Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Peacebus Valentine’s Gift…

… To Planet Earth!

The last fun art competition that we had on the Peacebus was way back in October – when the students created a kazillion peaceful drawings inspired by thoughts of turtles.
http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2011/11/t-is-for-turtle.html

With Valentine’s Day soon approaching, I thought that it would be fun to have another art competition inspired by thoughts like “I Love My Planet”. The students also thought that this was a great idea and soon pencil crayons and markers were put to work.


I found this really cool image on the internet and I thought that it would help to inspire the students. I added a few words to the image and after visiting my local print shop I had made a series of stickers to give to every student who created an artwork for this competition.


The next morning, three students handed in their creative artworks! I was very impressed with their use of colours and I complimented the students for their designs.


Jade’s design really blew me away! I could tell that she had used a few tools to help her with her drawing and that shows that a lot of thought went into her creation. Think about how much planning went into laying out the words ‘Happy Valentine’s’ as the letters circle the sun – with the word ‘Day’ finding a nice home in the middle.


I found Ava’s drawing to be a true delight and inspiration! Notice how the continents on her planet are shaped like hearts. The letters are brilliantly constructed – see all the textures that are used in each letter…blue and purple flowers in the ‘E’ and Valentine’s hearts in the ‘C’.


I really love Jane’s colourful design! It’s like a ‘love’ party!!!! There’s a huge heart filling the background, with an Earth near the middle surrounded by hearts and peace symbols while streamers cascade throughout the rest of the space. I followed the length of one of these streamers and was very impressed to witness that it changed colours as it wiggled around the page. Very nice!


It wasn’t just Peacebus students who participated in this competition. Word quickly spread through the school about what we were doing on the Peacebus and on several occasions friends of the Peacebus would visit me to hand in their drawings!!!! This made Mr. Jim (that’s me) very happy indeed!!!!


When we were getting near the end of the competition, I had to think of what I was going to create as a special gift for the winners.


In the past, I had taken one of the many designs and created additional stickers or posters to give away as prizes. This time I wanted to do something a bit different.



I did decide to create a poster as the final prize, but instead of using just one of the artworks I decided to use as many as I could fit onto a page. This worked out to be 24 images – a good number for sure! That’s a lot of art!!!


As the poster neared completion I realized that I needed just a few more artworks to fill the final spaces. I told the students about the poster. I told them that I had only three spaces left. I told them that if I received more artwork than would fit on the poster that the students shouldn’t be upset if their artwork wasn’t used, “There are only three spaces left, so the next three artworks will make it on the poster and after that I just won’t have any more room.”


Well, this worked like a super charm… later that afternoon when I arrived at the school to take the students home there was a line of students waiting for me. In the next three minutes 10 drawings were handed in!!!! Now I had more than enough to finish the poster prize!


I love it when I can say to the students, “Ya know… I had a really hard time choosing just a few winners for this art competition so I’ve decided to give a special prize to every single person who participated.” The Peacebus rocked with joyous cheers!!!!!


This is the poster that I created for the students. I didn’t want to wait until Valentine’s Day (next week) to hand out the prizes. I figured the students would be having a lot of other events happening on that day already, so I started handing out the posters last night. An early Valentine’s Day present for the students…

… and this blog entry is my early Valentine’s Day present to you – my readers!!!


May this Valentine’s Day fill your hearts with love, your minds with joy and your souls with peace.

Mr. Jim

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