Fall Trees from Extreme Perspective

It's always good to look at things from a different perspective.

The 3rd grade class got to draw these cool trees. It's a great study of texture, color and perspective. We used oil pastels and talked about how ordinary things can look completely different from an extreme perspective.

Spider Webs

About half of the 4th grade class was done with their maps so I took this opportunity to teach them how to draw webs. We talked about how the webs are like roads for the spiders so they need to all connect. It's time consuming to draw, but just think about how long it must take a spider to make it.

Van Gogh Sunflowers

After three classes the 1st grade class finished these lovely versions of Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

The background was done in tempera paint, the vase was done with oil pastels and the flowers were made with watercolors. They handled the mixed media with ease.

Primary Colors

My K2 class learned about the primary colors in class. Using blue, red and yellow tissue paper they glued the pieces onto watercolor paper with an outline of a leaf they did. When the paper overlaps the primary colors make new colors. After drying the students cut them out and added the veins to the leaf.

Below you can see them hard at work on the next lesson on Wassily Kandinsky.

Owls in Chalk Pastel

Who thought that there were so many ways to draw an owl? The 5th graders as usual delighted me with the results. The students at each group table got b&w samples of about five different owls. I got them started by directing them on the eyes first. Once they had the eyes we moved on to the texture of the feathers. It's fun to work with the chalk pastels when showing feathers. The student could use their fingers to blend the pastels to add softness to the feathers.  I also asked them to mostly work in black and then just add two more colors.

Black Cats

The 3rd graders had fun following along with me drawing a face of a cat. We started with pencil then traced the lines with black oil pastel. A little more color was added before washing the whole paper with black watercolor paint. Great one for Halloween!

Maps of Fantasy Lands

This was one of my favorites!!! I gave the 4th graders a list of names of fantasy lands to choose from.  Then using that name and a list of required items to represent on the map they were free to transport us to this fantasy land. It would be tough to choose if I want to visit Puppy City or Candy Land. They both look like a lot of fun.

I might not want to go to Deadly Valley though.

Here is a great detail of Crystal World.

Contour Sneakers

I've done this project with the 7th grade for years now. However I've changed one thing each time. The sneakers are still drawn in pencil first then finished off in thin black marker with contour lines.

The background has been changed each year.

This time the students used cut pieces of "cheap" colored tissue paper. I say "cheap" because it the only kind that will make the color of the paper run when you add water. I love the way the contrast of the blurry colors work with the black and white sneaker. These could be ads for a magazine.

Fall Leaves in Progress

This is three weeks into the paper mache fall leaves the 6th grade are working on. One more week to go. I will post the finished work next week.

Mushrooms

The 5th grade students started this assignment by following me draw three simple mushrooms in pencil on the paper carful to space them evenly. Next using crayons the students drew lines of color in the contour of the mushroom. Last a wash of brown watercolor was added to contrast the brights of the crayons. They exercised many skills in this short one class project.

Garden in Progress

Second grade has started a chalk pastel project this week. I had images of gardens full of different flowers available for reference for the students as they filled their paper with their own garden. Next week they will construct a magnifying glass out of paper to place on top of the garden. Then add a bug of their choice in the lens of the glass in magnified form. I'll show examples next week.

Take Off

We continued with the space theme in 3rd grade by making these cool rockets that actually climb up to the moon when you pull the strings. 

Snakes

Here is a sample of the finished snakes the K2 class made. As you can see they did a great job with patterns using tempera paint, google eyes and pink paper.

3D Cubes

I found a great templet for a paper cube so I thought it would work well in a lesson with the 2nd grade. We talked about the difference between 2D and 3D. Then used the templet to turn a 2D drawing into a 3D cube. They are now hanging up in the art room falling from the clouds.

Grapes

The 1st grade worked on many skills with this grapes project. First they learned how to draw grapes in the foreground and in the background. Then they added highlights to the grapes from a light source using a white crayon. After that they got red and blue paint to make purple for the grapes. When it was painted, the white crayon showed up. Cutting skills were used by cutting out the bunch of grapes shape. For the background they drew the vines with crayons and added tissue paper leaves with paper mache glue. All this was done in two classes!