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! 

https://www.brainpop.com/search/search.weml?keyword=moon

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!