2nd Grade Catchup and Monster Day

In class yesterday 2nd graders took time to finish all their unfinished works so that all their awesome art could go home.  Those kiddos who were speedy workers and had extra time got a chance to make some spooky Halloween Monsters.  For these monsters students worked on really zooming in on their monster so they could show expressive details.  If they had time to add color students were given their choice of paint, pastels, marker or colored pencil.  I love when these kiddos really get to make their own choice you never know what you're going to get as a project but they always have so much fun working. 

Kindergarten Foreground, Middle Ground, & Background

This project already went home but I forgot to post.  In this lesson Kindergarten students talked about Foreground, Middle Ground and Background and how things that are closer to us are lower on the page and larger and things that are farther away from us get smaller and higher on the page.  We colored these projects with oil pastel and students who were done early were given a chance to add in water color paint too.

4th Grade Tinfoil People

 This week most 4th graders took home their tinfoil sculptures.  I love the movement in these.  They are always fun for the kiddos to make.  This year we used some gold foil too some of the kiddos really loved this add in.  Now we are working on gesture drawing we started this week with trying to draw the gesture of our foil sculpture and then we drew students in class.  Next week we will be looking at some great artist and turn our gestures into our next project.

5th Grade Blind Contour Flowers

 These are the finished blind countour flowers 5th graders began last week.  Some of these were so beautiful and expressive after the addition of watercolor that it really was hard to believe that they were drawn blind.   We are still working on a second flower project, hopefully that will finish as beautiful as this one did.

Spiderweb

Third-graders who got finished with their foil animals early had a chance to play around today with oil resist watercolor techniques and create some spooky Halloween spiderwebs. 

3rd Grade Oaxacan Foiled Animals

For this project 3rd Graders began by drawing animals as realistic as they could.  Their animal was suppose to be large enough that it ran off the page on at least one side, (this was very hard for students we have a tendency to want to fit everything on our paper.)  Then we transfered out drawing onto a foil base, (our foil bases have thin peices of crafting foam under them so that the foil gives a little and can be indented.)  Then with Sharpie marker we colored our animals.  When coloring our animls we looked at the work of Mexican Oaxacan Carved Animals. These animal carvings are painted with ornate pattern and detail, that was our inspiration for our abstract color. Students seem to love this short simple project because they love to draw animals and color with sharpie.

Six grade color cubes

Six graders have been studying color theory they had to prove the knowledge of color Siri to me by creating a cube and I each of the six sides of the cube they needed to paint using a different color family. This lesson shows how well my six graders can paint how well they can cut and measure to actually create their queue as well as what they're learning about color theory. I love the end result of putting these in the display case with our Crayons. 

Second grade chalk pumpkins

 For this project students created a chalk pumpkin, they tried hard to show the texture of the pumpkin using shading and blending to get a variety of orange colors. Then each kiddo added their own fall creative twists to make theirs unique.

Blind contour drawings

Today fifth graders had to draw in sharpie without looking at their paper. To keep them from looking at their work their sharpies had a paper plate attached to it to cover up their hand.
Why would we do this you ask????  

Well actually the answers really simple sometimes the left side of our brain that deals with numbers and letters is just too strong and we need to turn off that part of our brain and turn on, or activate the part that focuses on shape, line, color, and detail.   To do that we had to work in complete silence and we really had to focus on what we we seeing.   Overall though I think most kids had fun and ended the day with some beautiful flower drawings. I'll post more pictures of their work when it's finished.

First grade van Goghs chair

 For this project first graders looked at the work of artist Vincent van Gogh and we specifically left at the chair that he drew. We studied his brushstrokes and his Texture. And these are a few of the beautiful projects that were created from that study. 

Watercolor leaves

For this project students looked at the lines or the veins in a leaf and they drew those out with sharpie and then we added water color marker to their pictures and use a spray bottle to actually spread the water color marker throughout the background of the picture to make it look like the leaves were falling.  We did this project while working on our leaf prints.  An idea called doubling in art.  What it really boils down to is having students work on multiple projects at once so that we can create and allow time to dry before moving to the next step and then during that drying time we can move to a project with the same concepts but in a different media.  That way no time is wasted and studnets learn more media and make more projects.  So far I like the idea but it dose take more planning and prepwork.  However studnets have loved how much we have been able to create. 

Leave prints

For this project students had to first print leaves using white printing ink and then after the leaves were dry they went back with color pencil to add extra details and more leaves   I love the overlap the lines and the textures that are created in this lesson 

Done early

It never fails that some students get done earlier than others, so trying to bridge the gap between my early finishers and my students who need more time is one of my biggest struggles as an art teacher.   Today to help my early finishers I gave them an extra project but with no instructions they had to figure out how to create it by themselves using the scrap paper box.   It was very fun to see what they could create if we come up with for their fall forest. 

This also lead to a great discussion about their Art Prize feild trip today.  We had a chance to talk about looking at art, and that they should try to think about how the artist made the piece, what supplies did they use, what time went into the work etc. And that when they determine if they like a work of art they should think about more then just what it looks like when it is done.