Light Painting

Recently I asked my friends to do me a huge favor and light some sparklers in the front yard.  This was a huge favor because it was the 4th of July and it was pouring rain all day.  They were so mad at me, but then I gave them cake so it was all good.  Here are a couple of the shots I got:

So then I thought I should try this with my students.  Without fire, of course.  We set up my camera in my closet at school, so it would be plenty dark in there, and I gave them a couple of flash lights.  We discussed contour lines, and I showed images of Picasso's light paintings.  So far they are coming out extraordinarily cool.  I can't post them since they mostly have kids in them, but here is one of mine: 

Neat!  I'm using a little LED flashlight.  Laser pointers work, too, but you have to go very slowly drawing the lines, since red light travels more slowly, apparently.  The best results I've gotten were with kids tracing each others' silhouettes, and adding interesting imaginary details.  I've seen mermaids, fairies, angels, wizards, etc.  My camera shutter speed is set on BULB, and I have a remote control shutter with a lock on it, so I can click it and it will hold itself down as long as I want it to.  My F-stop is 25, the smallest it could be with my lens, and the film speed is 100.  So in an almost completely dark room, I got no ambient light in the pictures at all.

There's my Deathly Hallows.

As long as you have a camera with adjustable shutter speed and a tripod, you can do this too!

Broken Projector. Op Art!

So I'm spoiled.  I have a lovely projector in my classroom, a document camera, AND a Promethean board.  So whining about how my projector is on the fritz right now is not really very productive.  I must say though, that in the absence of the projector I've encorporated several new projects I wouldn't have done if I'd been able to move forward with my curriculum the way I'd planned.  Right now, 5th grade is working on Op Art.  I tried this with the same group of kids when they were in 3rd grade and they did fairly well with that version of the project, which was basically an ink blot, with "echo" lines around it, or if you speak Zentangle, we'll call them "auras."

Here's the version from two years ago.  I included Color Field Painting in the inspiration.  Basically we used a blob of watercolor, and a straw to blow the blob into drippy shapes.

I needed a lesson that would review a lot of key terms and concepts, and introduce a new one, which didn't require a lot of demo and slides on my part.  And I noticed as the next class came in, I didn't feel like demonstrating the exact same style of Op art.  So I mixed it up with three different projects, all having simliar objectives: to demonstrate Value, Movement/Rhythm, Pattern, and (illusion of) Form.

Here are the three different examples I ended up with.  So far the kiddos are into it, since it takes far less brain power than the previous block printing project.