5th Grade Picasso Cubism Portraits

5th Graders are learning about the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso.  They are learning about the art style Cubism, invented by Picasso.  Students made their own cubist portraits in the style of Picasso.  Students paired up, one student posed while the other drew their partner and then they switched.  The student posing was to have two different poses.  The student drawing drew both poses and combined them to create one portrait.  

Here are the important terms we focused on when making this project.

Portrait:  The drawing or painting of person.

Geometric Shapes: Precise forms such as squares, circles, triangles, and rectangles.

Cubism: An artistic style, that describes painting of a person, place or thing that are made of geometric shapes and many different perspectives.

Here are some of Picasso's artwork we looked at in creating these portraits:

      

 

  

We also discussed warm and cool colors.

Warm colors are your reds, pinks, oranges, yellows, and browns. (think of the sun)

Cool colors are your greens, blues, and purples. (think of water or a winter's day)

Students were asked to use warm colors on one side of the face and cool colors on the other side of the face.  We used oil pastel to add color and practiced blending techniques.

Teacher Example

Student Examples

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:

Kindergarten Secondary Colors

The kindergartners last project was focused on just the primary colors: Red, Yellow, and Blue.  With the start of our next project we explored why the primary colors are important and what they do.  We discovered when we mix the primary colors together you get the secondary colors: Orange, Violet, and Green.

We watched this video to help remember our primary and secondary colors.

Using the primary colors students made their own secondary colors to create painted paper.  Students had about 7 minutes at each table and then they rotated to another table to make a different secondary color.

We've made tons of painted paper to use for our next fall inspired project.

3rd Grade Analogous Color Monsters

3rd Graders continued discussing the color wheel.  Building from our previous project discussing primary and secondary colors students explored analogous colors.  Analogous colors are 3 to 4 colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. By using these three analogous color schemes:

1. red, orange, yellow  
2. blue, violet, red
3. blue, green, yellow

Students picked an analogous color scheme and using the straw watercolor blowing technique students made monsters.  Students used the collage technique to add features to their monsters and to give them a background. 

Teacher Example:

Student Examples