New Posts from Before Covid Sent Us All Home... Starting with Faux-Stained Glass (1-3 grades)

So, as you all know, Covid sent us home mid-March of 2020. I never did post anything on here from that school year because I was posting the blog directly to the school's website. However, I am taking some time this summer to add some projects that I think were pretty great... for posterity. I will not post them all on this entry, but will start with one here and work my way through my photo files as I go.

Big & Bold Self-Portraits by Ks and 1s

For the past two weeks the kinders and first graders have been working on their big and beautiful self-portraits using chalk and/or oil pastels. These can be very messy materials but the children have persisted - despite fingerprints, smudges, and pink, chalky shirtsleeves.

Kindergarteners Explore How Shapes Make Pictures

This year our kindergarteners completed a drawing project in which they used shape stencils to create a picture or design. First, they worked collaboratively, exploring how to use the stencils and experimenting together to make pictures:

Second Graders Learn How to See Like an Artist

Second grade learned more about how to draw from observation this year - which means there were actual objects on their tables and they drew them as best they could by paying close attention to what they saw. 

Second Grade Fall Leaf Art Investigations

This fall my second graders were "art investigators". I brought in a variety of autumn leaves and encouraged my students to look closely at what they saw. Looking Closely is one of our ways of "thinking like an artist" that we talk about often in my classroom. 

Free Draw Selfies Make Me Smile

My students have been working furiously on completing their monochromatic self portraits inspired by Cassie Stephens. Thanks to her I have one more collaborative artwork to create that each student will be contributing to. Several of my classes' teachers have mentioned that they like their students to do self-portraits in the beginning of the year and I thought it was a great idea as an opportunity for me to get to know them as well as assess their skill levels since this is my first year with them. More on that later…

Our International Dot Day Collaborative Mobile is Complete!

Looking up from below

Our first art class project for all of the grades I teach at FCDS was based on the book "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds. After some thought I decided this would be a great introductory project that would give each student the chance to express him/herself as an individual and then also combine their work with others in the spirit of collaboration which we all know is a valuable "21st century skill". 

Preschoolers Draw From Live Flowers

In researching some potential projects for the lambies I found several posts about how little kids can draw from life. I thought, okay, how hard can that be? Lots of teachers do it, so can I! I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a bouquet that had a large variety of flowers in it.

Floral Still Lifes a la Van Gogh

This project was my favorite from the past school year! We looked at a ton of Van Gogh's flower still lifes. The students in each grade level were directed to deconstruct the images to figure out what techniques Van Gogh used to make the vases with flowers looked like they occupy a real space. They determined the following:

1. The vases had an oval for the opening, and an arc that has the same shape for the bottom.
2. The line that defines the back of the table is somewhere between the top and the bottom of the vase.
3. The stems of the flowers cross through the oval and stop at the bottom to make the flowers appear to be sitting inside of the vase.

Next, the students chose a sheet of colored construction paper, 12 x 18, and started to draw out their still life using oil pastels.

The next meeting I showed them how to create volume using white and black oil pastels blended with the color they used for the vase. These are the stunning results:

Fantastic Apples

After exploring realistic color with colored pencils, I wanted to give my high school artists a chance to get a little more creative. I printed out black and white images of apples and had them draw them in color. They were allowed to make the apples any colors they wanted. Here are the first three finished ones:

Andy Warhol Inspired Contour and Color Studies Project

My middle school artists learned about Andy Warhol's life and artwork. They found him to be fascinating, especially how he was so shy but became so famous. They were interested in his strange illness, how he stayed in bed for a long time as a child, and how he at one time owned 26 cats all named "Sam". They did have a hard time understanding how drawing a picture of a soup can constitutes "art", but then they did their own drawing of packaged and manmade objects, and I think related a little better to his work.

For their projects they had to choose 4 objects that they owned or used, divide their drawing paper into 4 rectangles, and then draw one object in each rectangle using the contour drawing skills they had just learned. Once they finished drawing they outlined with Sharpie.

I talked to them about color schemes, and they were to apply the following 4 schemes to their drawing, one in each of the rectangles, but in any order they desired: 1) primary colors, 2) secondary colors, 3) complementary colors, and 4) analogous colors. They used colored pencils to complete them. I think they turned out fantastic!

Mason

Beginning Drawing Still Lifes Are Awesome!

This year my drawing students are not allowed to rub and blend their pencil to do shading. They must use cross-hatching and other line work to show the different values in their drawings. After only a few weeks of learning drawing these total beginners belted out these beauties! I love how each one really shows the hand of the individual artist. Take a look:

One-Point Perspective in the Hallways

One of the concepts we want our middle and high school art students to learn in the beginning classes is perspective. This can be a tough one for even the best artist to master. For this concept I had them take their art pads into the hallways and draw what they saw in one-point perspective. To prepare them I talked about the horizon line (always at eye-level), the vanishing point (where you are on the horizon line), and how all lines moving away from you in space converge on the vanishing point. They also had to keep in mind that any line that is perpendicular to the viewer will not be effected by perspective.

I had them start by drawing the far wall in the hallway (usually with the doorway to the staircase), then find their vanishing point. After that they could draw in the information on the ceiling, floor and side walls. I did end up helping with some of the drawing until they got the idea, but many of them came out pretty well!

Here are some great examples:

First Grader Draws Video Game Scenes... I Am Impressed

One of my first graders, Quinn, was finished with his artist worksheet early this week and was drawing in a sketchbook. I just happened to notice this amongst all of the hubbub of trying to get the rest of them finished. I couldn't believe how intricate and detailed his pages are and I wanted to share them! Take a look:

Kandinsky: 5th Grade Preliminary Drawing Exercise

Wow...What a great class this morning! The students saw my iPod and speakers and immediately were asking me if they could listen to this that or the other rap artist, dance hall, etc. Unfortunately the answer was no - I wanted them to listen to classical music just as Kandinsky had. I brought in Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and had the 5th graders listen while they closed their eyes. I asked them to pretend they were Kandinsky and imagine what kinds of shapes and colors they would see. After the first song (Spring) they were all pretty enthusiastic about what they had seen while they were listening.

For the rest of the class period I played all the songs on a loop while the students drew shapes and colors on white paper. They came out great... and these are only the prep drawings for their paintings. Even better, many of the students kept saying how much they loved listening to the music!

Here are some great drawings they did:

Victor

Van Gogh's Starry Night

Our first elementary art project of the year was inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night painting:

This is one of my all time favorite works of art, even if it is "overplayed".

Winslow Homer Inspired Seascapes

After O'Keeffe I chose to look at Winslow Homer with the elementary school classes and we looked at many of his seascape paintings. I made sure they understood that a seascape always has at least two elements, the sea and the sky, and they always meet at the horizon line. I let them know its better to have your horizon line either above or below the center of the paper to make the composition more interesting. We looked at how the colors of the sky always reflected in the sea water and asked the students to pay particular attention to the time of day and/or weather they wanted to draw when they were selecting their colors. I offered either blue or white paper for them to work on. Many of them came out so beautifully!

Here are some of the Homer seascapes we saw first:

Middle School Crazy Portraits a Big Success

For the final project Fall Semester I wanted the kids to do something fun while also demonstrating their acquired drawing skills. I let them use Photo Booth on my MacBook and choose a filter that distorted their face. I printed these out in black and white and then they drew them on large drawing paper. Many of them came out really well, and I think it's because the faces were distorted already so it wasn't so important that their drawing looked exactly like them. Its interesting to see the different styles inherent in these students even after only one semester of drawing. Here are some of my favorites: