Kindergarten Leprechauns

 Kindergarteners are celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Art class this week. We are reading Fiona's Luck by Teresa Bateman. In this neatly illustrated book, the leprechauns take all the luck from the "big people" and hide it in a chest. Fiona goes on an adventure into the leprechaun's world and uses her wits to get the luck back.
We made paper collages of leprechauns. We talked about the difference between 2-D and 3-D artwork. We made our noses 3-D. It's hard to tell in the photos, but the noses are standing up (like a tent) and make our artwork 3-D!

4th grade Celtic Knot

 4th grade artists studied the life of St. Patrick as St. Patrick's day approaches. As a child he was taken into captivity. Upon his escape he began teaching, preaching and building schools and churches throughout Ireland.  St. Patrick used the Trinity knot and the shamrock in his preaching. We used a protractor to draw our endless knot and used a technique called stippling to add texture and depth to our work.

From a 3rd grade perspective

 Third grade artists learned about one-point perspective as a way to create the illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. We looked at street artist Julian Beever who creates fantastic chalk drawings that look very real. After we drew our shapes, we traced the corners back to our vanishing point with rulers, turning our 2-D shapes into 3-D forms.  Lastly, we shaded these with ball point pens, creating value (range from light to dark) using a technique called crosshatching.

Kindergarten Lions

 Kindergarten artists read the book The Lion and Rat, which we learned is a fable or a story with a lesson. Kindergarteners did a great job of figuring out the lesson behind this story. "The lesson is that litte friends can help big friends," one student said. We drew our lions by overlapping three circles. We added triangle teeth. We learned about pattern while making the mane. We also talked about the month of March--how it goes in 'like a lion and out like a lamb'.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Kindergarten artists learned about the life and art of Theodore Seuss Geissel, or Dr. Seuss. His birthday is coming up on March 2nd. Were he still alive, he'd be 108 years old. 2012 marks the 5oth anniversary of his first book Cat in the Hat. We read this book, looked carefully at the drawings and noticed that Seuss created texture in his artwork through his use of cross-hatching. We drew a simple cat in the hat with overlapping shapes and cross-hatching for texture and value.

The World According to 3rd graders

Third grade artists learned about Andy Warhol and Pop art. We learned that Pop art features images of things that are currently popular. We talked about how these things change over time. One thing that is very popular right now is our "One school, One book" program where we are reading The World According to Humphrey. Students learned how to draw a hamster, transferred their drawing onto a styrofoam printing plate and using brayers and ink, made four good prints of their hamster. We discussed what a "good" print looked like--just the right amount of ink, centered with an image that is easy to see. Students created four different prints from the same printing plate using a variety of ink and paper color combinations.

Let them draw cake!

Second grade artists learned about the life and artwork of Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud (born November 15, 1920) is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects, and the well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.
We talked about the difference between shapes and forms. Namely, that shapes are two-dimensional and forms are three-dimensional. We practiced drawing cylinders and then stacked 4-5 cylinders on top of one another and came up with designs for a cakes. We finished these in oil pastels while we discussed tints, shades and value. To create a tint we mixed our cake color with white. To make a shade we mixed our color with black. This range of color, from light to dark, in art, is called value.