Van Gogh's Vases! 2nd Grade

I borrowed this fabulous lesson from Deep Space Sparkle...if you haven't visited this amazing art teacher's blog, you have to right now! http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/

Anyway, we created these van Gogh inspired vases with flowers. They are still a work in progress...but they are looking so nice, I had to post them. The students began their drawings with pencils and are now adding color with oil pastels. They are using the magical 'white oil pastel' to blend and add highlights on the petals of their flowers. We realized after we started that outlining everything with black first works better and gives you an interesting tone with the petal color mixes with the black outline.

Not finished yet...but great progress made today!



i love this detail...the textures are so great!



I love these exaggerated flowers from Larry

3rd Grade Art Club: Yarn Creations

So, my Friday group of 3rd graders is small..er, so we have been doing some experimental projects. Here is a 'yarn drawing' collaged into a painted environment. The lesson needs some tweaking, but I think they are turning out well!

Jonathan's Rocket Crayon flying through space

Luis's hand...reminds me of the Inside Out Boy

Valentine's Day!

Space Crab! We seem to have a theme...

Christeena's cute duck!

Kinder/ 1st Grade Picasso Heads!

Collage of Picasso Heads!

I did this project with 2nd grade last year and decided it was too easy for them, so we are trying it out with Kinders and 1sters. haha.

First, we studied Picasso's paintings....looked at some cubism and other artists from the movement. Then, we created a "class picasso head" on the website: http://www.picassohead.com/ (you can make heads for hours). We all took turns adding Picasso-y features.

Click here to see Mrs.Van Dyke's class's picasso heads: http://www.picassohead.com/search.html?submitted=1&where=signature&query=van+dykes+class&selected=1174319

Then we practiced drawing 4 heads...as crazy as we could make them! We chose our favorite sketch and enlarged it onto a sheet of 12" x 12" white drawing paper. Then we used recycled materials to stamp in the features of the face with black paint.

Finally, we painted them using tempera cakes. Those pictures coming soon!

stamping Picasso Heads!

my beautifully presented stamping trays...

Star Wars Collage Video!

Jeremy Messersmith - Tatooine from Eric Power on Vimeo.

Impressionism for Kids!

Lately the 2nd and 4th graders have been learning all about Claude Monet and Impressionism. We have been practicing with Monet's famous paintings of "The Bridge over the Pond".


We started by drawing the Japanese bridge with pencil. Then we taped off the bridge using masking tape and painted the background with a watercolor wash of cool colors. The washes turned out great!



2nd Grader's Bridge and Watercolor wash



2nd Grade Bridge!

The next step is to add the Impressionist garden with dabs and dashes of tempera paint. The students are repurposing q-tips to create their Impressionist marks.

Adding Impressionist marks and water lilies in honor of Monet!

Finally, when the painting is complete, we will reveal the bridges and remove the tape!! More photos coming soon!!

Monet Paintings Video

Monet from Philip Scott Johnson on Vimeo.

Atmospheric Perspective Collages

Well I have to say thank you to Mrs.Jahnig, again! She had this lesson posted on her blog and I took it and ran with it.

We have been working on an architecture unit for quite sometime now and this lesson just fell right into place. We create a skyline with newspaper first, then we added layers of tissue paper to show atmospheric perspective and now we've been creating collage houses and buildings in the foreground. We did lose some of our skyline during the process, but they are looking so neat!

Vocabulary for this lesson:
Atmospheric Perspective
Collage
Mixed Media
Skyline
Dillute
Frank Gehry
Frank Lloyd Wright
Foreground, Middleground, Background