Ornamental Corn & Crayon Resist

4th graders had one 50 minute session to create these subtly colored ornamental corn pieces. They had real corn to look at as they sketched and colored enlarged ovals to represent the kernels. (We talked about how Georgia O'Keeffe magnified flowers in her art.) Their goal was to have just 2 or 3 lines of magnified kernels.

Students sketched their large ovals first, then made a white oval in the center of each oval where the light was hitting the kernel. Next, using crayons, they shaded from light to dark to get the illusion of depth in each kernel. They left the background white because they were going to paint over the whole thing with black watercolor for all the deep shadows. 

I find that getting kids to really enlarge can be challenging. This time I had an ear of ornamental corn displayed on the big screen with the document camera. I placed a 1 inch view finder on a section of the kernels so the students could see what they were trying to replicate on their 4" squares. That helped most of them to think "MAGNIFY".

This student really got into mixing and blending his crayon colors to achieve the subtlety of the real ornamental corn colors!!

It makes me happy to walk down this corridor of the school and see these greeting me!!

Yummy Quick Sketches

One of the reasons I love Fall is all the harvest foods and colorful autumnal dishes. Candy corn was pretty popular last year in art rooms. Shine brite zamorano posted some candies rendered by 1st graders (here) inspired by the wonderful photo realism of Margaret Morrison. These middle school school works were pretty impressive, too! (here) Thanks to both bloggers for the idea!!

4th graders were finishing up a project last week and we had 20-25 min. left, so I decided to do a quick candy corn lesson, focusing on just one candy projected on the big screen for all to work from. First, everyone sketched their candy corn, trying to fill their 4" X 4" square. This was a good opportunity to use math vocabulary (angles, parallel lines, diagonal, etc.)

These works were done in crayon.

They noticed the thin cast shadow on the real candy corn and tried to replicate it.

A couple of classes had a little extra time -- just enough for a quick wash of black watercolor for a resist rendering.

I actually don't much care for the taste of candy corn, but I love looking at these!!

Finished Gyotaku

Well, this week we finished up our Gyotaku. Colored the eye of the fish, cut it out (throwing the wadded up scraps in the scrap bowl on the table) and glued with little dots around the edges onto the ocean scenes they made last week. (see here)

Gyotaku Prints and Crayon Resist

Last year I invested in a set of rubber prints for making Gyotaku (Japanese fish prints). You can see last year's lesson here.  I only used them with 2 grade levels last year, so I decided to use them with 2 more grade levels this year (I guess partly to get my money's worth out of the fish!!).

This week, 4th graders watched the video clip of artist Naoki using the printing process. (You can get that link in the above linked lesson.)

Then, one group at a time, students made their prints while the rest of the class created underwater scapes. They had photos of sea grasses, kelp and a variety of coral to look at as they worked with crayon. Then, in the last ten minutes (yep, that is all the time it took) they used liquid water color to make the wet-on-wet wash and create the look of bubbles.

 I demonstrated how to get the look of bubbles by:
          1) Sprinkling small drops of plain water on the drying blue watercolor.
          2) Sprinkling salt
          3) Pressing bubble wrap on the damp paint

I thought that this student did a particularly nice job shading her grasses (to get the feeling of depth). You can also see how the salt not only made the little white bubbles, but also brought out purple from the blue -- LOTS if oohs and ahhs on this project!!!

Here are a few more backgrounds. Next week, student will cut out their fish prints and glue them on. I will be sure to share!

Great movement created by the curvy grasses.

 I like the way this student used bright colors for the coral.

I LOVE the way the water ran on this one!!! Looks like a ray of light coming from above the water.

A Few More Tumbling Cubes

Here are a few more examples of 4th graders work last week. One of my favorite things to do is to post art in the hallway because I get to listen to comments of passers-by. This board is on a main corridor leading to and from the office and the cafeteria, so a lot of kids are using the route as I work. Many discuss with each other the changing art, some stop to chat and discuss the art with me asking how the kids made it, and just about everyone walks on smiling and talking about art.

