We have spent this week making first marks in the sketchbooks that everyone has brought to school. It is exciting for us as all those blank pages hold so much potential! To introduce the many possibilities for sketchbooks to become art journals or junque journals, I have been showing a few videos that I found online. If you search art journal, sketchbook, or junque journal on Youtube, you will find many varied videos.

While pulling up these videos before class on Wednesday, I found a video the kids had made of one student’s sketchbook at the end of 8th grade. I remember the class being adamant that we record this young artist’s work because it was so good. One of the boys offered to make a video with his phone and later sent it to me. I had never done anything with it and decided that today would be the day! Using iMovie, I edited the clip and added the soundtrack of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. In the end the movie was too large to upload to the blog. Instead I uploaded it to Youtube, which would have been great had the soundtrack not been in place. As it turns out, with the copyrighted Bob Dylan song included, my little video was outlawed in 228 countries…including the United States! Yikes…and pointless if no one can see it. I had no choice but to swap the audio for some Youtube owned music, which is okay and will have to do. If you want to, when you watch the video, turn down the sound and play the Bob Dylan piece instead: When I Paint My Masterpiece Here is the link to the sketchbook video: Melissa’s Middle School Sketchbook

The Quote of the Week (no, I did not forget the quote of the week) was spoken today after I showed a video of a very colorful junque journal. As the video ended, a fifth grade girl looked up at me with the most sincerely awestruck expression and said,

“Wow. That was amazing. I would make that kind of journal if I knew how. But I don’t know how. Can you show us?”

My reply?

“Absolutely, I thought you’d never ask…”