Jackson worked on a family tree painting, and Remington wanted to created a squid with a water bottle and yarn. Both used good critical thinking skills and good handling of the media.

The artists performed some design thinking for the best way to create and attach straps to their shields. Each artist drew out his idea, and we decided which one we would try. We created a prototype to test out tomorrow when the glue is dry.

The brave knights drew and colored their animals and glued them on their shields.

Today, each young knight painted his shield of armor. The cardboard shields are life-size, and they chose the colors for each four areas on the shield. Tomorrow, they will draw the animals on their shields to represent their skills and attributes.

The lower school artists learned about the color symbolism and animal iconography of the heraldic shields. They chose their colors according to what they wanted to symbolize and the animals to speak of their courage, loyalty, etc. For example: the color red is courage and the eagle represents power and nobility. They finished their coat of arms, and then they will transfer their designs on large pieces of cardboard to create shields.

Each artist created two fire breathing dragons today in art studio by following a step-by-step drawing process. They did great! They will begin their coat of arms and shields next week.

We are working on drawing dragons, as we learn about knights, coats of arms, heraldry, armor, and shields.

Since we will be covering knights, dragons, coats of arms, shields, and heraldry, each artist started off our unit with coloring, cutting, and assembling a knight in armor.

Libby created a story book and started illustrating it and writing text. Her drawings were excellent along with her added sentences. Remi watched step-by-step videos on how to draw an Ender Man from Minecraft. He was working in his sketchbook observing, measuring, and drawing. The students were thrilled that Cam joined us. Cam started his cobra drawing on marbled paper. Each student was focused on her/his own project, and it was a very productive and harmonious studio.

Remington and Jackson had a visual arts group studio this morning. We started with the marbling technique. We did a step-by-step procedure for marbling paper pumpkins, mummies, and Day of the Dead sugar skulls. Our steps were as follows: 1) Each student sprayed shaving cream in the aluminum pan, 2) he added drops of liquid paint to the shaving cream, 3) he used a wooden tool to swirl or marble the paint in the shaving cream, 4) he placed the paper face down in the shaving cream, and 5) after he pulled the paper off the foam, we used a squeegee to scrape the shaving cream off to reveal our marbled print. We were left with beautiful, marbled pumpkins, sugar skulls for Day of the Dead, and mummies. The artists want to hang these artworks in the lunchroom for our school Halloween party.

Then we went to our STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) station and created Halloween figures out of toilet paper rolls. Each artist made a vampire with bat wings. It was a productive studio!