Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Second Grade Snorkeling Artworks

Second Graders have worked hard creating this artwork in several stages. After reading the book" I am the Best Artist in the Ocean", we painted cool colors to create our oceans. Next I photographed kiddos. You can barely tell, but many of them had their cheeks all puffed out as if holding their breath under water!  Then we learned to draw a variety of sea creatures and used crayons to color with warm colors. Lastly students used a template to make a diving mask, draw a pattern with markers, and glued a plastic film behind as goggles. After everything was cut and glued. I added a straw as a snorkel!  Several versions of these are  floating around online and this is our!s What a fun way to create our self portraits!





Thanks to Pinterest for the inspiration

Fifth Grade Perspective Drawings

A few 5th graders finished their perspective drawings, using colored pencil and 3 values. They then added a small picture of themselves "falling" into the picture.  I don't know who first published this online, but I borrowed the idea and just love the results!


Another great Pinterest inspiration.

Fourth Grade Pop Art Complete!

Today a class of fourth graders added black and white frames to their decorated photos and mounted them on a colored back ground.  They are now presentation ready. They speak for themselves!





Thanks to Sherry Gann for inspiration.

First Grade Self Portraits and Favorite Book

First Graders made a self portrait, which are cute in and of themselves. We love to read at our school, so we added a hand drawn and painted picture of our favorite book. I like how the books pop out and add a 3-D element to the self portraits.  Some of these books are my favorites too!  Thanks to the internet and Pinterest for the inspiration.









Kinder Paul Klee Fish

KInders learned about Warm and Cool colors, with 2 songs. We also learned a bit about the artist Paul Klee. Using his fish paintings for inspiration, we drew and painted our own goofy fishes with warm liquid watercolors. Then the ocean was painted with cool  water colors. We also added lots of lines like Paul Klee. These will be saved for the spring Art to Remember program.






Kinder December Self Portraits

Each month kinders are developing their self portraits. There is a lot of growth month to month. These I am saving to assemble a book at the end of the year to document their growth. It also makes a nice keepsake for parents. This month we practiced drawing ourselves out of shapes. We read "Mouse Shapes" , I demonstrated, and they went to work. I also have full length mirrors that I get out for such purposes. Students will go to the mirrors to check on eye and hair color. The portraits are so cute, I had to show them off.

                                                                               















Thursday, December 11, 2014

Fourth Graders make Pop Art

After learning about Andy Warhol, and the Pop Art Movement, fourth graders had a blast decorating their portraits.  I took quick photos as they were working on other projects and printed them out in black and white. We used markers, and a few "guidelines". They colored some solid spaces, and added patterns to some parts. They could design/color their hair, clothes and lips only. Fangs, mustaches, and antennae were discouraged.....
Next week we will add black and white borders to the photos, and assemble them Warhol-style on a colored background. 





Fifth Grade Op Art

Thanks to Pinterest, and to all art teachers who share ideas, for this fun project. Fifth grade learned about Op Art, Victor Vasarely and  Bridget Riley, the dad and mom of Op art. We loved the dizzying artworks. So students are creating their own. Using a center vanishing point, curved lines, and shading, our young artists are creating the illusion of disappearing tubes.  We then took crazy photos of ourselves looking as if we were falling into space. Yes, even Mrs. Jackson participated! Come back and check as we add our small portraits "falling" into our Op Art projects.


Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Second Grade Clay Peacocks

Today was an Early Release Wednesday. Kids are dismissed at 2:00. Teachers have professional development for 2 hours. The shorter day makes it a bit of a rush in Art. Afternoon classes are a mere 30 minutes. I have to break down project steps into little chunks. I told today's second graders to not stress about painting their peacocks. We could finish next week.But they challenged themselves and worked very hard. The prize of course being that they could take their little sculptures home. As I was hot gluing coffee filter tails on painted pieces, I hurriedly snapped a few photos with my phone. These are little blurry...Yet  you can see the care and fun they had using "cool" colors to complete their clay project.