And here is just a quick note on rulers. It always amazes me how many students can get to 4th grade and still have such a difficult time using a ruler!! For the above art, I asked the classes to use a ruler as a straight edge to draw a border for their work (no measuring involved here -- just holding the ruler flush with the edge of the board and drawing a line -- which I modeled) -- like this:

                                                         Nice job!!

The first day I saw more than one student, however, doing this:

Needless to say, on Day 2 I dramatically modeled how NOT to cross over your arms as you try to draw lines!!!!!

Tumbling Blocks Create "Movement"

For this project, 4th graders started out at the Smartboard discussing the Tumbling Block quilt pattern, observing the angles, color values, shapes and placement that make the cubes look three-dimensional. In addition to the "art talk" we shared stories about quilts and even about building with blocks and having a little brother come along and remove one from the bottom!! Good opportunity to mention "small moment" stories in writing and quilts' history in our country.

Also on Day one, students used a ruler to lightly draw a border and a ground line to represent a table.

Then, using cake tempera, which they watered down considerably in their palette, kids painted a patterned "wallpaper" background a la Matisse and a solid base color. Since the cubes would be done in colored pencil, which reads somewhat muted, I stressed the necessity of having the background colors soft so that the cubes would stand out and be the focal point for the viewer.

Sorry this is upside down -- Blogger wouldn't accept my rotated version! Although kids could decide to use their painted background this way, too.

Day 2 was all about making the cubes (1 small, 1 medium and 1 large). The first cube was a directed lesson and then kids could draw the other two. The "A" and "B" were on the upper corners to help with verbal directions and getting the lines and angles "right". To reinforce the idea that light source creates the value of the colors of each side of the cube I had a lightbulb icon on a smartboard page (see photo above) that students could move around to demonstrate where the light source was for various quilt examples.

As I walked around the room to help when needed, students used first a regular #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencil and then colored pencil on top to shade the darkest side of the cube, medium pressure of a colored pencil for the main value and very light pressure for the top of their cubes. We all used the same light source direction for uniformity when these were displayed later.

Next, students cut out their cubes, arranged them on their background, overlapping and tilting them to get the illusion of movement. (We had discussed how to achieve this look.)

We had some left-over painted paper strips in the scrap box, so kids could choose either black or these painted strips to cut into squares and use for the border.

The kids had a lot of fun trying out different ways to make their cubes appear to be tumbling!! I'll post more results as I get them.

Mr. Brush

Blogging often offers such unexpected pleasures. Last year, through this blog, I connected with an art teacher that works not too far from where I am. This past summer I met with her and 5 of her art teacher buddies to share ideas and "talk art." It was such a treat to connect with other art teachers (our small district doesn't have elementary art teachers).  As we lamented how many young students show a need for little lessons on the tools of our trade (use and care of brushes, scissors, rulers, etc.) I mentioned how much I love my Mr. Brush poster on brush care. They suggested that I share this on the blog.

A few years ago I read about the Mr. Brush posters offered by Royal Langnickel. I'm not sure where I first heard about them, but it may have been from Phyl's blog, There's a Dragon in My Art Room. They don't list this poster in their catalogue and didn't at that time either. As I recall, I e-mailed them asking if the posters were still available and that I was interested in purchasing them. Lo and behold, I got a very nice response and 2 complimentary posters -- this one on brush care, and another showing all the various types of paintbrushes.

This is my students' favorite. It hangs "front and center" for all to see. A few times last year I neglected to refer to the chart when I was mentioning cleaning the brush in clean water and a bunch of hands shot up in the air to remind me that that was just what Mr. Brush liked!!! I think their favorite picture is the one on the bottom left that says Mr. Brush does not like his hair smashed!!

I was just hanging it up today, getting ready for Wednesday, my first day with students. Yippee -- I am more than ready to get started!! Check back later for our first lesson (a multi-media piece where kids experiment with value, still life, painting and collage).