It’s the last week of art class and the weather is lovely. For their final project, the 5th and 6th graders did observational drawings of the weeds in our school garden.
Materials:
Clipboards
Copy paper
Colored pencils
Weeds
Each student picks one weed from the ground. They should try to keep the root intact. Weeds must be no longer than the paper.
Clip paper to board, then clip top of weed to the left side of the board (left-handed kids should clip weed on the right).
Draw a scale drawing of the weed.
Start with a long stem line. Mark leaf placement with short lines alone the stem line. Then draw the contour of the leaves. Look closely at the leaf veins and draw them. Add flowers and roots. Finally, draw irregularities such as bite marks.
What a fabulous way to end the art year. We practiced our drawing skills and weeded the garden path. Bonus!
Here are some more photos from Art Show 2014. Thanks again to Devan, our art show chair (and party planning/layout genius) and all the AMAZING art show and art room volunteers who put this show together.
Our volunteers are the best! Our school is blessed to have the help of parents year-round in the art room. We had some amazing, hard-working parents who hung this show in just three days.
It was our last show with Devan as chair. We will really miss her vision and energy. How fortunate we are to have had her help these past four shows.
SSF art show 2014: paint cans spill a rainbow of color down the stairs; Bob Ross painting video plays throughout the evening.
We had our annual art show last week. It was amazing! Over 1000 pieces of art; at least two from each student. This show featured a rainbow theme (designed by Devan, our AMAZING parent volunteer art show chair), a FEAST! food art area, and an iPad photography/digital art showcase.
Rainbow theme:
Devan used real paint cans purchased at Home Depot. The colored ‘paints’ are plastic table cover rolls. The 10 cans on the stage were drilled and hung on monofilament. Hidden PVC pipe stands hold up the freestanding paint cans.
The show featured Devan’s amazing freestanding paint can decorations.
Giant crayons and a rainbow of color in front of the plaster masks.
Five FEAST! art projects (clockwise from left): clay cupcakes with roses and alphabet pasta; Seurat pointillist food; Thanksgiving feast collage; cooking plate collage; Wayne Thiebaud geometric dessert.
Andy Warhol activity:
We had a coloring contest again this year. I used a blank Campell’s soup can sheet courtesy of E is for Explore blog. Click here to get yours. We used a real soup pot and real cans of Campbell’s soup.
Our interactive coloring contest ties in to the FEAST! unit. Check out the pot of crayons!
iPad Art Showcase:
We put the iPad showcase right up at the entrance. I printed out a few samples of the second grade iPad photography project, then stationed two iPads looping slideshows of our other digital art projects.
This achieved three goals: 1) display student art, 2) advocate for the art program and 3) thank the parents who raised money to bring iPads to our school.
iPad photography print outs, plus looping slideshows at the iPad art showcase.
Thanks to our PTO and parent volunteers
Our entire art program is made possible by the parents at our school. A big thank you to the art room and art show volunteers for all their hard work during the year and for three CRAZY days hanging the show. We also had the help of a college student, Abby, who spent two weeks observing our art program. The gorgeous room layout and decorations are the vision of our amazing art show chair, Devan, a professional party planner. We are so lucky to have Devan on board.
100% of our art program is funded by our school PTO. Thank you.
Our first graders just completed their Mother’s Day project – portraits of their Moms in the style of Amadeo Modigliani.
Day 1: Learn about Modigliani’s style; practice drawing.
We talked about how the artist’s style included almond-shaped eyes, long skinny noses, tiny lips, and long thin necks. Click here for my Modigliani powerpoint. Students did a practice drawing of Mom on copy paper.
We drew our portraits on watercolor paper using pencil. We colored with oil pastels. I offered several skin color options. Students were encouraged to rub two colors of oil pastel in the background.
This year I sent the classroom teachers an explanatory email with images of Modigliani’s work and a link to his biography. The email will go home in the weekly classroom newsletter. (Why? Last year a mother commented she didn’t understand her gift – when I explained she said she had never heard of Modigliani).
Here is a 2-minute video of Modigliani’s portraits of women.
Our 6th graders did another digital art project this week: a quick artwork inspired by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. We used iPads, but the good news is you can do this project from a computer just as easily.
Lichtenstein’s Thinking of Him, 1963.
After looking at Lichtenstein’s 1963 painting Thinking of Him, students used their iPads to do a Google search for Lichtenstein images. They saved their five favorites to the camera roll.
I asked what they noticed about Lichtenstein’s work. Students noticed word bubbles, a lot of blonds and cartoons. I asked them to review their saved images and look for
everyday items
primary colors (red/yellow/blue)
black outlines
dots, especially for flesh tone
We talked about appropriation in art. During the 1960s, Lichtenstein and other pop artists such as Andy Warhol used pre-existing images of everyday objects (i.e. comics) as a starting points in their artworks. I passed out enlargements from old newspaper comics, plus the little wax paper primary color comics from Bazooka bubblegum. I explained that these types of images were well-known back in the early 1960s. Even the dots (known as ‘benday’ dots) Lichtenstein used were appropriated from comic book printing techniques used back in the 1960s.
The digital Art Project
We used the free, online TATE kids dotshop website to create our digital artworks. (note: dotshop is compatible with iPad and computer).
Create a digital Lichtenstein-inspired portrait using TATE kids DotShop. Teacher example. Betty Draper photo via AMC
Steps to create a Lichtenstein-inspired digital artwork:
1.Open TATE Kids
2. a) use the camera option to take a selfie or picture of your friends or b) appropriate a well-known image from the internet (e.g. Betty Draper, Sponge Bob, Arnold Schwartzenegger).
3. Adjust color and benday dot size.
4. Color in the background a solid color
5. optional: outline in black
6. optional: add text.
7 Save within the website, then save to camera roll.
8. Turn in to digital turn in folder on Google Drive (click here to read about how we turn in digital art).
6th grade results
Kenna’s appropriated image, includes dots, pink background and text.
Appropriating an image: Lucas found an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger, added benday dots, colored the background red, and added text.
Enjoy!
Do you have a favorite Lichtenstein-inspired art project?
