5th graders studeied surrealism. We learned the surrealism combines real, common, everyday things in very unusual ways. We looked surreal artists Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Arcimboldo was a Renaissance artist who became famous for painting portraits of people but using fruit, or vegetables for all of their facial features. We traced our silhouettes onto cardstock, cut them out and then used a collage technique to complete our self-portraits. Upon completion, students used these art projects in Spanish class to write artist statments in Spanish, discussing their choice of imagery.
5th grade artists looked at Islamic art. We noticed the patterns, the repeating elements and the lack of representational imagery. We came up with six different ideas for our 1"x1" eraser stamps. The ideas had to be: abstract, asymetrical and fairly simple given the size of the erasers. After we chose our strongest design, we drew the design on the end of the eraser and then began to carve away the negative (empty) space on the eraser. The areas we left in relief (raised up) are the designs you see here. Using a guide sheet to help us line up our stamps, we created radial balance. Each stamp is repeated four times as it rotates around a central axis. Lastly, since we printed on thin rice paper, we used rulers and following specific measurements, we created a paper mat for our art. The original idea for this project can be found here: http://www.artforsmallhands.com/2010/07/printing-patterns.html
