Category: School Arts

What's a White Spot Inspector?

07/03/2012

What's a White Spot Inspector? Well, it's the little friend in your pocket that helps you find those unwanted white spots in your painting. These tiny inspectors kindly point out these areas of your artwork to help you make your finished piece "neat and complete".
It's also an excuse to teach figure drawing while encouraging good craftsmanship.
(PS. It is a major no-no to leave a white spot on your white spot inspector!)

Lesson plan from the day I introduced 1st grader to their White Spot Inspectors.

My School Arts Magazine article about encouraging artistry from young students.

The White Spot Inspector lesson is accompanied by this Fugleflick video below.
My students like to sing along and request the video every day of the project, so I added a karaoke page on my wiki so my students can perform the song while creating art.

White Spot Inspector from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

View the first graders' White Spot Inspectors below and on Artsonia here.

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Strive for Artistry

04/22/2012

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I received an email from a teacher asking about our Self-Portrait lesson in Fifth Grade (view the full gallery of images on Artsonia). I thought, maybe someone else might like to hear the same answers I gave her about how we do this project and my product recommendations so I posted the questions and my answers below:
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1. Do you use Tempera paint? Yes, What brand? Sax's brand Versatemp
2. Do you pre-mix fleshtones or have the kids do it? I use the multicultural paints and let them pick one for skin and one for shade of their skin.
3. How do you handle the distribution of paint? I have these great containers that we just keep refilling. We call the skin colors by number just to have a reference. I write the number on the lids (looks like these). I see a lot of different colors in your students' work, but I can't imagine having every color out on every table! With these containers I just set out three strips of colors one is skin, one is primary/secondary and one is black, white, gray, and browns.
4. Do you have them outline with Sharpie last? I prefer Redimark Permanent markers because they're thicker and juicer. I show them our movie about black marker first to get motivated to rescue their painting from Sloppy Brush.
5. How do you get them to do such a nice, neat job?!
Thank you! but I really try to enforce craftsmanship. I just wrote an article about Good Artistry for the May issue of School Arts Magazine. You can view it here.

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Managing the Classroom with Videos!

04/05/2012

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Take a look in the May 2012 edition of School Arts Magazine to see my article called, Striving for Artistry. In this article I explain my strategy of creating videos with students for students to help motivate my young artists to try their best in the art room.

P.S. Read the article by Michelle Savran. She creates great art education animations for her students and even credits our Fugleflicks as an encouragement! We're honored:)