Art Auction Items Blog

Kindergarten Collaborative Piece

The art projects are complete. A total of 52 pieces will be on display. The invitations have been sent out and posters are in the school hallways. My checklist is almost full of checks, whew. The last elements on my agenda include: name tags for the auction items; bidding sheets for each auction item; and assembling a team for the auction night to keep track of the bids.

For the parents unable to attend I established a blog, listing each individual auction piece where they can place a bid the night of the event. I'm asking the administration to send an email reminder to the parents the day before and the day of the auction. To bid, parents and family simply leave a comment on the auction item posting. I'll have two people with iPads walking around updating the physical sheets at the auction and then updating, as necessary, the auction item, should the bidding continually change.

The work is almost done but there are factors working against the event that might not make it successful. It is at the end of the school year; parents have an event at the school two days before the auction; and, the cost to attend the dinner auction is high. The lack of success won't be for the lack of beautiful artwork, that is for sure!

Collaboration - Elementary School Art Auction Pieces

This is the Kindergarten Classes Collaborative Piece 22"x17"

On top of the individual and collage art auction pieces I've created a collaboration piece for each individual class. My collaboration pieces are a mosaic puzzle of an image. Here are my steps:

1) I created the piece on an 8.5x11 piece of paper with just the outlines (like a coloring book page.) 
2) I then blew it up on a copier so that it became a 22" by 17" piece.
3) Using oil pastels, I matched the colors to the original inspirational painting.
4) I cut it into squares depending on the number of students in my class. (16 or 24)
5) I laminated the squares individually.
6) In a plastic bag I put the the individual laminated square, and the identical uncolored square, plus the oil pastels used to color in that specific part.
7) I know my students abilities so I made sure to match the artist skill to the complexity of the square.
8) I'll spray a fixitive on top and mount them together to create a single piece. 

This is the first grade collaborative piece 17"x22"

Kindergarten Art Auction Piece

This is a collage piece.
Each student has a flower in this
bouquet. One student is the vase. 

Since my kindergarten class has 22 students I'm going to have four bouquets of flowers to assure each student has a flower in the auction. I chose four student's vases that best fit the flower colors.

I created four different flowers for the kids to watercolor paint. I wanted consistency with the design and have the kids really focus on the painting part and not the drawing part. The first week of painting I had them add some crayon resistance to outline or add design to the flowers. The second week of painting I had them just use watercolor and no crayon. I think they were more successful when they had the crayons.

I gave them outlines for three different vases. This time I brought in acrylic (not tempura) paint for them. They used cotton swabs to mix the paint and apply it. I like using cotton swabs to paint with kindergartners better than paint brushes, they fit their small hands better and don't rely as much on fine motor skills.

I will be assembling the four collages for the art auction and watch the 7-8 families enjoy a healthy battle to win the piece. I'll post all of the final art pieces for the auction after I've mounted them.

First Grade Art Auction Piece - Mondrian

Inspired by the work of artist Piet Mondrian

Teaching young children that more isn't always best is hard. When they are learning about what they can do in art they want to do it all. Piet Mondrian and his minimalism approach to his art is truly inspiring. Introducing this to my first grade class has been interesting. I used a worksheet I found on Pinterest from a blog called Once Upon an Art Room. It helped the kids think about the shapes in a Mondrian painting.

Last week I had the kids do a practice run using markers and crayons. They drew their lines with rulers and went over them with black and then filled in some of the shapes with primary colored crayons. The biggest thing for a good number of kids to overcome was drawing so many lines on the page that it became similar to a checkerboard. Limiting them to 10 lines would have helped.

This week we will put pre-cut painters tape down on 6"x 6" pieces of tagboard paper. They only have 6 pieces of tape to work with, so that will eliminate their desire to add too many lines. If we have time we will start painting some of the pieces in with acrylic primary colors. I will require them to at least leave two white squares to balance their use of color.

Next week to finish up. We will remove all of the painters tape, color in the white lines left behind with marker and then touching that up with black acrylic paint. 

I will mount three student pieces on one black mounting board, ready for the art auction!