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!!!

Colored Pencil Chevrons in 45 Minutes (or less)

Here is a quick, one session exercise to practice value with colored pencils.

Start with grid paper and mark the points of the chevron like this:

Kids can use a ruler, or just a little pre-marked index card like above.

Once the lines are drawn, the coloring begins! I like the idea of starting with 3 distinct areas to color -- that is 3 different values (light, medium, dark), but you could have students create a greater number of values if you like, but that can be trickier. I think this is a good time to talk to kids about controlling the pressure they put on their pencil (or crayon, if you like that media better).

When the chevrons are colored, cut them out.

Then the fun begins as students arrange the chevrons to make an endless number of designs. I like to share quilting examples at this point for inspiration. The first examples below are using the six primary/secondary colors.

This one is a bit more intricate, using overlapping chevrons to create smaller triangles.

Of course, you can use fewer numbers of chevrons to make quicker designs. This 4-chevron one emphasizes warm and cool colors.

There are MANY quilting books for kids out there, but I particularly like using the book, Eight Hands Round, because it is an alphabet book of different quilt blocks that can lead to many other shapes to explore!!

'Tis the Week Before Christmas

As our Winter Holiday approaches, 3rd graders finish up these Tumbling People:

Here is how we started -- contemplating playing cards strewn about:

 Students used one card and drew their composition with pencil. Then they outlined the rectangles with black crayon to keep the watercolor from "traveling" between them. ( I demonstrated how to do this -- overlapping, not crossing over previous pencil lines, starting from the bottom and moving towards the top, etc.)

 Next came the watercolor: plain water first, then drop in two or 3 colors and watch the color run and mix together -- just like magic!!

 While the paint dried, students made gesture drawings the same size as their cards using white crayon.

Then it was time to place their figures and glue them on using dots of white glue.

This took one class period -- 50 minutes. Some kids had time to make a figure for each of their rectangles, others had one or two, but all the compositions were delightful!!

We ran out of time but in a second period we could have cut out the tumbling people and mounted them on a variety of different backgrounds. Here is what that might have looked like:

I think it is interesting to see how the same figures take on different moods with the varying backgrounds. This would provide a good opportunity to discuss positive and negative space. It's fun to experiment!!

Overlapping Quadrilaterals (and other shapes!)

I love listening to children using academic language, and especially when that vocabulary comes from multiple disciplines. With that in mind,  I wanted these 4th grade students to work with shapes they had learned in math, and apply their knowledge in Art.

We started with a Hang Spider game where the missing word was "quadrilateral", a word from last year's state math test. I wanted to recirculate some shape vocabulary.

I demonstrated how to draw and cut some of these shapes. Students' goal was to aim for quadrilaterals, but if they ended up with other shapes, that was fine, too. We got quite a variety!!

 The first step was to fold a piece of cardstock (6" X 9") in half. They tried to visualize what the final shape would be if they drew half of it from the fold. They drew the outside lines of their shape, beginning and ending on the fold. Then they drew the inside lines of the shape and . . .

 cut on all their pencil lines. I had a few extra papers so kids could experiment.

When they had cut out a minimum of three shapes, it was time to use crayons to color patterns or designs on them.

I set a couple of parameters for the coloring phase: 1 shape had to be black and white, 1 shape had to be made of 2 complementary colors (opposites on the color wheel) and other shapes could be anything the artist liked.

When it came to gluing, which was done with Elmer's Glue All (my favorite glue) in 4 oz. bottles, I asked students to make sure that their shapes either overlapped (creating black negative spaces) or touched another shape. Our back ground was an 8 1/2 " X 11" piece of black card stock. This was another opportunity to get "good" at making little dots of glue!!!!

 Most students were very thoughtful as they decided on their composition. Part of my lesson was to emphasize negative space, angles, borders and color placement.

Here are some of our results:

 I told the boy who made the above piece that it reminded me a bit of the front of a car (the grill area). He, of course, thought that was pretty cool!

 The above piece got more and more intricate as he played around with his shapes. It was interesting to see how many children opted for symmetry.

 I had mentioned that going "off the page" was totally fine, but not too many students made that choice. This girl planned her black and white quadrilateral with that intention in mind because she colored the back of that piece with black and white stripes so that it would look planned from the back!!

Another option for this lesson is to make it sculptural. I had intended to try it out with classes but did not have the opportunity. To exercise this option, cut a strip of black card stock to glue standing up on the 9" X 12" card stock. Students color BOTH sides of their shapes and glue them (still overlapping) on the black strip.

I am hoping that these children go home and experiment with other shapes and compositions. Since it requires no special media, it might happen:)))