Welcome back, everyone, for the second semester at ASFL. I hope everyone is rested and refreshed and ready to make some more beautiful artwork. And let's all hope the second half of the year goes by as fast as the first half. Time flies when you're having fun.

Here is my trophy wall at the school.

These are some papier-mache masks the 7th and 8th graders made inspired by some African ceremonial masks we looked at.

This was a project that took a long time to finish because it had so many steps, but the results were great.

What's really weird is that I've done this project a few times, and I've never had kids make animal-inspired masks before, and this year I had three do it. They didn't copy each other or anything, it just happened that we ended up with a rabbit, an elephant, and a fox.

Dream beneath a desert sky

A two-fer Wednesday. These are some Joshua Tree-esque watercolor paintings the 6th graders made. They had to blend the colors together to make the sunset sky and the trees in the foreground were made by laying down a line of india ink and blowing on it with a straw. It makes a very cool effect.

Robot Parade

These robots were created by the first-graders. We talked about organic and geometric shapes, and the students drew robots using only geometric shapes. Some very cute robots were the result.

Don't ask me about the dollar sign on the first couple of pictures. You know how first-graders are. If one kid does something, they all have to do it.

My Classroom Door

Total Abstraction

A quickie. Some Wassily Kandinsky inspired pieces 6th grade did.

See how they run

I wanted to post some pictures of the kindergarteners working on their latest project, and of course my first picture inexplicably flips and I don't know how to fix it. Aarrgh! Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I read the book "Mouse Paint" to the kindergarten classes, and we talked about mixing colors to make new colors.

(On a side note, sometimes this blogger site can be so IRRITATING! It just won't let me do what I want to do.) After reading the story the students then mixed primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) to make secondary colors (green, purple, and orange). When the paint dried, they cut out the different colors and made their own mice.

Every color and every hue is represented by me and you.

These are Kaleidoscope Designs, or you could call them mandalas, that 6th graders finished today. We discussed radial symmetry, and they made a simple design and repeated it eight times around a circle.

They colored the designs with colored pencils, and were encouraged to try "shading" some of the shapes, which give them almost a stained-glass window quality. I think this is the first time they've been asked to shade something, and they did a good job.

These were made by Thearion, Hannah, Taylor, Jose, Kobe, and Chloe.