4th Grade Fantasy Forest-Creating Space

For this lesson students focused on the art element of space.

We explored this by creating fantasy trees.

I first showed students my example of the project they will be doing, and simply asked the question, "What do you see?"

After a few minutes of discussing we came up with two things:

1. The trees are changing size going from large to small.

2. The trees are overlapping, you never see a full tree.

Two ways to create space are through size and overlapping, which we used to do this project.

We started by drawing a diagonal line across the page.  This line acted as a guide to keep our trees in a row.  I then handed out a sheet that had creative ways to draw trees on them given to me by a fellow art teacher.  Students were asked to design a tree with an interesting shape and pattern.  We talked a little bit about reality vs fantasy and how we identify our trees as trees, but they are not realistic.  Students were instructed to draw that tree on that line starting large and drawing them small until they ran out of space.  We then made that line into a road and students could add a mountain, hill, moon, or sun in the background.

To add color we used water color.  We discussed warm and cool colors and how those colors can help us identify a season, a particular temperature, or time of day.  Students were instructed to either use warm colors on the sky and cool colors on the ground and vice versa.

To add a little more interest to our trees we discussed analogous colors: colors right next to each other on the color wheel.  Using the color wheel as a tool students painted their trees using analogous colors.

This lesson enabled students to really practice proper watercolor techniques.

2nd Grade Complementary Color Giraffes

2nd Grade students are learning about the color wheel, and our particular focus is on complementary colors.

Complementary Colors:  Colors that are across from each other on the color wheel and when placed next to each other they make the colors appear brighter.

I started the lesson by asking students what is a compliment?  

Most students answered, "when someone says something nice to you."

We can think of complementary colors in the same way.  They compliment each other, together they look nice.

Our focus was on these complementary colors:

Blue and Orange:

Violet and Yellow:

Red and Green:

After we learned a little about color theory we moved onto the next step of our project.  Students followed my directed drawing  step by step to draw a giraffe.

To color our giraffes students were allowed to pick one set of complementary colors.  One color would be used to paint the body the other to paint the spots.  As a final touch we added giraffe hair with construction paper that was the same color as the spots.

Teacher Examples:

  

Student Giraffes:

Being in the Holiday season many students chose red and green to make a "Christmas Giraffe."

These Giraffes look so fun hanging in the hallway together.

Kindergarten Claude Monet Bridge and Lily Pond

To starts this lesson we read "The Magical Garden of Claude Monet"

Overview

Julie is a happy little girl who lives in Paris, but she wishes she could walk in a country garden. Julie is pleased when her mother decides to take her to visit the most wonderful garden in the world, owned by a great friend of the family. They arrive at their destination, and for this little girl it is like walking in a dreamy world where twisting plants grow as tall as trees. When Julie's dog runs away, she asks the gardener to help find her pet, and soon she and the gardener are friends. But this amiable, bearded old man is a very unusual gardener, for not only does he cultivate his many plants, he also paints beautiful pictures of them. Julie has made a friend of the great impressionist painter, Claude Monet. Based on a true story about the daughter of another fine artist, Berthe Morisot, this charmingly illustrated picture book includes reproductions by author-illustrator Laurance Anholt of a famous waterlilies painting, which Monet completed in his garden at Giverny, a few miles from Paris.

As Claude Monet is recognized for his many paintings of lily pads check out this painting recently auctioned for 43 million dollars! We were inspired by this painting by Claude Monet in creating our work:

"The Japanese Footbridge"

We first did a step by step directed drawing of the bridge.  Students were then given gold paint to paint their bridge. Next using blue, purple, and pink chalks we practiced blending and created our water under the bridge.  Above the bridge we used greens and yellows to create our trees and shrubbery.  To add a final touch we made lily pads by using construction paper and tissue paper.

Teacher Example: 

Student Examples:

1st Grade Pinch Pot Pumpkins

Welcome To Our Pumpkin Patch!

First graders made pinch pot pumpkins using model magic.  Students first made an upside down pinch pot for the bottom and added another piece of model magic for the stem.  We then painted the bottoms orange and the stems green.  

5th Grade Composition Gourds and Pumpkins

For this project 5th graders discussed composition.

Composition: is the placement or arrangement of visual elements in a work of art.

We discussed how generally when we start to draw we put the subject right in the center of the page.  Leaving nothing to the imagination.  For this project students were given pumpkins and gourds to draw from to create an interesting composition.  

We followed these guidelines:

1. The object cannot be in the center of the page, put it on the page in an interesting way.

2. The object should go off the page, the entire object should not be seen.

To color our pumpkins and gourds we used colored pencil focusing on value, looking at the darks and lights.  Students also practiced layering colored pencils to get a complete finished look.

Kindergarten Pinch Pot Lady Bugs

Kindergartners started this lesson by talking about shape vs form.

We then read "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle.

Step by step using model magic students first made a pinch pot, they added a head and pulled up antennas, and poked in eyes with the back of a pencil.  They then divided the pinch pot with a line to make the wings and by rolling small balls and flattening them on the ladybugs body they made spots.

Students were then able to paint there ladybug choosing one color: yellow, red, or green.  They used black to paint the spots and head.

I apologize these little guys don't seem to photograph well and the pictures certainly do not do them justice!