The Dusty Art Room

Artist Trading Cards are small pieces of artwork meant to be traded with other artists, just as baseball or Pokemon cards are traded.  Hester artists from first trimester were lucky enough to participate in an international trading card exchanged hosted by the amazing Nic Hahn, aka Mini Matisse, from Hassan Elementary in Minnesota. Check out her blog HERE.  There are schools from around the United States and also several countries from around the world participating!  Students used a variety of techniques from Mixed Media Collage and painting to drawing.  Some students did not complete their cards (some good learning for next time on scheduling), but those who sent a card will get one back in return - can't wait! We will get our cards back in January, but here is a sampling of the cards we were able to send:

Project: Mixed Media Self-Portraits You may be wondering how these beautiful watercolor paintings will evolve into a mixed media self-portrait... The purpose of a self-portrait is to capture part of your identity.  Instead of capturing what we look like, we will layer text on top of these paintings with paper, colored pencil, oil pastel & markers.  The words we choose will be strong adjectives and phrases that describe who we are, what we believe in & other important aspects of our identity.   Students were captivated by the effect of wet-into-wet watercolor painting.  When the paper is wet first color quickly diffuses into beautiful clouds of color!  Students also experimented with dabbing the paint into the water, creating fireworks of color!  Many were also quite busy experimenting with mixing different colors and seeing what new colors they could create- enthusiasm quickly spread throughout the classroom as students exchanged 'recipes' for their...