3rd Grade Ghost-Eye Trees

This week we are finishing our tints and shades lesson using The Ghost-Eye Tree as inspiration. Last week we painted our concentric circles (working on tints, shades and turning the brush as we painted) here.

It was interesting to watch kids try to visualize the trunk of the tree (looking like a capital "Y") as they cut. You learn so much about students' perceptual skills!

They used their scraps to add branches (hopefully with natural, organic shapes). Some chose to cut silhouettes of a fence to add detail.

We also talked about how some artists add a little surprise element to their art. The example I used was Miro's "People and Dog in the Sun" with its little spot of yellow near the center. I had the kids use the skills they learned last year to make a cylinder look 3-dimensional, only applying the concept of light source to a pumpkin sphere. They were asked to glue that little pumpkin somewhere in their scene as the only element that was NOT silhouetted.

Kids were "happy as clams" as they watched their scene take form. I heard a lot of conversation about "making the branches go in a certain direction so it would look windy" and "contrast between the lighter tints and the black silhouettes" and "thinner branches look kind of like spider webs."

The bonus of this project is that 1) EVERYBODY is successful and 2) the hallways have a subtle touch of Halloween flavor without being ghoulish!!!