Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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!!!

7 comments:

  1. These look great! Wonderful lesson for this time of year!

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  2. Oh, these look fabulous! I love the way the skies turned out and the contrast of the black trees is marvelous. I'm going to have to look for this book.

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  3. Great way to teach Tints and shades!!

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  4. i agree - this is a good way to get that halloween feeling, while avoiding inappropriate teaching subjects. turned out great - hope to try it before halloween gets here...

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  5. WOW these are fabulous! Great value lesson and they turned out beautiful! I love how they chose different colors for the sky and the silhouette trees are so cool looking!

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  6. I've said it before and I'll say it again--where were you when I was a little girl in art class! I want to be in your art class now, and I am 10.1 times the age I was then! (math problem for the art teacher!) Thank you for your very inspiring blog!

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  7. Bought the book and I tried these with my third graders. What a fun way to teach value!

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