Back At It

Welcome back, students of 2012-2013!

Check out some of the art that's been made over the last few years in our little Art Room.

 Last summer we took home plenty of awards at the San Diego County Fair, including Best of Show!

 This was a crazy and flattering surprise.  A student painted my portrait in watercolor and won a first place ribbon for it!

 In 7th grade last year we printed some owl templates from here and created our own 3-D trees on the bulletin board to show them off.  Then we made storyboards showing what unique characters and stories each owl had.

 Our advanced students took advantage of a Craig's List steal and transformed some old  surfboards into beautiful canvases for surf inspired art.

 And these silly Junior Highers chose to make themselves even more adorable with these great self portraits.

  (The ears are quite accurate on this guy.)

Stamp Tutorial and Materials

Click here Geninne's Hand Carved Stamp Tutorial

and here for her stamp video demonstration.

A Bit on the Big Side

These kids are amazing. This is their final project in which they took a small object and enlarged it. Here are the results. Impressive, no?

Luna and Sol Storybook by Nancy

Lock and Key by Brianna

Chinese Food Takeout Box by Courtney

Egg Roll by Jamie

Spool of Thread by Mira

Pin Cushion by Erin

Electric Plug by Aryn

Art Contest: O'side Turkey Trot

Call for entries! Art is now being accepted for the Oceanside Turkey Trot 2009 t-shirt design contest. Get more info here, entries are due May 21.

San Diego County Fair Call for Entries

Hurry! The deadline to enter artwork to the SD County Fair at Del Mar is April 24! You can click here to enter online, or mail or bring your entry form to the fairgrounds. The art will not be collected until their take-in days at the beginning of May.

There is a fee of $16 per entry, but according to a student who entered and won last year, if you are a student, the fee is only a couple of bucks.

For more info, visit the SD Fair website, but hurry! That's this Friday!

Art Festival 2009

This year's Art Festival, which features K-12 art created in the 08-09 school year, was slightly smaller than usual, but was so concentrated by high caliber art, especially among the Art 2 and 3 students.

Mira, Watercolor
Junior
this student's second watercolor, and first watercolor portrait

"Peter Pan" Aryn, Watercolor
Senior

Brianna, Graphite; Katie, Pen & Ink and Colored Pencil
Sophomores

Christy, Graphite Dustin, Graphite
Sophomores

12th grade work: Aryn, colored pencil; Julia, graphite, Nancy, Graphite; Courtney, colored pencil (left to right)

Some of the Elementary campus' more whimsical contributions. These guys are an annual favorite.

Brianna, Watercolor
Junior

this student's second watercolor, and first watercolor portrait

Erin, Graphite Junior

The art was judged by parents, staff, and secondary students. Classes were judged by grade, and among the secondary grades, separated into advanced and regular classes.

Outliers of the Artistic Kind

Aryn, Watercolor, 2009

We live in a culture that values intelligence above little else, save, perhaps, morality. In his book, Outliers, Malcom Gladwell speaks of individuals who provided for themselves the right circumstances to succeed, given their inherent ability already allowed them a foot in the door. The illustration he uses is one of a tall tree:

“…the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn [natural ability]; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before maturity.”

Here are a few young saplings who I’ve had the good fortune to nurture for a season, ensuring sunlight and soil in the best ways I know how, and this is a record of our accomplishments. This is a blog of student artists, advanced artists, who brought talent to the classroom and who now have grown immeasurably and aren’t done yet. Here is a record of their most gifted ability, their outrageous skill, their beauty birthed from effort.