Sweet New Children’s Book
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1M ago
I came across a sweet new children’s book that I’d like to share with you. It is called If You Are an Artist, (Amazon affiliate link at no extra cost for you) by Meg Auchenbach. I always love finding new inspirational books for my young students and this one is a charming book that shows what it’s like to think as an artist. The illustrations are whimsical and the book is delightful. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Art is Basic (@art.is.basic) Before I buy a book I like to know what the pages look like on the inside so I know if it will be useful to me. Here are some of exa ..read more
Visit website
Watercolor Spirals
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
6M ago
I hope the beginning of your school year is going well. Mine is going fine. We are getting back into the swing of things around here. Here is a fun and meditative art project good for kids and adults of all ages. You can tie this in to labrynths, mazes and mandalas. I use all different kinds of watercolor paints. I have a whole collection! One of my favorites is the Prima Marketing Confections sets. There are a number of different color sets. I also like the Crayola Education Watercolor sets. For the marker details, I use Posca paint markers and Micron pens. You can use whatever brands or typ ..read more
Visit website
Inside Out Design
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
11M ago
This is a fun, one-day project for kids that teaches about positive and negative space and is good for spatial awareness. I taught this to my 1st graders and most of them understood the concepts and some of them needed help. First, positive space is the shape you cut out of the paper. Negative space is the shape left behind. You will need one sheet of background paper 8.5″ x 11″ and a color rectangle of paper that is half that size 4.25″ x 11″, scissors and a glue stick. Start by cutting out a shape from the yellow sheet of paper. Continue cutting shapes from all sides of the yellow piece of ..read more
Visit website
Giveaway- Drawing Games!
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
Just in time for the holidays, I have a fun giveaway for 2 lucky readers. Two winners will each receive a copy of BOTH of the games pictured above. (USA only please) I learned about 2 new drawing games from Drawing Deck, LLC. They may look familiar to you because they also made the game Createures. The first game is called FrankenMonster5, a family drawing game. The box says 3-6 players and it involves points and art critiquing, but I found that I would be more likely to use this as a set of drawing prompts for kids. This may be fun to do at home with the art critic role, but I could imagine ..read more
Visit website
Collaborative Mural Inspired by Tula Pink
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
I wanted to share our wonderful results of this collaborative mural project inspired by the artist Tula Pink‘s Tridazzler Quilt. This idea was created by Don Masse, of Shine Brite Zamorano. Check out his blog here to see the directions for this project. Here is the Tridazzler Quilt the project was inspired by. We precut squares and triangles for the kids. First, they glued the triangle to the square. Then they used a ruler to draw the lines and then colored in with Crayola Twistable crayons and construction paper crayons. We had kids in all of our classes K-8 create a square. The older kids h ..read more
Visit website
Printable Positive Adjectives
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
Hi! I have something new to share with you. I’ve been working on making these printable positive adjective sheets. They are 4 different pages of positive adjectives to describe a person. They are printed in a variety of fonts and colors. These would be fun to use with Vision Boards, self-portraits and All About Me projects. All you have to do is print these on to paper, cut out the adjectives you want and glue them to your artwork to express yourself. Alternatively, you could flip through magazines to find adjectives you like to use in your artworks, but this is an easy shortcut when teaching ..read more
Visit website
Grid Name Design for Back to School
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
Are you looking for an easy back to school project for your students? Here is a name design that I have taught in the past. This will be easy for you to do, with very little prep. My own kiddo did this project in their 2nd grade class and that is where I got the idea. It is so simple yet makes cool results. All you need to do is print out the grid paper and maybe make an example for yourself. I have done this with kids as young as 1st grade. On the grid paper, write the letters of your name (here I did “Marcia”) across the paper, with one letter in each square. Then just keep going and contin ..read more
Visit website
Back to School Tips and Projects for the Art Teacher
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
Hi friends! Many schools are already going back for the new school year and I thought I would round up some previous posts you may have missed from years ago that may help you come up with some ways to start your school year off right! The first section contains links and pictures from my blog. The second section contains blog posts from some of my art teacher friends! Tips and Projects for Back to School from Art is Basic In this blog post, Tips for the First Days of School, I compiled a list of tips from dozens of art teachers across different grade levels. Very helpful for new ideas! Click ..read more
Visit website
Getting Started with Alcohol Inks
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
I recently took a workshop at a local gallery with artist Kinga Johnson. I learned a lot of great tips and techniques for working with alcohol inks. I bought some of my own alcohol inks and experimented at home and I wanted to share with you some easy ways to get started using alcohol inks. It is a really fun process and you can use the resulting papers for fun backgrounds or to cut out and make collages. You can also just frame the pieces as they are. I do not recommend this to be done with young students at a school though, because there are all kinds of warnings on the bottles about being ..read more
Visit website
Neurographic Art
Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog
by Marcia Beckett
1y ago
Neurographic art is an art form that was designed in 2014 by a Russian psychologist named Pavel Piskarov. It is an intuitive form of art that involves mindfulness and intentionality. We have over 100 billion neurons that transmit information from the brain to the rest of the body. These neurographic artworks kind of look like neurons and cells. Piskarev’s Definition: Neurographic art is a creative method of world transformation. It helps evolve our reality by engaging our emotional and aesthetic intelligence for discovering solutions to a variety of issues you may be working through. Neuro ..read more
Visit website

Follow Art is Basic | Art Teacher Blog on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR