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!

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.

Kindergarteners take Color

Several weeks back, my kindergarten classes dove in head first to the concept of color.

We first explored the world of primary colors and lines to create these masterpieces:

Next up was to explore what the primary colors can do so we painted paper and made the secondary colors.  I've done this every year with my kindergarteners because they really seem to understand the concept of the primary colors making the secondary colors when they do the mixing themselves.

This year I switched it up a little bit, check out the past few years here and here.  Although, you can't go wrong with the colors I think I kind of like the one's from years past better...what do you think?

3rd Grade Positive/Negative Shape Leaves

3rd graders explored positive and negative shapes.  We watched this video:

Students than used a 5in by 5in square to create a leaf, having it touch all four sides. Students then cut out their leaf and traced into onto a black piece of paper.  I instructed students to trace around their 7-8 times having at least 3 go off the page.  Using silver paint students painted around the leaves.  On the second day of the lesson students used oil pastels to create a pattern inside the leaf.

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Kindergarten Secondary Color Pumpkin Landscape

With all the painted paper kindergarteners made students made a fall inspired piece.  Using the secondary color painted paper students practiced our cutting and gluing skills as well as making shapes.  The main shape we focused on was the pumpkin shape using an oval to make the form.  Students could add detail to their pumpkins with black sharpie.

Teacher Example:

Student Examples:

This last one was made by an ELL student, notice the sleeping pumpkin.

1st Grade Fall Prints "Autumn Elegance"

1st graders are taking their first look at printmaking.  As the fall season has arrived we are doing, what I like to call, an "Autumn Elegance" inspired project.  Using real, pressed leaves students experimented with printing leaves.

Collected Leaves:

Using gold paint students painted on the vein side of the leaves and printed on black paper by holding a paper over the leaf and rubbing gently with their hand.

Taking the project a little further we discussed how we see artwork in an art museum.  We came up with the conclusion that art in an art museum is usually presented with a frame.  To finish our project 1st graders could pick between these colors; red, yellow, green, and orange (keeping along with the fall theme.) We talked about the word "matte" and using the color students chose they matted their leave prints with glue.  Students were to try their best to center their print on the matte. With oil pastels students created a pattern around their frame. 

4th Grade Indian Corn Still Life

4th Graders are focusing on these important art concepts in this fall inspired lesson:

Still Life: A painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects.
Contour: Shows the outline of the subject, and not the volume or mass of an object.
Visual Texture: The illusion of a 3D surface on a 2D Surface.  If we were to touch a visual texture, we would not feel what our eyes tell us to expect. (A concept 4th graders have been exploring in science)

To explore these concepts students drew a still life of indian corn, focusing on the contours to show visual texture.  

After students made their contour drawing they outlined it with sharpie.  Next they colored each kernel individually with crayon, blending and overlapping colors to get the desired color.  Students then used wax resist with watercolor to paint the background and areas not covered with crayon.

Student Examples: