3rd grade artists learned how to mix tints and shades to create a value scale ranging from white, light gray, medium gray, dark gray and black. We looked at Chinese brush painting and studied how these artists created depth in their paintings. They used atmospheric perspective--making things lighter to make them appear farther away. These artists also placed farther away objects higher up on their paper. We borrowed these ancient techniques and created these wintery landscapes.
This week in Art, Fifth grade artists are putting on the finishing touches on their cross-curricular art project. In social studies students researched and learned about a hero. We built these heroes out of clay. This week we mixed colors to create realistic and unique skin tones and hair colors. And some students even designed glasses from wire. This was a great project!
This short school week (Monday/Tuesday), the 3-5 grade students that have art looked at the painting "Freedom from Want" by Norman Rockwell. Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works are popular for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. We talked about how Rockwell's paintings tell stories without words; every detail is important to the story. We talked about how Rockwell achieved a sense of depth in his artwork by using two different techniques: Overlapping and placement. The people at the bottom of the painting appear to be in front because they are not blocked by other people. As the people get farther away, they are overlapped and they move higher up the paper. We attempted to use these two techniques to create cartoon versions of our Thanksgiving dinners. These examples are from 3A.
Kindergartner's drew turkeys! We looked at several photos and decided that a turkey's body was shaped like an oval, his head was shaped like a circle and his beak was shaped like a triangle. We added feathers, we added a horizon line and also a background. Then we painted these using paint dabbers. It was a great review of mixing primary colors and making secondary colors.
Third graders looked at the artwork of Stuart Davis. Davis (December 7, 1892–June 24, 1964), was an early American modernist painter. His paintings feature large, over lapping shapes that create a sense of depth. Using rolls of tape and plastic shapes as stencils, we learned how to correctly overlap things in a drawing to create the illusion of space. We finished these in markers.
4th grade artists studied the artwork of Albert Bierdstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902). He was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. We talked about how to mix tints (lighter versions) and shades (darker versions) of our back ground color. We mixed five different values of one color, from white to really dark. We painted our background first and using only a wet brush, blended the values together to make a seamless gradient. Some students choice to use old toothbrushes to splatter paint stars in their night time skies. The following week we practiced using a fan brush to paint realistic trees, and then finished our paintings.
Kindergarten Artists studied pumpkins. We read a few books about pumpkins. Some books were fiction, one was non-fiction. We created these pumpkin landscapes. We drew pumpkins in the foreground. We drew a horizon line to seperate the sky and the ground. We used oil pastels and blended yellow and red primary colors together to make orange pumpkins. We also blended white and blue together in our skies. The last thing we did was paint over everything, using the resist technique, in watercolor.
Fifth grade artists are finishing modelling their clay heroes. We worked from reference photos of our chosen heroes. We used additive and subtractive methods of sculpture to create our heroes. We discussed two methods of attaching clay pieces to our project: blending and slipping/scoring. We also discussed texture and added texture to our people's hair and clothes. So far, these guys and gals look great. They'll be headed into the kiln soon and then painted next week.