Kyoung Lee - Student Photographer

One of my favorite things about teaching is discovering the many facets within each of my students. Mostly I know the kids only within the confines of my art classroom, I know how creative they are, what kind of a craftsperson they are, etc., but it's always so much fun to find out about their other interests and talents as well. For instance, I just discovered 2 days ago that senior Kyoung Lee, who I have been teaching 2-d art to for the past 2 years is an incredible photographer. And the only reason I found out is that he was helping another student learn how to use that kid's new, very complicated camera. So after badgering Kyoung with a barrage of questions, I talked him into sending me his site address so I could view his work. After seeing it I felt I needed to showcase some of his work on my blog and give you the address to his site so you can view more of his work. The address is www.flickr.com/photos/26304566@N02/

He shoots a variety of subjects and has a great eye for composition and lighting. These couple that I'm showcasing are some of my favorites off his site.

I asked Kyoung which was his favorite and he said the one above of the Griffith Observatory.

I think of all of them this one of the leaf is a personal favorite. I love how close he is able to shot and how beautifully focused his pieces are.

These are two of Kyoung's good friends as subject matter, both of whom are also my students. Nick Fernando (above) is one of my outstanding clay students this year, and below is Paul Kim, one of my remarkable Beginning 2-D art students whose work I have featured on my blog numerous times. So if you get a chance, take a peek at what Kyoung Lee is looking at through his lens.

Mosaic Frames - Student Art

Gorgeous work is what my Beginning 3-D Art kids are creating for me. Just look at the detail in their mosaic work. From strong designs to great looking colors to interesting shards, and then just the right color grout, these children are going above and beyond my wildest expectations. I couldn't be more thrilled with their finished products. The piece above was done by senior Eunice Pang and purchased at Open House by our Vice-Principal, Bryan Glonchak for big bucks. Way to go Eunice!!

This exquisite frame above and below belongs to senior Hannah Park. It is amazing in person with all those tiny shards of mirror that she put in. Plus the lattice tiles are so cool and makes this piece a real stand out.

I bought both the frames above at Open house from seniors Ashlee Chang and Anne Guu. Ashlee's frame is already hanging in my daughter's bathroom that she just redid, and it looks great against the chocolate brown paint that she picked out. And Anne's piece is going into my new home/studio with a pix of both my children in it. Check out the text that Anne glued under her clear rounds in the right corner that are balanced off with the mirror shards in the upper left corner. I'm telling you, these kids are fantastic designers.

The piece that got the most attention was done by Kevin Ni (above, top). It was very unusual in that he allowed his shards to hang over the edge of the frame. He also incorporated text under a few clear pieces in lower right corner. And then the bottom most frame belongs to one of the sweetest seniors in the whole senior class, Sherri Singh, who has been an absolute joy to work with in the classroom. Extremely attentive and hardworking, Sherri has created some beautiful work this year. I hope you enjoyed seeing these frames as much as I enjoyed sharing them with all of you.

7th Grade

Look at my 7th graders go, so many outstanding pieces to share. We had a unit on linear texture and repetition along with a unit on watercolor washes, and these were the results. From top to bottom, left to right we have Alice Hong, Poonam Bhakta, Teresa Yoon, Diego Gonzalez and Jovani Garcia.

More from above belong to Sabrina Gutierrez, Sameera Ahmad, Daphne Chiang, Zoe Lin and Andrew Kim. As you can see these kids are working hard for me.

Here are close ups of Zoe's,

Alice's,

and Sabrina's. Beautiful work everyone!!!

Scratchboard with Watercolor

My second year drawing students just finished up a unit on shading that involved pointillism, crosshatching and hatchure strokes, and culminated with these phenomenal scratchboard/watercolor pieces. Scratchboard is a heavier stock paper that is overlaid with a black substance. You use a metal nib to scrape away the black to get to the white paper. Once there you can either just leave it white or watercolor overtop it. This top one belongs to the very popular with the girls, senior, Sam Chon :)

And then we had two kitty cats done by very talented seniors Brandon Liao (who is headed to Art Center in Pasadena to study Entertainment Design), and Marisela Herrerte, whose mommy just donated a tub full of art and crafts supplies. Thank you Mrs. Herrerte!!! Love how both Marisela and Brandon matted up their cats.

And lastly we have seniors Ashlee Chang and MaryLou Bunn, both extremely critical thinkers who always come up with something special to incorporate into their pieces. Ashlee didn't like the way the upper left portion of her pup turned out so she cut off the offensive area and woven up some newspaper strips and inlaid them into 3 spots around her piece. And Mary Lou, who loves to watercolor, scraped off a major portion of her scratchboard so she could do a lot with the watercolor. She also incorporated text around the edge of the mat. Very cool work all of you. I believe Mr. Z is gonna buy MaryLou's piece. Nice!!!!!!!!!

Carved Glass Plaques - Student Art

Unloaded the glaze kiln the other day to find these 3 beauties. They were done by my Beginning Ceramic students and are always a big hit with the kids. They roll out a 1/2 inch slab, trim the outside edge to their desired shape, and carve away the areas where they want to melt the glass shards. The pieces go thru a bisque firing before they put in the glass pieces and then off they go for the final glaze firing where I take the kiln up to Cone 5 or 2150 degrees, the perfect temp. to completely melt the glass. Above we have senior Jennifer Su's beauitfully crafted mermaid and below we have senior Erin Unson and junior Tryphena Liu's clever designs. The kids are also encouraged to apply glazes and oxides around the dividing lines to add additional color as both Erin and Tryphena did.

Extra Credit for all 2-D Art students

Mixed Media artist Jane LaFazio (janeville.blogspot.com) whose blog I follow daily posted the best watercolor tutorial yesterday. So for up to 10 points of extra credit click onto her site and follow along. Get watercolor paper from me if you don't have any at home.

