Clay Fossils

Kindergarten and First grade artists just brought a fun new project: Clay Fossils! Before it got too cold, we walked outside and gathered a few interesting leaves. We brought them into the art room and after reading a bit about fossils, we began our clay project. We started by creating a slab of clay. A slab is a flat, even sheet of clay. We then discussed texture and using our fingertips we found the side of a leaf that had the most texture. We then imprinted this side of the leaf into the clay. The projects were fired in our kiln and then we painted them using sponges and brown tempera paint to make them appear old. They also have value. In art, value is when there are light and dark versions of one color. Lastly, we sealed them with a gloss medium to protect  the paint and make them shiny!

2nd Grade Lego Self-Portraits

2nd graders are just starting a cross-curricular lego project involving Oak Park Education Foundation, the classroom teachers and of course, me, the art teacher. To get us in a lego frame-of-mind, we watched a great video on the history of legos. And then looked at the proportions of a lego mini person. We then all drew a plain lego person together. But then added lego details like clothes, hair and a background that made our lego person look like us. Of course, in typical lego fashion, we are all yellow-skinned.

4th Grade Shoe Drawings

Fourth graders began this art project by learning about the brain. We discussed how the left side of our brain is really good at things like math, logic, analyzing and naming things. While the right half of our brain is more visual, creative, random and intuitive.  When trying to draw from life, the right side is the way to go. Before drawing our shoes we completed a drawing activity designed to shut down the left half and engage the right side of our brain. We drew a horse by looking at a picture of a horse. BUT, the reference photo was upside down and almost entirely covered by a sheet of dark paper. So we didn't draw the "horse," we looked at little squiggles and bendy lines and drew that we saw and drew those. Then we'd move our dark paper down an bit and add more to our drawing. Before we knew it, we had created beautiful, realistic drawings of a horse! But we had to use our eyes to see, not our brains to think. While our right brains were on a roll, we took off one shoe, and set it in front of us. We tried to forget that it was a shoe, and just observe it as a series of bendy lines and shapes. The results are great! Lastly, we added a rhythm and movement by creating a pattern that followed the contour of our shoe.

Pumpkin Landscapes

Kindergarten Artists learned about landscapes in art class. We looked at several landscape paintings by various artists. After reading "Pumpkin, Pumpkin" and watching a short video about the life-cycle of pumpkins, we created our collage landscapes. We drew our pumpkins together. We then practiced how to safely and effectively use our scissors to cut the pumpkins out. We created texture in the grass and glued everything together. Lastly, we used white chalk to add a glowing moon and stars to the sky. Some students chose to draw faces on their pumpkins.

Op Art

In Optical Art or “Op Art,” artists create an optical illusion. The illusion could be that something is moving, or popping out, or falling in. We made our op art pop out by using colored pencils and shading a range of values for each color in our patterns. This helped us create the illusion of three dimensions on our two-dimensional paper.

Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead)

 In a cross-curricular project, Art and Espanol joined forces with Kindergarten and First grade students. All classes read a couple of different stories about Dia de los Muertos. In Spanish class students read the stories in Spanish and in Art they read them in English. Students learned that Day of the Dead is a time to celebrate and remember the lives of loved ones. Part of this celebration includes the creation of sugar skulls. In Art, students applied what they learned in Spanish in the creation of these Sugar Skulls. Our art words include line, pattern, symmetry and texture.

Positive and Negative Space

3rd, 4th and 5th grade artists spent one class and finished these cut-paper jack-o-lanterns. We began by looking at some really cool pumpkins carved by Ray Villafane. What followed was an interesting debate about whether or not these carved pumpkins are "Art." Students argued on both sides of the issue and defended their point of view with specific reasons. We then reviews the Elements of Art and talked about space in art. There are two types of space--Negative and Postive. Positive is the object itself (say, a chair) Negative space is the area in and around the chair.  We used negative and positive space to create these jack-o-lanterns.