Mini Camouflage Abstracts

Our last project of the year was this little camouflage abstract. 

I say camouflage because each little painting started with a cut-out from a cereal box or catalogue that was glued in the center of the 6" square illustration board. I had a lot of precut recycled cut-outs so kids had quite an assortment to choose from. I tried to have some with several colors and some with only 2 or 3 for kids who wanted something easier.

Then, using Sharpie pens, the kids extended lines from the cut-out to the edge of the board wherever two colors met. You can see what I mean in the above photo. Where the red changes to white, that is the start of one Sharpie line. Kids just moved their finger around the edge of the cut-out, looking for where one color met another.

I also made the rule that one Sharpie line could not cross another.

Then students used water color to try to mix the exact color on the cut-out and extend that color out to the edges of their board. I also said they, as artists, might choose to leave some sections white.

You can see in the first painting in the above photo how this student worked to achieve the variations of blue. These were done by 2nd graders and the concept of making tints using more water instead of adding white was a new skill for many!!

I love the graphic variety in these little gems!! I also told the kids that one of the reasons we were doing them now, was to remind them that they could easily do pictures like these at home during the summer using recycled cut-outs to start them out.

This is one of those absolutely "no fail" projects where everyone is successful. I think they did a GREAT job -- as I look at the photos above I am having a hard time finding some of the camouflaged shapes and I know where they are!!!!

Happy Summer!!

Presidents' Day Art & Math with Quarters

Here's a fun way to learn about quarters for both math and art. 

I actually started thinking about this awhile ago when I drove by this wall art in the neighborhood.

The lesson starts out with the kids creating the background so that it can dry by the time they are ready to glue on their coin rubbings. This background is wet on wet watercolor.

Then students get to the real work. Using my favorite PRANG colored pencils, they rub the heads side and the tail side of various quarters, noticing all the details. Working in small groups, and using small magnifying glasses, each group records everything they see on their coins on a record sheet.

Later we record their observations in chart form and discuss them. We actually do this for all coins at another time and have the charts to compare what kids find on them all.

Quarters are such great coins to study since they have started being minted for each state. Depending on the age and skills of your students you can decide how much research to have them do as they discover phrases on some of the state quarters. For example, the Hawaii 2008 coin has Hawaiian words that kids can look up on the computer to find the translation. For those of you who are curious, the Hawaiian translation is "The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness." Nice, huh??!!

You can also decide whether to have kids label their rubbings and how detailed to be. Another option is to have students color in each state on a U.S. map to match the color of their rubbing:

I am getting ready to this with 2nd graders and will share some of their art results as they are available. I should mention that I also plan to extend this lesson in math to augment place value/tens and ones work that these students are doing.

Happy Presidents' Day -- hope you enjoy celebrating on your 3 day weekend, too!!!

Winter Pastel Landscapes

For this 2-day project, 3rd Graders started by observing the snowmen in the book, Snowmen in the Night, noticing how the light shining on the spheres of the snowmen created a 3D impression. We also noticed how the snow was shaded in various places. There are many scenes in the book to observe how large snowmen appear closer and are placed near the bottom of the page, and smaller snowmen placed higher on the page give the appearance of distance. We discussed foreground, mid-ground and background in landscapes.

I demonstrated how students could cut a  9" X 12" piece of white drawing paper to create 2 pieces that would be their snow and a center piece that we would use for one of the snowmen. I had some extra smaller pieces of white paper for those who wanted to make a smaller snowman.

Students positioned one of the side pieces above along the bottom of their landscape paper and the other one overlapping it on the other side to create two hills of snow, one behind the other. A few kids had trouble with how to do this spatially. 

They shaded the back hill where it met the front hill. (See examples further down.)

Next we used the center piece of drawing paper to make a snowman, shading one side where the moonlight would not be hitting it. The only tip here is to ask kids to use the side of their pastel and not to press too hard. They blended the pastel with their finger. I had an assortment of blues, purples and grays for them to choose from.

Students used their scraps to color accessories, using plain crayons. I had them use glue stick to affix the snow and snowmen before they started the caps, scarves, etc. They colored and added those as they went. They used pastels to make a moon in the sky.

On Day 2 students used white tempera and pastels to create trees in the distance. They dip the pastel in the paint and, starting at the bottom of the tree, zig zag up and down from left to right. When they no longer see white, it is time to re-dip. They move up the tree making each layer a bit shorter, until they reach the top of the tree. This is a fun technique that can actually be used to make a whole snow scene, people and all!