If rocks are not your thing find something from nature and watercolor it and it's cast shadow. This is your minimum requirement. You could do so much more to earn more points if you wish. Think about adding collage to the watercolor or maybe some pen and ink or both! Watercolor artist Jodi Edwards did the feather above. Work as realistically as possible using your right brain skills. Notice how both artists drew outline borders around their pieces? It really helps anchor the work onto the page, especially if you don't have a horizon. Also look closely at Edwards very subtle watercolor washed background, do you see yellows, greens and oranges? I'm thinking wet into wet with very little pigment in your mixtures. Also notice how Jane is using text in her work, and notice how both artists are signing their pieces. OK, let's see what you guys can do!

Preliminary Wood Exercises - Student Work

Two days ago I posted the Wood Angel recycle assignment, but what I forgot to show you were the exercises leading up to the project. To learn to work with the wood I demonstrated to the kids how to saw, sand, stain and drill. They then drilled a hole into a wood block and sawed a piece of doweling. Plus they used their staining and collage skills to decorate part of the prelim as well. Below is senior Marisela Herrarte's prelim that she also did some wood burning on. Look at how cute it turned out. Marisela, you are such a clever girl! Love you.

Preliminary Paintings in Tempera - Student Art

Now that my Beginning 2-d students have an understanding of drawing and design I have been taking them through several color units like oil and water pastels, watercolor, and now tempera. They actually used tempera in the beginning of the year in a very graphic, flat way (see color theory under side label), but now that they get the basics of light and shadow we can work in a more painterly way, thus these sweet little tempera pieces. The very eerie one above was done by junior Michael Jo, love his composition, his monochromatic color scheme and that he took extra time to mount the piece.

And look at the painting skills of junior Shirley Sun, wow, was I impressed when she turned this dynamic piece in, she's got so much good design going on here from the diagonally placed sunglasses to the textural foreground and strong cast shadows. And then there is senior Brian Choi below who always comes up with thought provoking designs that make the other kids ooh and aah.

We also have the very sensitive stylings of senior Alan Tsim who is a master with the paint. This is so gorgeous Alan, love it!

The 3 pieces above belong to seniors Javier Figueroa, Meliza Panganiban, and Sarah Lee. What I love about all these pieces are the creative design solutions these kids come up with, especially when they only had to paint a simple sphere, horizon and cast shadow. All these children went way beyond the basic minimum requirements.

And lastly we have senior Sonya Liu and junior Paul Kim, both of whom are using delicious colors that really pop. All in all a tremendous job by all!

These are for you Elena at Green Cube - Student Art

A great new store opened in Laguna Beach recently called Green Cube, trying to sell only "green" items, and they specialize in a lot of recycled sculpture, which is right up my alley since I have such a limited budget to work with. We do a lot of recycled art in my class. Anyways, I found the store last Saturday night when I was down in Laguna for dinner with my man Jim, and Elena, the shop keeper gave us a tour of the place. So many clever, cool things to see and buy. And yes, I did go a bit overboard with a few purchases :) When Elena found out I was an art teacher she expressed an interest in seeing some of the recycled pieces that we do in my classes, so here you go Elena. I call these Wood Angels and they are made from many recycled goodies. All the wood comes from a dumpster that I pass every morning on my way to school labeled "Free Wood". We also used only recycled papers, cardboard, and buttons to collage with. The amazing sculpture above belongs to senior Kevin Ni and was one of my personal favorites this year.

This wood burned piece was made by very talented senior Ashlee Chang whose work you see quite often on my blog. This one is another personal favorite.

Senior Anne Guu did the comical and fabulous Pee Wee Herman piece above, and senior Jenny Dai did the lovely cube lady below. Look at how clever these kids are with the wire attachments!

And check out the variety of materials they came up with for the wings and body. Above senior Eunice Pang used cheesecloth for the body wrap, and below senior Hannah Park used the insides from a piece of cardboard.

And all of them are doing such a beautiful and sensitive job with their collage elements. Above we have juniors Brittaney Lee and Miya Clark. It is such a pleasure to teach these children. Thanks all of you for giving me so much effort in all that you do. You guys bring me so much joy! And I'm so proud to display your work for all to see.

MIssing You Grace and Ryan

About 2 months ago I posted that my dear cousin Michelle had moved her family from Irvine ,Ca. to Austin, Texas. Michelle and I are only 9 months apart and grew up together in a very close-knit Italian family setting where we celebrated all holidays and birthdays together. As adults we became even closer, in our twenties we started a very small dress designing business (lasted thru the summer), started our families in our 30's and then in our forties and fifties spent every Wednesday in the summertime at Newport Beach with our children. Michelle's oldest, Rob, is 18, mine is 21. So when she told me they were leaving to move to Texas I was really sad that she was going to be so far away. But as you will see in these pix, Texas is really agreeing with her and the little ones, and they are thriving there.

There are horse back riding lessons for Grace, a golf course practically in his back yard for up and coming golfer, Ryan. More horses at Grandma's farm

along with a pond to fish in on her property.

And there is Uncle Joe and Aunt Kathy's farm where you can ride out on the tractor to feed the livestock and laying hens and see hours old calves right after they are born.

Then there is cousin Tina's working quarter horse ranch where they recently got to see their first polo match. There is also loads of fresh vegetables to pick yourself and cook that same night for dinner. Caves to explore and so much more. A brand new house to enjoy and decorate, and a swimming pool to watch being built in the back yard. I'm thrilled for you Gracie and Ryan, but I miss you guys so much. Hopefully I will get to come spend some time with you this summer. Miss you so Michelle. Love to you all!