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.
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.
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.
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondrian (March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944) was a Dutch Painter. Mondrian’s abstract paintings feature geometric shapes—like rectangles and squares. They also show case horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. His artwork typically featured only primary colors—red, yellow and blue. Mondrian was part of an art movement known as “de Stijl” (Dutch for “The Style”) which influenced architecture and building design in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
2nd graders learned about the life and the art of pop artist Jim Dine. Dine used repetition in his artwork. One of the themes he often revisted is hearts. We talked about the texture of his hearts. We talked about the mood of his hearts--some looked happy; some sad. Then we talked about foreground and background. Our hearts are drawn in pairs, with alternating foregrounds and backgrounds. For example the red heart on the top left has polka dots in the foreground and zebra stripes in the background. The heart below is reversed, with zebra stripes in the foreground and polka dots in the background. We finished this one day project off using complementary colors that alternate just like our designs.
4th grader artists looked at the artwork of "Op" artists Bridgey Riley and Victor Vasarely. Th ese artists used science and math to try and create the optical illusion of three-dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. Typically their artwork either receded (fell back) or advanced (came towards). After creating our drawings we reviewed the color wheel and used complementart colors to really make our drawings pop. Finally we added some value (light to dark shading) to our drawings with colored pencils to further create the illusion of a curved 3-D surface.
