5th grade Focal point drawings

For this abstract pencil drawing lesson, students studied the composition of movie posters. We discussed how the artist created a focal point or center of interest. We clearly noticed one part of the image before anything else. Why? How did the artist make your eyes notice the focal point first? After looking at Spider-Man, Up, and a few other movie posters. We noticed the focal point was usually pretty large compared to other things in the image. We found many lines and shapes in the image leading to the focal point. And thirdly we noticed the use of color featured high contrast, light and dark colors together, to draw attention to the focal point.
Our drawings feature just that--they have a clear focal point created through size, leading lines and contrast. They are also shaded carefully to have equal amounts of black, white and gray.

Rockin' Lock-in Mural

5y clay presidents

5P Clay presidents

After researching and writing a paper on different American presidents in social studies class, fifth graders sculpted their president out of clay. We used reference photos to help us sculpt details like hair, clothes appropriate to when the president lived and facial features. We looked at the artwork of Shepard Fairey, the controversial street artist who created Obama' "hope" poster for the 2008 election.

O'Keefe flowers

Kindergarten and first grade artists looked at the life and artwork of Georgia O'Keefe. She is a famous female, American painter noted for her large, colorful paintings of flowers and other natural objects. We also found inspiration in time lapse videos of flowers opening and closing and sunflowers following the sun. We began by painting with primary colors. We painted ten randomly placed blobs of each color. Then using markers we added stems, leaves and grass. Then using a variety of colored markers, we added petals and looking at photos of actual flowers drew and colored petals to finish our landscape artwork.

4th grade sky scrapers continued...

First grade Matisse paintings

First graders learned about the french artist Henri Mattise. He lived from 1869-1972. He grew up wanting to be a lawyer and did not begin painting until he was 20 years old. After painting for the first time, he declared that for the first time in his life, he was not bored. He quit law school and became an artist. Matisse loved color and painted the colors he felt, not the colors he saw. An art critique said that he painted like a wild beast or in French- les Fauves. Matisse therefore was part of an art movement known as fauvism. We looked closely at his painting of goldfish and tried to replicate it, but using the colors we liked.