Dot Day Audition

A short walk from school we have a wonderful park overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In that park is a bush I think of as "the polka-dot bush" just waiting to be the inspiration for a piece of art to celebrate  International Dot Day (Sept. 15, 2017). This day celebrates Peter Reynold's book, The Dot. It is kind of hard to see the blossoms in this photo, but up close they really do look like polka dots!! Also, beyond the fence in the background is the ocean.

I like to ask students to imagine what this landscape would look like if we removed all the bushes, the trees and the fence. We might have something that looked like this:

This first layer was done with pastels, softened by smearing them with a tissue. Then we start adding the trees, bushes, walkways, etc. using water soluble crayons(that can be painted over with water if desired) for everything except the front bush. That is done with cake tempera, sponge painted on ( although regular tempera or acrylics would work, too). This is a good opportunity to use art vocabulary: background, mid-ground and foreground.

Meanwhile, the paper for the dots is painted, using warm colors and allowing the colors to run together a bit. This was also done with cake tempera. Branches are added with crayons.

Students are asked to cut circles of different sizes, trying to include a variety of colors. They can use lids to trace the circles, but they can also cut freehand.

The last step is gluing on the circles to complete the polka-dot bush.

An option would be to outline the dots with a marker as seen in the example on the right below.

I'm not sure which Dot Day projects I'll use this year. I have some other options here, and here, and here.

Hope everyone is off to a great new school year!!!!

Fall Leaf Art - Audition

Fortunately I have some great trees right outside my home that I can visit to collect motivation for this leaf painting project. 

 Last year I used them for this totally different kind of lesson (here).

This year kids will be using the leaves to experiment with mixing primary colors to make the colors they see in the real fall leaves. Part one of the lesson is to encourage students to keep some colors clear and strong as they paint, rather then ending up with a muddy mess. To do this they start with 4 blobs of yellow in each of 4 quadrants (good math vocabulary) of their newspaper. They have the other 2 primary colors (red and blue) to mix in with the yellow to create their fall colors.

 I like using newspaper for this because a) it provides some texture to the leaf, b) it allows me to reinforce that we can recycle and use found papers at home rather than buying paper to use, and 3) it is really easy for little hands to cut.

On a separate sheet of newspaper kids can experiment with mixing any combination of the three colors, discovering that this is where brown comes from!! Once one discovers it, they all catch on and the muddier the better! Success for everyone.

While these color sheets are drying, each student gets a piece of card stock to experiment with watercolors. This can be done on the same day or a second day, depending on your time constraints. I actually like to do these on two different days, making a whole lesson on the differences between painting with tempera/or acrylics and watercolor. This is also a good time to let kids experiment with what happens when you blot watercolor with plastic wrap, sprinkle salt on it, or spray it with water drops.

When all the painted papers are dry, the composition begins. Kids can trace around the real leaves to make the leaves they will cut out. They can also paint the back of real leaves with various colors (I used white here) and make leaf prints.

When leaves are cut out, students can experiment with composition. I like to talk about size, direction of leaves, and overlapping, depending on the grade level. Sometimes I like to talk about setting one leaf apart (that is why there is only one white leaf in my sample) like Van Gogh had just one white iris in his painting of irises.

I am thinking about having kids cut out around the blue area and gluing the whole thing on another piece of board, like this:

. . . but I haven't quite decided about this step yet:)  That is what auditions are for!!

Papier Mache Leaf Displays - 3 Variations

Remember the papier mache leaves we made the last 2 sessions??
The 3 below were painted using the paintings of Kim MacConnel as inspiration. You can see his work here. I love his abstracts for their colors and patterns!! You can find Parts 1 and 2 of this lesson here and here.

Well, here is Part 3, with 3 ways to display the leaves.

Our first variation is to create sculpture with the leaves. Glue All and clothespins to hold the leaves will work, but a parent or teacher manning hot glue guns at a station for kids to rotate through is faster if you have the man-power. I suppose older kids could be trusted with this step, but it always makes me nervous to put hot glue guns in the hands of children in a classroom.

These are mounted on black illustration board.

Combining the leaves gives students an opportunity to experiment with  "form"

Option #2 is mounting the leaves flat on illustration board (or cardstock) with at least one edge outside the boundary. This provides an opportunity to discuss positive and negative space.

Display Option #3 is to make a mobile. These were hard to photograph showing the dimension, but I think you can get the idea. You can see the hole punched in the leaf with an awl (a metal skewers, too). The leaves are hung with fine monofilament fishing line so it looks like they are falling. One of our science units is "Balance and Motion" and these mobiles give students practice in getting their leaves to balance.

Here are the "MacConnel" leaves hanging from a twig. We have lots of trees with fallen twigs around school, so it is easy to have students go out and find a suitable ones.

This Mondrian inspired mobile is hanging from a small portion cup with 4 holes punched at "12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock. Again, fishing line is tied on the line and in the punched holes in the cup. You can see the close up below.

This last example is a combinaton of sponge painted leaves and leaves painted with colors to match famous artists' works.

Most of these leaves were painted with acrylic so they have some shine. If you use a more matte finish, you might spray the leaves with a shiny glaze before the final assembly.

My original thought was to do class mobiles -- large affairs with kids hanging their all their leaves from one large branch -- but that's not going to happen this hear.
Happy papier macheing!!!

