Observational drawing from a Fall Still Life.

Fourth grade students have been working on their observation skills as they drew a still life.  I often question myself as to whether this is too hard for a 4th grader but based on the results this year, I think they are definitely up for it.  I was really pleased with many of the results.  They were challenged to focus on shadows, colors and laying down their color in a way to add the illusion of dimension to their work.  For their first attempts at this type of work, I think they did really well!

Life has been busy!

I've been absent way too long but it's not because things haven't been happening in the art room.  This month the focus was on shape, line and color across the grades.  Some of the projects are repeat project and a few were some old tried and true that I hadn't gotten to in the last several years.

Multiple projects from across the grades.

Above is the bulletin board in one of the schools where I tried to display a few projects
from each grade. You will notice spider webs done with a watercolor wash from
 Kindergarten where the focus was on line names and directions identification.  
Both third and fourth were creating observational drawings.  Fourth
 created the harvest still life and third were drawing skeletons.  For both 
grades the focus was "seeing like a scientist" and drawing only things as 
they are seen rather than what we know to be true. This proved to be a bit 
challenging for both groups so a two drafts were created for each project with
 personal and group critiques to help students to raise the bar with their drawings.

Second grade students created line/pattern leaves with scratch art paper.  This is a project from several  years ago.  I had used the die cut machine to cut out maple leaves and the left overs were filed away.  Since there were enough for my two classes, I decided to pull it back out again.  Since 2nd grade had never used scratch art paper before, I had them practice drawing lines and patterns on a small scrap of the paper first.  After mastering the technique, the stem was extended onto the leaf and veins added to created sections.  Each section was filled with a different line pattern.

Finally, a few photos of the value webs from 5th grade.  This project is a twist on one from Art with Mr. E that was popular a few years ago and you still find on pinterest.  Instead of plotting along a line and then creating the value curves, I had students draw a spider web and add value around the web.  Most students opted to add a spider using oil crayons once they were finished.  These were especially striking.  

So that will catch you up a little with the going ons.  I'll try to post a little more regularly in the future.