Artist Trading Cards- A Global Connection

Do you ever think about connecting your students with another art class from around the country?  Or maybe... you could connect your art class with students from around the globe?
Well... there's one way you can. How about participating in an Artist Trading Card swap?

I'd never heard of Artist Trading Cards or an Artist Trading Card swap, until I participated in the AOE Summer Online Conference and heard art teacher Nic Hahn, from Minnesota (of the blog Mini Matisse) talking about her idea for a global Artist Trading Card swap. I was intrigued! It sounded great!  Right then and there I knew I wanted my students to join in. My 3rd graders were signed up shortly after.

Since I had no idea who would receive our ATC's, I needed to think of some kind of universal image to use for the lesson. I've always loved owls, and thought an owl would be easily recognized around the globe. So I decided to use that as our theme.

I had some left over scrap booking paper that the PTA had bought for me. So I decided to use that paper as the background.

Below you can see the cards, with the backgrounds glued on.

When it came time for drawing the owls we kept with simple shapes- ovals, circles, triangle, rectangles, etc. The only requirements were- there had to be a branch for the owl to sit on and the colors used on the owl had to be in the same color family as the background.

You can see some of the owls below.

  

We outline the owls in ultra fine Sharpies. And used colored pencil to color them in. Below are some of the finished owls. They're looking good!

They're ready to be mailed to Minnesota where art teacher Nic Hahn  compiled them and sent them off to be traded. My students knew they have to wait until January to hear back. And they are super excited  to receive ATCs from back from somewhere around the globe.

As January arrives, we hear back. Wow! Artist Trading Cards arrive from Minnesota; Nashville, Tennessee, Illinois and Sydney, Australia! You can see them below!

You can find out what happens next- how the Artist Trading Card lesson was extended, in an upcoming post.

What do you think about the Artist Trading Card swap? Is this something you would do in your art class? You can let us know below.