Sunday, December 7, 2014

Peacock Paintings by 3rd Grade


These fabulous paintings are going in our upcoming February student art show....but here's a sneak peek!

This is a 3 day project for 3rd graders...but could be done with 2nd or 4th. 


Day One: We discussed the differences between Peacocks and Peahens. The boys love hearing that the girls are drab and plain looking while the boys are colorful and vibrant. I have this great video I show of a peacock trying to catch a snake...http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Indian_Peafowl

We draw the peacock's body, beak, talons and the first row of metallic feathers. I let the kids paint everything with different shades of gold paint. 


Day Two: We draw about 20 "eyes of the gods" in black oil pastel then use cool colors to paint them.






Day Three: We paint the rest of the plumage with cool colors and add lines with oil pastels. They cut out their eyes of the gods and collage them around the painting. These are awesome! 





 I encourage a lot of creativity when painting the feathers. They can aim for realistic feathers or make them really abstract. They also experiment with some color mixing....different types of brush techniques...mixed media things are happening and it's great.



























Magazine Bowl Sculptures

Magazine Bowl Sculptures....

I talked a little bit about this project in my post about Auction Projects but here's some of the bowls the kids made. I'll add more photos of the others soon!

Below you see the kids painting on the mod podge as the final step. 







Here's how I constructed the abstract sculptures. 





Monochromatic Moonscape Paintings by 4th Grade

Well, I wanted to do this project earlier in the year and boy let me tell you I'm so glad I did because I got observed during my introduction to this project. This painting encompasses soooo many different disciplines...the lesson plan looks great on paper to principals!

Day One: Intro

We write in our idea book the term Monochromatic Moonscape...then we break it down...
they create a value scale with their thumbprint and a marker. Then we watch a Brain Pop video on the phases of the moon....SCIENCE! 


Then they draw the moon on their 9 x 18 white drawing paper. We create echo rings around the moon and paint a different value inside with blue, red or purple mixed with white. 
They mix their tints to get light around the moon. 


Day Two: We talk about the history of silhouettes and practice drawing trees. Their requirement is to paint at least one tree and another object of their choice with solid black. I encourage a tree with no leaves so they will get into some nice line work with the branches.





I love how a little bit of blue snuck into these purple paintings. 

Tada!

School Auction Projects from the Art Room/ Artober with Kandinsky

Each year our school has a Silent/Live Auction to raise funds for the school. I create an art project with each class to sell at the Silent Auction (yes each class...over 25 projects). I have started combining all of the 4th grade classes into one big project because it makes life a little easier. 

I try to do something different each year and listen to the feedback of what people "love" so I can try to keep those parents and teachers wanting to buy what we create! 

Since our auction is in November, I always start a month early...although I should be starting earlier than that! So October was "Artober with Kandinsky" this year in Nashville. We had a lovely Kandinsky exhibit at the Frist Center so we were encouraged to do Kandinsky projects. 
Below is a link to the Frist Center webpage regarding the exhibit:

----------------------------------------------------------------

So here's the projects! 

I taught the 3rd and 4th graders how to create Magazine Bowls. It's one of my favorite projects to teach and you could go as low as 2nd grade with it...but it really shines with the older kids because of their ability to make really tight roll-ups. We talked about "concentric circles" and looked at Kandinsky's painting while making these little sculptures. The kids made their own sculpture and one small one for the auction project. We called them "sushi rolls". 

4th Grade Collaborative Magazine Collage
4th Grade Collaborative Collage 



3rd Grade Magazine Sculptures

The third graders' project was a little weird, but fun! I had a hard time explaining that these were abstract sculptures...they stand on their own and look really cool in person. I just hot glued the "sushi rolls" together and spray painted a clear coat over them.






2nd Grade Tissue Paper Plates

The 2nd graders created concentric circles using tissue paper that I mod podged to the back of a clear glass plate found at Old Time Pottery for $1.49! If you're searching for a cheap class project, I highly recommend mod podge and glass. Sooooo easy. 





Kindergarten Trees
Admittedly the auction becomes overwhelming and I lose my "let's make everything really complicated and awesome!" vibe and move into the panicky "oh crap let's get this done!" phase. Below are some hand-painted trees with concentric circle hearts created by Kindergarten. They printed different sizes of circles with black paint and then used watercolors. I had my future student teacher cut them into hearts and mod podge them to the trees.








1st Grade Vases

Here's another budget friendly project....coffee filters on vases. Mod podge is my best friend, can you tell? I purchased thrift store vases that were all approx. the same size. Never buy new vases or baskets!
The first graders drew concentric circles (you guessed it!) with sharpie on coffee filters, they colored in with washable markers and washed with water. I cut the circles out (once dry) and glued the overlapping due to space to the vases. 






Pre-K Up Houses

I don't teach Pre-K but I help them create auction projects so they aren't left out of the auction fun. So this year we tried something different. I drew a bunch of balloon shapes and the kids colored them with colored pencils. Then their teachers cut them out and I mod podged them to a small canvas. Then I just drew a little house and strings...painted it and called it a day.