Fall Tree Silouettes

As we warmed up to watercolors in the beginning of the year, we do a quick "wet on wet" watercolor technique sky and talking about different times of day. Then students use what they know about line and shape to create a silouette compostion. This year it was trees, during our fall color unit.

 

 

Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes

Yummy, Yummy Cakes!

4th Graders studied the artist Wayne Thiebaud. They then made a cake of thier own using oil pastels as thier medium. They were told to layer HEAVILY to get the painterly effect, mix colors and

be creative! Students were also introduced to shading cyclindars to make thier cakes look round. Don't the look good enough to eat?!

 

 

Kandisnky's Abstract Squares

4th and 5th Graders started thier unit on Abstract Art by studying the father of abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky. In addtion they had a color family review by having  to have one square primary, one secondary, one warm and one cool. They used oil pastels and water color as thier media.



Clay!

I make the kids wait until the spring to do clay. Right after April vacation I turn my whole room over into a ceramic studio and do clay with the entire school. We all start out with a rules and play day where guidelines and rule are gone over and they get to play with the clay and get all the "ooohhs, aaahhhs, and icks" out. The following week we have a practice week with their project where I give a demo and they practice making their person, animal or pot.  I do this because I don't have time or space to keep work wet enough to be workable over a week's time. I tell them they have to be able to create their piece in 1 class time. Of course if they are stuggling they can try again the following week.

The 5th graders make clay portaits where they have to show themselves doing something they like. The other requirement is that the figure has to be standing or sitting independentely without supports. The starting construction method is the same.

The 4th graders create animals. These animals can be real or imaginary but have to have 4 legs. Again,they all start again with the same construction method and have to be standing or sitting independently of supports.

3rd graders create coil pots. This is their first big clay project. They learn the coil method of constuction along with the glazing process.

Impressions of Monet

I honor of Spring approaching, I introduced the Impressionist Artist Claude Monet. First we watched the movie "Linnea in Monet's Garden". Then students looked at many examples of Monet's work. They learned how the impressionist were some of the first artisits to work outside and how they had to work quickly to get the impressions on what they saw before the scene changed. We then recreated one of Monet't paintings using sponges and tempera paint.

Positive and Negative Portraits

In our unit on shape, the 4th graders also start learning about positive and negative shapes. Students start with a brief exercise using a 6x6 black paper and 9x9 piece of black to create a unique positive and negative design using shapes.

After this exercise students then create a portrait using positive and negative shapes and spaces while also using what they learned about symmetry.