December Already

Where has the year gone? I can't believe it's already December and we ONLY have 10 school days left until the winter break! Well... we have been pretty busy creating lots of great artwork! Here is a highlight reel of all the good stuff! 

1st Grade made their Mondrian Animals. A favorite of mine that is must every year. 

2nd Grade made Warm and Cool Landscapes. We talk balance and about the warm and cool colors then divided our paper with each color family. 

3rd Grade made Pirate Ship Seascapes. First we painted and tried to show a little texture. Then did a collage pirate ship on the high seas. 

4th Grade made MineCraft Pirates. I did MineCraft Self Portraits last year. This year gave them a pirate twist to go along with our school theme. 

Ocean Zentangle

3rd Grade started the year with a Zentangle. If you aren't sure a Zentangle is, it is the art of doodling. The idea that doodling can be relaxing or zen like. And then adding that idea to create it's own picture or into another. In our case we started with an ocean landscape, like you were looking at all the layers of the ocean. Then at each layer we put patterns and rhythms to create the Zentangle.

Most Zentangles are black and white. But we added a some color to ours.

We talked about Value and what a Monochromatic Color Scheme is. I gave the kids some tip and techniques on how to create values with watercolor.

 I encouraged them to use different colors then blue. But the ocean is blue, so most results were too.

Pretty AWESOME!!

(Stay tuned for 4th and 5th Grade Zentangles were we did a similar project but took influence from Hokusai's "Great Wave")

Comic Book Art

3rd Grade Artists learned about Pop Art and artist Roy Litchenstein. 

First we talked about Onomatopoeia words, which are words that sound like their action. Then students picked a word and started to paint using bright colors to show emphasis. When the word was finished we started on the background by collageing an action bubble with newspaper. Once everything was cut and pasted, oil pastels were used to add a bit more detail and even more action. And I'm so sorry I can't find the blog to which inspired me, but thank you!

Zentangle Portraits

 I LOVE ZENTANGLES!! They are great way to introduce or review pattern and rhythm. This year 3rd Grade made these awesome Zentangle Portraits. We talked about line and shape and how we can use them to create patterns and rhythms. Students started with a portrait of a head, then added all kinds of lines for "crazy hair" or backgrounds. Then to add a pop of emphasis I had them choose a space or portrait space to color. I am loving the results!!

Cacti and other Desert Plants

3rd Graders made these wonderful desert plants out of clay! The lesson pervious to this we created a desert landscape with overlapping hills (Thanks to Lines, Dots and Doodle for the idea). Here is a picture of the landscape painting.

Doing the landscape before the clay lesson made for some great connections and students were more familiar with how desert plants look. I encouraged students to add patterns and rhythms to the pots of their plants to give their artwork more embellishment and details. 

These obviously have not been painted yet, but they have great FORM! 

I love the yellow coils creeping from the pot of the front right piece! 

Pop and Op Art Heart

3rd grade students were inspired by Jim Dine and Andy Warhol while making these Pop Art Hearts. Like this Dine seen here:

 When creating we discussed contrast and different color theory such as warm and cool color families. We painted the backgrounds first, then collaged hearts on top. Here are some great examples of artwork the students made:

4th grade students learned about Op Art when creating this Optical Illusions of Hearts. I was inspired by a lesson I saw on Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists blog (one of my favorites). After discussing line, shape, pattern and color theory students got to work on these eye crossing works of art:

If you wondering why so many heart projects? Well, at my school we do a fund raiser with a company called Square 1 Art, this year I decided to do a heart theme with the entire school, to go along our school's theme of Kindness, I thought a heart would be most fitting.

Clay Landscapes

After painting landscapes with 3rd Graders, they learned about Form and created a 3-D landscape with clay.

This landscape was submitted for consideration to our annual District Art Show