Kindergarten - Unit 2 - Winter birds

Project Focus:  Combining shapes to make a new object, texture and landscape

This project began by a discussion on texture.  The students then used a dry paint brush and black paint to paint scratchy textures on white paper.  Next, they created texture by drawing patterns on paper then painted over it with watercolor paint.  They later used this to create their land and birds.  Next, they learned what a landscape is - a picture of land.  They create the trees from their textured paper and the snowy horizon line by tearing white paper.  Finally, they created their winter birds after being introduced to one of my favorite artist, Charley Harper.  He started off as a graphic designer and it shows in his paintings of birds.  The students could really see how he used geometric shapes to create their birds similar to the way Harper did.

Kindergarten -Unit 2-Polar Express

In kindergarten art, I like to keep reinforcing to the students that all objects can be created by drawing shapes together.  They did this for this project with a little inspiration from one of my all time favorite book and movie during this time of year, The Polar Express.  The students watched a short clip from the movie then set off on creating their own train adventures.

Fifth Grade - Unit 2 - Reductive Printmaking

For this lesson, the 5th graders learned a new printmaking technique that allows them to use more than one color in a printmaking project.  This new method is called reductive printmaking.  They were inspired by many of the famous pet portrait artist popular today such as...

Artist James Dean's Pete the Cat,  George Rodrigue's Blue Dog and Laurel Burch's Cats

Artist: James Dean, Red Flowers

Artist: George Rodrigue, Alice in Wonderland

Artist: Laurel Burch, Two Cats 

Student Work

Second grade - Winter cabins

Big Ideas:  Aritst: Pieter Brugel the Elder, Form & Simple Perspective

Our Second grade art curriculum focuses on creating form and an illusion of space.  We did this in unit 1 with out dessert drawings learning to draw the top and sides of a cylinder and how to add value (light and dark areas) within an object.  In this lesson we take it a bit further by learning how to draw a shape with multiple sides and how to create the illusion of depth by making items appear smaller as they go back into space.  Our inspiration for this project was the artist Pieter Brugel the Elder.  He beautifully creates depth in his painted landscapes and also manages to use them to tell a story about the lives of those in his works.

Artwork by Pieter Brugel the Elder

Artwork by Pieter Brugel the Elder

Student Work:

Fifth Grade - Unit 1 - Tropical Scenes

Focus of Project:  Line variety, movement and value in a work of art.

5th Graders learned about a current young artist from Hawaii, Coleen Wilcox.  Wilcox creates amazing paintings and design for surf boards and draws inspiration for her work from the beautiful tropical environment where she lives. The students observed how she combines the elements of art to create movement and unity within her work.  Their challenge was to create an underwater scene by also making careful choices of the elements of art to also create movement and unit within their own work. I think our students did an amazing job with these!