Category Archives: Collage

Snowflake Bentley

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Hello friends! I hope you are all having a great winter. If it’s December, January or February, you can’t go wrong with a snowflake lesson.

Here is my Snowflake Bentley lesson. It’s based on the work of photographer and tinkerer Willson Bentley. Bentley was the first person to photograph individual snowflakes on a microscopic level. Thanks to Bentley, we know that each snowflake is unique and six-sided.

I’m using my new favorite tool, the Smore (www.smore.com) to share it with you. Enjoy!!!

P.S. This makes a great sub plan.

Happy winter!

Monster Silhouettes

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Our fifth graders just created these fabulous monster silhouettes. They learned how contour, organic shape and negative space contribute to an interesting design.

Materials:

  • black construction paper
  • copy paper
  • scissors
  • glue stick
  • pencils, erasers

‘Monster Mash’

Monster Mash

Illustrations from ‘Monster Mash’ by Mimi Maxwell

We began by looking at the illustrations in the book Monster Mash by Mimi Maxwell. The monsters are all in silhouette. We discussed organic (free form) vs. geometric shape. We also noticed the most interesting monsters had pointed or swirling body parts.  Many had cut-outs (aka negative space).

monster silhouettes

Fifth grade monster silhouettes.

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Fifth grade monster silhouette. Allow 90 minutes.

Create the monsters

Students did a couple of thumbnail sketches, then drew their monsters on black paper. Remind your students to design large monsters with interesting body parts and cut-outs. The most common problem is when a student draws a tiny, perfect monster that is too small to cut out.

Use glue stick to mount on copy paper.

I got this great lesson plan from art teacher Grace Hulse. Grace recommends this project as an introduction to a shadow puppet lesson. Click here to see more about Grace’s shadow puppet workshop at NAEA14.

Enjoy!

Mixing Greens

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Students used tempera paint to create many shades of green.

I received the book Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger as a gift from a parent. This beautiful book (it won the Caldecott Honor in 2013) is filled with all things green.  It is the perfect tie-in to a color mixing lesson.

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, winner of the 2013 Caldecott Honor.

I read Green to my second grade art students.  They loved it – the book is full of die-cut holes and the kids enjoyed peeking through them. Can you see the die-cut holes in this video?

Materials:

  • white sulfite drawing paper (or other paper that will hold up to painting)
  • black crayons
  • paper placemats (we used 12″x18″ construction paper)
  • brushes
  • paper plates
  • tempera paint: blue and/or turquoise, yellow, black and white
  • black construction paper for mounting
  • scissors
  • glue sticks
  • colored construction paper (to create jungle animal collage)
Second graders used blue, turquoise, yellow, black and white tempera to mix shades of green.

Second graders used blue, turquoise, yellow, black and white tempera to mix shades of green.

Mixing greens

After reading the book, we got to work creating our own jungle. Students began by drawing a variety of leaves on their paper. They added veins and stems. They placed their white paper onto the construction paper placemats. Next, they scooped up a small amount of yellow paint onto their paper plates. They added dots of blue paint and mixed to create green, then painted a leaf.

The students experimented – adding white to create tints and black to create shades. Students were excited to create army green and blue-green. Seriously – they called each other over when they created cool new colors. They loved color mixing so much we had to do it a second session.

We did not use water for this project. The goal was to mix a wide variety of greens. If necessary, they brushed excess paint onto their placemats.

Create a jungle collage

After the paints dried, we mounted the paintings on black construction paper. Students cut leaves out of their painted paper plates and used them to decorate the corners or create a border. Then they constructed jungle animals from colored paper and glued them on  top of the paintings.

mixing greens - jungle collage

This was a very successful lesson plan! The students enjoyed color mixing so much we could have done it for weeks.

Enjoy!

p.s. the project would be nice as an Henri Rousseau lesson plan.

What I learned at NAEA14 part 1

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I just spent four wonderful days at NAEA 14, here in my hometown of San Diego.  I attended a ton of sessions, including a pre-conference tour and a hands-on workshop. Here’s a peek at what I saw and learned.

Friday, March 28: Pre-Conference Tour of Art Program and Murals and Zamorano Fine Arts Academyzamorano mural tour NAEA14 Art teacher/art ed blogger Don Masse led this tour of his public elementary school’s remarkable art program. Zamarano Fine Arts Academy employs five (!) visual art educators for 1400 (!) students from transitional kindergarten-grade 5. The school has a clay program, photography, fashion design, and much more. Don’s 5th graders create an annual ‘legacy’ mural…in addition, we saw many other outdoor artworks, including painted windows. See lots more of Don’s contemporary-art inspired projects at his blog, shite brite zamorano.

 

Monday, March 31 Shadow Puppets workshop with Grace Hulse

I have wanted to teach a shadow puppet unit for years, but never really knew how. Grace Hulse’s workshop was a great intro. Her Baltimore second graders put on a shadow puppet play every year.

We cut black tagboard into interesting animal shapes. Ms. Hulse encouraged us to create openings in the puppets using craft knives and decorative punches. We taped lace doilies or colored vellum over the openings to add interest. We could create articulated limbs with small brads.

We also learned about inexpensive materials to make a small theater.

shadow puppets collageIf you want to learn more, Ms. Hulse highly recommends the book Worlds of Shadow: Teaching with Shadow Puppetry by David and Donna Wiesniewski (Note: you can get a good preview of this book on Amazon).

In addition, Ms. Hulse’s students created an iMovie trailer using photos of shadow puppet illustrations. Check out the Odyssey of Homer trailer on Vimeo.

Lucky you – Ms. Hulse has a public Prezi of her shadow puppet presentation.

More NAEA14 awesomeness coming up soon!

Enjoy!

Masterpieces from San Diego Youth Art Month Show

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the annual San Diego Youth Art Month (YAM) show. I saw some gorgeous artworks – here are a few that caught my eye.

Elementary school:

Collage:

Playing card collage

Playing card collage, elementary level.

Playing card collage, elementary level.

Corrugated Cardboard portrait collage

Elementary corrugated cardboard portrait.

Elementary corrugated cardboard portrait.

Printmaking:

Clipper ship watercolor and print

Clipper ship watercolor and print from Ocean Air elementary school.

Collagraph printed in rainbow ink

Collagraph print in rainbow ink, from Ocean Air elementary school.

Collagraph print in rainbow ink, from Ocean Air elementary school.

Sculpture

These plaster masks are from our school! Congrats to Camille (1st place elementary 3D), Olive (2nd place), Morgan (3rd place), Caroline and Santiago.

Solana Santa Fe elementary school masks at YAM.

Solana Santa Fe elementary school masks at YAM.

High School

Zentangle elephant

Zentangle Elephant by Alexis Griffith, Guajome Park Academy High School.

Zentangle Elephant by Alexis Griffith, Guajome Park Academy High School.

This is exquisite.  In the art room, this could be adapted as an early finisher activity if you hand out an elephant line drawing as a coloring page.

Dia de Los Muertos cut paper art

Dia de Los Muertos Cut Paper design by Lizeth Garcia, Torrey Pines High School.

Dia de Los Muertos Cut Paper design by Lizeth Garcia, Torrey Pines High School.

This piece is by a former student, now in high school! So glad she is still enjoying art.

Lots more awesomeness on display, including Don Masse’s mud cloth collage and Marz Jr. line drawings.

Thanks to the San Diego Art Institute and the San Diego County Art Education Association for a fabulous YAM show.

Enjoy!

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