5th grade Eraser prints

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

Eye Love Art Club

 4th and 5th grade members of Art club learned how to accurately draw the human eye. We used #2 pencils and blending stumps to create a range of values from dark, to medium to white.

First grade warhol flakes

First graders watched a youtube video about the colorwheel- www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGrGkJtSLsk
After discussing primary colors, secondary colors, warm colors, cool colors and complementary colors. We looked at some of Andy Warhol's "Pop Art".  Pop art refers to popular culture. Warhol's artwork is infamous for its use of repetition and color. Using the primary colors for back ground colors and the secondary colors for snowflakes, we created our art. The rule was that each secondary colored snowflake had to be glued to its complementary primary color. We had a large color wheel projected on the wall as reference.

Kindergarten Winter Collage

Kindergarten artists read the book "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats. We read the book online using the website www.wegivebooks.org. It's a free site that requires an email address to register and then you have access to thousands of books online--for free! I like it because you can zoom in quite a bit and look at details of the artwork. After reading we talked about collage. Collage is a french word meaning "glue". Using construction paper and glue we created these paper collages of a street during a snow storm. We finished our collages with white paint for snow.

2nd grade legos

OPEF (Oak Park Education Foundation), the 2nd grade team, and two art teachers all joined forces as second graders completed a community building project. Students walked around Oak Park and looked at the amazing architecture. In the Art room, students were given a blue print of a building in Oak Park. After learning about scale and how tall their lego scaled model of their building needed to be, students began work. They had 3 references photos of the building and made their models 1/60 the size of the original buildings.
You can see the work on this video:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk5Rz-5d-OQ&list=UUAV2EQtmUowV7-Pz2BIig5w&index=1

5th Grade Surreal Collage

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. 

3rd grade Robot Paintings

Third graders read the book "Robot Zot" by Jon Scieszka. We looked carefully at the pictures and talked about Robot Zot. What makes him look like a robot? The answer was details--little bolts, antennae, switches and texture. He looked metallic. We noticed a white shiny highlight and some shading. We also talked about why people build robots, mostly to do jobs humans don't want to do. After drawing our own unique robot. We painted them one solid color. We then discussed adding a light source in our art, so it looks like there is light shining on our robot. On the same side as the light, we painted our white highlight. On the side opposite the light source, we painted a shadow by mixing our robot paint color with a bit of black paint. We will add backgrounds next week. I found the idea for this project here: http://www.johnpost.us/Teaching%20Links/Painting%20Lessons/robot-paintings/robot-paintings.html

Kindergarten Paper Sculptures

Kindergarten artists learned about sculpture! We compared a drawing and a sculpture. "What's the difference between these two artworks?" We noticed that the painting is flat and the sculpture is not. We can turn the sculpture around and look at it from many different angles. The painting, however, is not meant to seen from the back. We then reviewed all the different types of lines--horizontal, vertical, diagonal, wavy, zig-zag and spiral. We then created sculptures of all those lines using primary-colored construction paper.

4th and 5th grade Specials Night

 Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in Specials Night. We had a great turn out! Each 4th and 5th grader had two pieces of artwork on display. 4th graders created clay slab mugs, and landscape paintings. 5th graders studied glass blowing and Dale Chihiluy and created 'glass' bowls. 5th graders also studied surrealism and had a collage project that Spanish class helped with.