<br />
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I started by asking my 8 year old if she wanted Frozen Cereal.&nbsp; Of course, she was&nbsp;ecstatic at the idea as she loved the movie.&nbsp; However, she was not expecting this.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Not) Disney Frozen Cereal by A Crafty Arab</td></tr>
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Her revenge was covering my refrigerator with ghastly bugs, snakes, frogs&nbsp;and hand drawn googly eyes (she couldn't find the ones that "ahem" someone used last year). I stopped counting at 32.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Not) Disney Frozen Cereal by A Crafty Arab</td></tr>
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My middle child decided to get in on the fun by putting a few drops of yellow food coloring on the inside of a small piece of duct tape.&nbsp; She then placed this piece of duct tape on my faucet. This caused yellow water to be splashed all over my bathroom counters. Everywhere but my toothbrush.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Not) Disney Frozen Cereal by A Crafty Arab</td></tr>
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My oldest did not want to be outdone and took to my car.&nbsp; She soaked cotton balls in water and covered my hood with them in the shape of a smiley face emoji. The ones below lasted a few errands around town and I'm sure got lots of funny double takes.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Not) Disney Frozen Cereal by A Crafty Arab</td></tr>
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There were a few other occurrences throughout the day.&nbsp; Money taped to the garage rugs to give the illusion that it can be picked up easily.<br />
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A cup&nbsp;was added to the side of the car with a magnet.<br />
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And the driver's side of my car was covered in post it notes.<br />
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No one is claiming they did the above three.&nbsp; So I'm going to blame <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/shemsthesiamese/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">#ShemsTheSiamese</a> for now. If you look closely, you will see a paw print on the post it over my steering wheel.<br />
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Did you get pranked on this day?