Saturday, November 29, 2014

Rounding out Autumn Lessons

Good grief Charlie Brown, I'm glad I got to squeeze this post in before December hit.  Before Thanksgiving break all of the final autumn-esque art lessons were finished up.  I mean it is still fall and winter won't "technically" be here for almost another month, but here in Nebraska it sure feels a lot like winter.  I'm not even mad about it, BECAUSE SNOW AND WINTER ARE MY FAVORITE.  

Well to finish off the fall themed posts for the year is a project done by 6th graders.  When developing an art project, especially for my 6th graders, because I see them so seldom I try to see how much art learning can be loaded into one art lesson in the simplest ways possible.  That's usually easier said than done, but I try. 

This here lesson is one that was inspired by the batik look.  Students created backgrounds using a wet on wet technique with liquid watercolors.  While the watercolors were still wet students crumpled up the paper, the watercolors mixed together and WA-LA these fabulous backgrounds were created.  The next step was drawing fall themed produce and filling them in with oil pastel.  Students used a similar batik process as done here, crumpling up there objects 7 to 8 times and going over with watered down black tempera paint.  

The students were so into the destruction (being able to crumple the paper) of their artwork in the background, but some were a little more reluctant when it came to the objects.  They knew the end result would be pretty awesome, but there mentality was "I just worked so hard on this and I love the way it works, why would I want to destroy it?"  For some this was a challenge, but we fought the good fight and made some pretty awesome art.  

Some of these 6th graders just rocked it.




4th graders made these fall inspired warm/cool drawings with mod podge and oil pastels.



I hope your thanksgiving was fantastic.......AND with that being said bring on my favorite season, Christmas, and PLEASE LOTS OF SNOW!

Monday, November 3, 2014

Did Someone Say Fall? The Fall Art Edition

Halloween is over...all the tricks and treats have been upon us AND even though I'm not even mad that every store now has their Christmas stuff up (I may or may not be a winter-loving, Christmas-ite) it still is fall.  As I am finally getting around to sharing some of the projects that were started in September, I hope you're excited too see them.

I'm not really a save the best for last type of girl so let's start off with my favorite fall themed project of the season.

I bring you these beautifully done painting by 3rd graders.  This lesson was super simple, we covered some terminology looking at composition and value.

Day 1: draw pumpkins, paint pumpkins, paint background.
Day 2: oil pastels on pumpkin........AND the dreaded
glitter sky that just needed to be done.

(Oh, you say I still have glitter all over my body from weeks ago? Let me tell you it was worth it.)

Without further adieu:





I'm going to keep the rest of this simple and let the artwork (almost) speak for itself.

Here we have 4th grade patterned pumpkin beauties in their zentangle pumpkin patch.



The 2nd grade pumpkin patch has creatures and some fantastical complement colors:





With all these pumpkin patches the 1st graders came in to save the day and brought us some scarecrows.  Notice some of the silly faces brought by inspiration from The Little Scarecrow Boy




The 1st graders also wanted the scarecrows to have something nice to look at during the nighttime hours.