Line, Shape & Pattern

Grades 3, 4 and 5 studied the art work of Gustav Klimt. He is the founder of the art nouveau movement. Klimt's artwork is full of lines, shapes and patterns. As a class we talked about the difference between a line and shape--a line is open and a shape is closed. We then worked in groups making a list of as many different kinds of lines as possible. We looked around the artroom and found inspiration for our lines on the tables, ceilings, floor, posters, flags, almost everywhere!

Student then created a simple scribble-line drawing. They then found shapes in their drawing and had to fill each shape with a pattern using only lines. We then used colored sharpies to create pattern using colors. The results are great!

First Grade Artists

 First grade artists spent the first art classes this year learning about different kinds of lines. We looked around the art room and found horizontal lines and vertical lines on the brick walls. We saw organic, wavy lines on our wooden tables. We worked drawing cartoon faces using only one type of line for each face.
This week we are reading "Elmer", the story of a patch-work-colored elephant who doesn't like being different than all the other gray elephants. We will be creating a drawing of Elmer, using all the lines we learned about to create shapes and patterns.

KindergARTen

Kindergarten artists learned many things in art the past week and we made two masterpieces. We read "Bridget's Beret," the story of a girl who creates masterpiece drawings and thinks that her beret is the reason she can draw well. We have been talking about lines. We created a really fun drawing with lots of different cartoon faces using only lines--horizontal, vertical, diagonal,  zig-zag, wavy and curly. Hopefully you saw this packet come home and had fun talking about it with your student.
This week we are using those lines and learning the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional artwork. We are creating a paper sculpture using strips of paper and recreating our all of our lines from last week, but in 3-D. Should be fun!

"What did you do this summer?"

"Bathing at Asnieres"

"Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"

Welcome back to Art! 3rd, 4th and 5th grade artists are currently working on story-telling with their Artwork. They are drawing their favorite memory from this past summer, using George Seurat's paintings "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte" and "Bathing at Asnieres" as inspiration. We talked about how Seurat's paintings were, at first, considered offensive because they showed common people doing common things--like swimming in a river and laying on a beach.
Seurat created a sense of depth in his paintings by establishing a very clear foreground, middle ground and background. We are doing the same thing with our drawings by drawing the foreground objects very large, the middle ground is drawn medium-sized and the back ground details are drawn very small. We finished our drawings in marker and colored pencil.

WELCOME BACK !

Welcome back to school everyone! I am looking forward to a great 2nd year teaching art at Holmes! I've got some really great projects planned. I hope everyone had a great summer--mine was very enjoyable! I spent lots of time with my family. My three-year-old son could spend all day swinging on our new swing set, and our nine-month-old is crawling everywhere. We spent a few weeks in the Upper Peninsula hiking, swimming and hanging out. I also worked as a photographer, shooting lots of weddings and high school senior portraits.
See you in the Art Room!
Mr. Kristofer

What;s under the bed???

First and Second grade artists read the book "What's under the BED?" which was written and illustrated by Joe Fenton. We talked about creating a drawing with a foreground, middleground and background. We then drew a room with a bed in the middleground, windows in the background and students chose to something in their room and put that in the foreground of their drawing. We drew ourselves in bed, under the covers and under the bed...We drew monsters!!!

Still Life Drawings

3rd, 4th and 5th grade artists spent their last classes in art learning about still lives. A still life is a drawing that is created by carefully focusing all of your attention on the object that you are drawing. We talked about drawing being a skill that EVERYONE can learn, if you practice certain things. One of these important things to practice is simply seeing. We looked at our empty pop cans and we found simple shapes, like ovals and rectangles. We lightly sketched these shapes onto our paper. We also tried to plan our drawings so that they were proportionate by making the can the right height and by making the labels the right size.