Floating Spheres at MacArthur Park

For the past week the idea of painted spheres has been floating around in my mind -- just like the painted spheres floating at MacArthur Park (link to post) that I posted about a week ago. In thinking about doing a sphere project with kids, I decided to try out some different media.

I almost never have kids do a project that I haven't experimented with first -- unless it is purely a "discovery" experience. Good thing I tried this one out because my first idea was a flop -- which I am happy to share to spare anyone else from having to try it!!

I thought about tracing circles on the back of wrapping paper, then flipping the paper over and making black lines to define shapes (like the spheres in the lake) and shading the sphere to make it look 3 dimensional. To add to the dimensional illusion, kids would glue the spheres overlapping on (and in slits in) painted acetate.

Well . . .  the tracing part went just fine.

 Then things started to go south! Once I turned it over and tried to color with black on the wrapping paper, the slick surface of the paper got in the way and was tough to get really black; shading for depth was a nightmare (see red sphere below). So I decided to try it on the back side of the wrapping paper (below, left). Again, the slick surface made the color look washed out -- and there is almost nothing I dislike more than faded looking color!!! I tried it with oil pastels -- same thing (and I didn't want this to be a painting project, so I didn't get the paints out!).

OK. Then it was on to the acetate -- except I was doing this over Labor Day weekend and couldn't find any acetate at home, so I tried it with plastic wrap, UHG!! I managed to get through the process, but it would be way too hard for little ones as it kept moving all over the place.

I used acrylic for this. Sorry for the blurry focus!

 Once it was dry, I made some slits in it so the spheres could slip in and look like they were submerged a bit. That part was actually OK.

So then I decided to try making the spheres on regular drawing paper and coloring with oil pastels. This worked much better. This would be a good way to have students practice using different color families (primary, secondary, warm/cool).

Warm colors -- solid

Primary colors (plus a surprise pop of secondary)

 I like to show students how Van Gogh used a "surprise pop of a different color (think about his "Irises" with the one white iris in the field of violets) and invite them to "surprise their viewer" by inserting an unexpected color.

This shows primary with a "pop" of secondary.

Finally, I imagined what these spheres would look like if I used painted papers that I always have accumulated in  

Spring. So, of course, I painted some papers to try that out using warm colors.

A few trees in the background . . . hmmmmm . . . maybe.

 Black outlining for the spheres . . . seemed like a good idea at first, but looking at it now, maybe not.

So what did I learn this Labor Day?? 

• I learned that painting spheres is still fun (I always do     some sort of sphere work each year -- see here and here.) 
• I reaffirmed that auditioning art lessons at home is always a good idea before taking them to the classroom. It's good to know what some of the pitfalls might be!!
• Think I'll try painting left-over laminating film for my water feature before springing for buying acetate. That might work better!
• I'm also thinking that this would be a smashing collaborative project, where kids could design spheres and make a GIANT lake collage with them!!

Isn't it fun that we can keep on learning forever??!!!!

Why Doughnut Art??

Well, I could say that the reason for making doughnut art is to practice tinting and shading to create the illusion of depth; 

or I could say it is to reinforce the study of shapes; or I could say it is to experiment with color or different media; or learn about Wayne Thiebaud's art . . .  One could go on and on. 

One could also say that I wanted a good excuse to visit my favorite donut shop in Costa Mesa, California (right next to Newport Beach) and buy a bunch of their cinnamon crumb cake donuts -- YUM!! 

After using these as inspiration for art I would, of course, have to eat them. I actually make the trek to this shop (one hour drive each way) often, just to buy the donuts. I eat a few and then wrap the rest singly and freeze them for when the craving strikes. Seriously, these are JUST THE BEST!!!!

But I am digressing -- back to the ART.

This project starts by having students use a ruler to divide a square paper into fourths. That is a whole lesson in itself for some. (How to start measuring at the end of the ruler - or where the zero would be if we considered the ruler as a number line -, how to hold the ruler in 2 places so it doesn't wobble, how to measure and mark in two places so the lines are equal distances apart, etc).

(For younger students, or to accommodate time constraints, you could have each student draw just one donut instead of four.)

Then, using photos of donuts (or the real thing), kids sketch and shade their 4 donuts. Notice that each donut just about touches the edges so that the donut "fills the space." Sometimes I have students use a little photo icon of a light to remind them where the light source is and where the shadows will be as they are shading. (see here for example: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2010/10/sunny-day-great-shadows.html)

Then comes the color. Instead of using just one media I like to put out crayons, oil pastels, colored pencils and paint so that students can experiment with each. This is a good way to introduce use of materials at the beginning of the year and it is a good way for students to discover for themselves the variations that can be achieved with different media. Oil pastels definitely work best for making the "sprinkles" because of their strong color!

 Once these are done, they can be framed as individual pieces of art . . .

. . . or they can be combined into arrays as collaborative works. I actually like this because it opens up lots of possibilities for integrating with math!!

Here we have 4 X 4 = 16.

And here is 4 X 6 = 24 or 6 X 4 = 24 or "What fraction of the group is Jelly Donuts?" or "If you eat half of this box of donuts, how many are left?"  You get the idea:))

A great Literature Connection for this lesson would be to read Homer Price by Robert McCloskey.

 Just think of all the great math questions one could generate with this illustration!! I can remember hearing this story as a read aloud in, I think, my own 4th grade classroom decades ago!!!

On that note, I think it is time for me to go eat a doughnut or two:))