Of course, kids invariably found their own way to make trees, which is just fine!

The final step was to add snow. We used the white tempera and applied it by stamping with a cotton swab. I cut those in half, since they really only need one side. Might as well conserve when we can!!

Can you find the little guy wearing a sombrero? LOVE IT!!!!

New Spring Blossom Collages

Using the blossoming trees around our school as inspiration (see here), students can bring our hallways alive with Spring!!

They start on Day #1 painting tints,  using acrylic paint -- white and the color of their choice. We also had some colored tissue paper that kids could paint with white to create tints. The advantage of using acrylic is that students can experiment with keeping the paint thick (like Van Gogh).
 

The next step is to cut and glue branches and blossoms, overlapping the blossoms for depth.

 After the blossoms are glued, students can add darker areas with crayon or oil pastels representing the depth of the centers of flowers.

I am thinking these would be spectacular displayed all together on a hallway bulletin board!!

Winter Reflection Collage

Every now and then I resurrect a reflection lesson (see here) with a different theme. Last year it was with pumpkins in a puddle (here) for fall, this year it is with snowmen in the forest with the addition of collaged ice skaters on the pond.

We start by folding the paper in half (lengthwise) and use landscape setting. I use regular copy paper from the printer rather than heavier drawing paper. Kids draw their forest scene with snowmen using Crayola Watercolor markers (they seem to work the best for me). You can find some great Google images of forests, mountains, etc. to show your class for reference. Caution students to draw their trees and snowmen sitting right on the fold line. This is REALLY important!!



Then spray or brush water on the white part of the paper and carefully fold it up onto the colored part. Press lightly and unfold to see the reflection on the pond.



You could stop right there and call it a day. Because these are on copier paper, they dry REALLY quickly.

Or, if you have the time, have student draw and color ice skaters that they can cut out and glue onto the ice. We used drawing paper (90# I think) for this step. (We do quick gesture sketches on scratch paper to get the positions to show movement.) This is a good opportunity to mention creating the illusion of depth  with overlapping and size of objects!



In the example below, the student took time to go back after the paper was dry and before gluing the skaters to add extra touches of color to the forest using oil pastels.
She also spattered white paint for that snowy touch.

This is a pretty quick, fun project for that wintery feeling!!

P.S. - Blogger's new feature of allowing you drag and drop pictures right onto your post is VERY cool. Thank you Blogger!!

More Picasso Fractured Faces for Winter

After we did our Frankenstein lesson (see here) I started thinking of other options for this lesson. I did a quick Google search for Picasso Snowmen and found some full body examples, but no portraits. Thinking that kids would have fun with that variation I gave it a try. 

Instead of cutting out the face, I tried painting the 2 halves, shading for a bit of dimension. The background is pastel in the complementary color to the blue in the face. The pastels could be left like this, or smoothed over with a bit of paper towel for a blended look.

All the details were drawn on a separate piece of paper and colored with marker or crayon.

The last step is to cut them out, arrange them in a fractured (or Cubist) form and glue.

I like the idea of backing the whole piece in a color to complement the colors used in the collage/drawing.

The whole purpose of this exercise was to play around with breaking apart faces/profiles and gaining some understanding of what Picasso was experimenting with. I guess you can see that the possibilities are unlimited. I hope some of you give it a try with your students trying some other options!!

Picasso and Fractured Frankensteins

Last week one of our third grade teachers wanted to try out this lesson that she had seen on Pinterest using Picasso and Halloween as the motivation. So I helped out. (I wish I knew the original source to share with you, but all she had was a photo on her I-Phone and I don't have that information.)

We started with a little Picasso background and a Smartboard illustrated discussion about Cubism and its origins with Picasso and Braque. Students notice placement of eyes, nose, etc. and we talked about profile view vs. full face view.

Then, armed with the following guidelines, kids started cutting and glueing.
They had:

•  2 pieces of green construction paper (9" X 11"), one light and one darker     

•  1 strip of black construction paper (about 2" X 8")
•  1 piece each of black and white construction paper (about 4" X 6")  

•  1 large piece of construction paper forbackground (12" X 18") 

Students needed very little help as they created these fractured Frankenstein faces!!