August/September Newsletter

A Brand New Year
from Mrs. Klatt
Dear Parents, 

Welcome to a great new school in the Sacred Heart Art Room. We have been busy preparing our portfolios and beginning our first project of the year: Self Portraits!
  • Kindergarten learned about Paul Klee and his use of line. He is famous for saying "A line is a dot that went for a walk". We then used lines to create our black and white self portraits in Sharpie.  After, we had a lot of fun covering our papers with water and using bleeding tissue paper to create a watercolor effect on the paper. Next week we will celebrate International Dot Day - I have invited kindergarten to wear something with dots on Wednesday next week! We will also read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and create a fun dot art project. https://www.internationaldotday.org/
  • First grade are creating Royal Self Portraits. The students are learning that you can make skin tones out of yellow, white, red, and brown paint.  Everyone mixed layers of tempera paint to paint the skin and hair of their self portrait and soon we will create our faces and add crowns and jewels for our Kings and Queens of first grade. 
  • Second grade students learned about Brazilian artist Romero Britto and are busy creating Pop Art style self portraits with colored pencil. They will decorate their background with some of their favorite things. 
  • Third grade is also working on Pop Art - they are inspired by Andy Warhol and are learning about tertiary colors (the colors created when you mix primary and secondary colors) as they work on their colorful and whimsical mixed media self portraits. 
  • Fourth grade learned about artist Sandra Silberzweig and her abstract painting style. Students created portraits in her style and then traced their lines with black glue. Next we will be using analogous colors (colors next to each other on the color wheel) to fill in the spaces with chalk pastel. 
  • Fifth grade started one of my favorite self portrait lessons. The took a photo and cut it in half and will be drawing 1/2 of their face in graphite. They are learning value and shading techniques, along with how to use a variety of drawing tools like tortillons, kneading erasers, and graphite. 
  • Junior High Boys learned about the artist Chuck Close and are creating a grid to create a colorful and bright abstract self portrait with shapes that mirror the artist's portrait style in either marker or colored pencil. 
  • Junior High Girls are working on assemblage self portraits. They are constructing their images into a found object collage. Some of the girls want to construct their portraits out of food items. They have been limited to items on the School Safe Snack list and those items need to come to the school and get checked at the front office in the original container/packaging. The list can be found here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AwhAjaZo6SgxBlU01dA9yR0QOAx3S34v/view?usp=drive_link
Some items around the house that might be headed to Goodwill that would help out 8th grade girls are:
  • Buttons
  • Clean bottle tops (water, pop, juice, etc.)
  • Fashion Magazines / Teen celebrity magazines
  • Clean candy/snack wrappers (tootsie pop wrappers, candy boxes, etc) from the snack safe list above. 
  • lost toy box items: random game/playing cards, dice, game pieces, dominoes, etc. 
  • Wrapping paper scraps
  • Patterned napkins
  • Old Greeting Cards 
If you have any of the above items that was already headed for a new home or out for recycling you can send the items in with your student or drop them at the front office labeled for the art room. Thank you in advance! 

ART CLUB & OPEN STUDIO

Art Club this year is on Thursdays at recess for Junior High and Grades 2-5.  It is a free art period for students to be creative and socialize. It is also a time where I will be working on community service projects and decorations for events as well as preparing for the art show with student volunteers. 

Open Studio is new this year. It is a time where students can come up to the art room to work on projects in small groups or individually. 

Grades 1-5 Tuesdays  8:30-9:15 AM
Grades 6-8  Thursdays  2:30-3:15 PM

NATIONAL JUNIOR ART HONORS SOCIETY

This year I am starting a chapter of National Junior Art Honors Society for Grades 6-8.  To join students need a "B" or better in art and are willing to commit to one meeting per month and participate in a service project. There is a $5 fee to join for the year.  Please send in dues by Sept 12th.  We will have a mandatory meeting once per month at recess on Friday. 

ART ROOM NIGHT LIGHTS UPDATE:

I have been doing some research on some exciting items I will be bringing into the art room thanks to the generous contributions to our art program from the Night Lights Fundraiser. We will be purchasing a Cricut machine for use in the art room as well as a Sewing Machine. We are also looking into expanding our digital art program. Please stay tuned for updates in the near future. 

ART ROOM PHOTOS:

Here are a few photos taken so far this year of our Sacred Heartists in creative mode. Keep checking back for new photos! 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jBR41G5DE1SZ1CPPqBmHTUSPLKiRFPSp?usp=drive_link

If you have questions or concerns - please don't hesitate to reach out. See you all very soon at BTS (Back- to-School) Night! 

Best,
Tanya Klatt