Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Pyramid of __________

The prompt for my Design Craft's warm-up sketch today was "Pyramid of __________". They came up with some great ideas; here a few of my favorites:

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Moving Right Along

Trust me, it's been killing me not to update.  I've been taking lots of pictures and had so much to share but.... you know how it goes: busy, busy, busy.

So here's what's been going on in Calligraphy:

My summer order has been trickling in slowly, but surely.  Not necessarily in order of importance, unfortunately.  I got the "Calligraphy Kit" boxes and some felt tip pens.  Each student has a cubby (there's an "A" and a "B" cubby, each with 10 shelves.  To make room for everybody they have to share, so if a student is assignmed A4R, they are cubby A, shelf 4, on the Left side.

I had my T.A. label all the boxes with masking tape and a Sharpie, then label the markers.  Hopefully this will encourage streamlined materials get out/put away and avoid thievery (hopefully).


We've been continuing our warm-up sketches each day, some are prompts, where they create letters/words inspired by my prompt, sometimes they copy alphabets from a hand-out.

In the last couple of weeks our hand-out drawings have been:
Hand Outs: 
Tattoo Letters ~I had them copy this alphabet then design a tattoo with them.


Prompts:

Letters with Shadows                                                 "Newport Harbor" Backwards

Doodles Behind Letters                                              Lizard Letters


The students were also responsible for a homework assignment in their Composition Books.  So far we've done three:

#1.  Collage of Letters













#2. Connected Signatures

 #3. Number Cluster
In class, since we're still waiting for or nib sets and ink, I gave a lecture on the History of Writing (see last entry)

 I had them practice a basic Roman Alphabet in their Composition Books, then write the Pledge of Allegiance in the same font.













Next, we had a lesson on the History of Writing Tools using this Power Point.

Luckily, I had some extra feathers on hand from my Crafts Class to make Quill Pens.  I just used a box cutter to slice off the tip of the feather at an angle, then used scissors to cut a small slit at the tip.  I did have SOME ink, and some baby food jars that I had saved from when my kids were babies, so I made a few jars of ink for them to use.  

First, they just practiced with the Feather Quill:


 Then I let them use a pen with a plastic handle and steel nib (I had some of those on hand from YEARS ago), and had them write the Gettysburg Address.  I wanted them to write a document that had originally bee written with a Quill Pen.

Next on the agenda: Contour Letters