2018 Begins

Our students have been hard at work already in 2018. Enjoy the images! Kindergarten Rainbow Lizards: To begin, I read them "A Color of His Own", by Leo Lionni. We then learned the correct order of the rainbow. Students drew, painted, and collaged their own versions of the chameleon in the story. Here is what they are working on so far.

South African Clay Pots: AFter looking at images of pottery from South Africa, students learned about making pottery. We practiced making pinch pots with playdough first, so that our clay did not dry out. Once students had the technique down, we moved on to creating our pots from clay. After firing, we will paint our pottery.

Arctic White: With this lesson, we heard a story about a little girl that lives in a wintery land. Everything is white or a version of white. Once night, her grandfather takes her, along with many others in her village, to a special place. There, they are able to see the Northern Lights. Inspired by what she saw, the little girl paints her memories of the vivid colors. Using the story as our inspiration, the students created vibrant watercolor resist paintings.

First Grade Charley Harper Cardinals: First graders learned about the artist Charley Harper. We created stylized collage pieces in his honor.

Second and Third Grades Warm and Cool Skies: Students worked on patterns through this unit. Each design highlighted warm and cool colors on the page.

Fourth Grade Tints and Shades Abstractions: In this color unit, students learned how adding white to a color creates a tint, by adding greys, one creates tones, and by adding black creates a shade.

Fifth Grade African Masks: I am so proud of the work the students for this unit. They learned about numerous masking traditions, as well as various characteristics of African masks. In this project, they created their own characters that displayed the variety of characteristics they learned about, such as symmetry, geometric versus organic shapes, neutral versus vibrant colors, and so forth.

Art Supply Still Life: Currently, students are working on still life drawings. I challenged the students to have more creative freedom in this unit by having them select their own items and set up their very own still lifes. We discussed what creates a strong composition, and then students had to put those ideas to use through numerous thumbnail sketches. For those that aren't familiar with thumbnails, these are quick, small sketches that artists use to help plan what their final piece of art will look like.

Sixth Grade Picasso Portraits: Previously, I had shown images of students' thumbnail sketches. Here is a reminder, plus some pieces on their way to completion.

Seventh and Eighth Grades Altered American Gothic: Last posting, I had shared some of the unit with you. As students got closer to developing their ideas for they will individually alter the famous painting "AMerican Gothic", by Grant Wood, they spent a day learning how to draw a correct portrait and how to proportion the human body correctly. Also, here is a completed sketch, ready to be turned into the final piece!

A Little of This and That

The second semester is beginning! Here are a few things that we've been working on lately: First Grade finished Alphabet Soup. In this assignment, students manipulated shape, size, pattern and color in a variety of ways.

Second and Third Grades are working on warm and cool colors, as well as patterns, with Warm and Cool Skies.

Sixth Graders are learning about and being inspired by Pablo Picasso's Cubist portraits.

Goodbye, First Marking Period!

I can't believe that it's the end of the first marking period!  The beginning of the 2017-2018 school year flew right by.  I'll be at school for Parent Teacher Conferences this upcoming Thursday.  Please come visit my room to check out more art.  You may ask to see the students' art portfolios too.

As the year progresses, I am collecting art to choose for upcoming art exhibitions.  On Tuesday, I let our eighth grader, Amber, know that I chose her Tonal Landscape for the annual show at Fashion Square Mall.  Here she is, working on finishing touches.

The fourth grade class completed their chalk pastel pumpkin drawings in time for my to put them up for conferences.  They did a fantastic job learning a new medium (material), which is adding to their growing repertoire of art skills.

I couldn't be more proud of our phenomenal Kindergarten class this year!  While we study our color unit, the students take to the lessons admirably.  They have proven to be so good at following directions and participating in the color lessons that I feel they are ready for their first art test!  Yes, Kindergarten has tests in Art, too!  Here they are, beginning their Kandinsky Color Circles.  I'll post a lot of finished work next week.

Hope to see you Thursday night!

OCTOBER HIGHLIGHTS

One more week to go before the end of the first marking period!  Our students have created an amazing amount of work in the art room already.  Enjoy the highlights from the past couple of weeks.

Kindergarten completed their Line Unit with a lesson on Modern artist Piet Mondrian.  Ask them if they can tell you how we said "Mr. Mondrian" in art class!  This lesson introduced them to horizontal and vertical lines, as well as the primary colors.

Speaking of primary colors, below is also the start to their Primary Color Birds.

First Grade worked on Lines at a Circus.  The pieces are created from watercolor, marker and colored pencil.

Second and Third Grades closed their unit on Line with their own versions of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night.  For this assignment, they created their own kinds of cities or towns.  They used crayon to complete the town, oil pastels to make their stars, and light blue tempera to make swirls in the sky.

The class was sooo excited to do their Form unit, because it meant time for clay!  Second grade was introduced to portraits by having the third graders review how to create a correctly proportioned face.  Second graders created a correct portrait, while I allowed the third graders to make an abstracted portrait this year.

Fourth Grade wrapped up their Line unit with an assignment I called Line to Create Shape: Still Life.  They began by drawing from observation a simple still life.  They painted it using watercolors and then outlined the shape of the objects with Sharpie marker.

To wrap up the month of October, I introduced the students to working with chalk pastels.  We are creating a harvest pumpkin scene.

Fifth Graders finished their first large assignment, where they studied Value, which is the relative lightness or darkness of objects.  Here is a viewed of our class board, displaying all of the charcoal drawings.

We've now moved into a very exciting unit on African masks!  Students are currently designing their own masks, based on characters they have created.  They will be making the three-dimensional masks over the next couple of weeks.

Sixth Grade has done an impressive job with their Mexican Folk Art unit.  After learning about a few different folk arts throughout Mexico, they took the traditions of fun, joyful skeletons from Dia de Los Muertos and turned them into contemporary scenes.  I tasked them with learning how to draw the human figure in correct proportion - something I have taught my college and adult students!  I am so proud of the hard work they put in.  The pieces are due this week, and I can't wait to post them in next week's blog!

Speaking of "I can't wait" for my post next week, Seventh and Eighth Graders are also finishing their major project of the marking period this week.  They have created Tonal Landscape paintings.  The concept we studied is atmospheric perspective.  They created their own landscape drawings, which they painted in flat value ranges.