5th grade mural

The Fifth grade mural is finally complete! We painted the 8 foot tall fence surrounding the "earth tub" (or composter). All 5th grade students helped with this mural. We first had to prime the bare wood of the fence and then painted the background blue (for the sky) and green on the bottom (for grass). Then five exemplary students from each class were selected to draw and paint the flowers, plants and sunshine on our mural.

First & Second grade Camouflage

First and second grade artists read two books about chameleons. Both books were fiction, but one book had drawings created by an illustrator and the other used real photographs to tell a fictional story. We learned that chameleons can change colors when they are frightened and can blend into a variety of backgrounds. We drew jungles with large plants, trees and vines like a chameleon's real habitat. We then drew a chameleon and colored him or her so that they were camouflaged into the background! We used oil pastels on this project and discussed how to blend oil pastels together to mix tints (lighter versions) and shades (darker versions) of our jungle colors.

4th grade Printmaking

4th grade artists learned about "Pop" artists like Andy Warhol and Romero Britto. We talked about Pop Art being a reflection of what is popular at the time. We talked about how what is considered popular changes over time. We looked at Pop art images from the 60's and learned about what was popular then based on what we saw in their artwork. We saw stars like Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and the Beetles. We then drew something that was popular and important now and created styrofoam printing plates. We then made four different prints, making sure we had contrast between our ink color and paper color.

5th grade artists looked at iPod's use of silhouettes. We discussed why we thought iPod would use silhouettes of people instead of using real photographs of real people in their ads. We had some great discussion. We concluded that the iPod folks probably chose to use silhouettes because silhouettes could represent many different people. And maybe many different people would want an iPod after seeing these images.
We took the idea of silhouettes and created a landscape drawing with crayons and water colors. We drew the trees in the foreground very big, the middle ground is the island with the other trees. This island is further away so its a bit smaller, and the background features a horizon line and sunset. We used the "wet-on-wet" technique with our watercolors to create a blended and colorful sunset sky.

Printmaking!

Third grade artists studied Andy Warhol and learned about "pop" (popular) art. We learned that printmaking is a fun and efficient way to quickly make copies of your artwork. We began by drawing one object that is popular and important in our lives. We made sure that any writing on our drawings was drawn backwards because our prints are mirror-images of our printing plates. We transferred our drawings to styrofoam printing plates and students made at least two different prints. We signed, numbered and titled our prints.

Email

Since the beginning of the school year I have repeatedly run into parents and they'll ask, "Did you get my email?" And quite a few times I never did get their emails and never could figure out why... Today, with the help of a parent, I figured out why. The email address listed for me on the Holmes website is incorrect. My correct email is jkristofer@op97.org, not akristofer@op97.org as the link suggests. I'm sorry if your email was one of the few (many?) that went unanswered.

Warm and Cool Flower Drawings

1st and 2nd grade artists discussed several of Vincent Vangogh's paintings. We looked at his use of colors and talked about how artists use color in their artwork to help create a specific mood. We reviewed the color wheel--primary colors, secondary colors, intermediate colors and neutral colors. We then learned the 1/2 of the colors on the colorwheel are warm  (yellow, red, orange, green). And we learned that the other half of the color wheel has cool colors (blue, purple, green). Warm colors make artwork look bright, happy and exciting. Cool colors make artwork look calm, relaxing and sometimes even sad. We created these flower drawings in markers, using either warm or cool colors.