Success or Failure??

student work

I wanted to attempt something a little different with first grade students this year to introduce them to warm and cool colors.  After surfing through some blog post and perusing Pinterest, I decided I wanted to try the bleeding tissue paper to create a background for a winter tree composition.  This would be similar to a project I have previously done with first grade but with a new twist.  I pre-cut squares and rectangles of the tissue paper in the warm colors and had students to cover their papers with any pattern they chose.  Meanwhile, another piece of paper was painted only used cool colors with watercolor paint.  Week two I supplied students with triangle tracers in a variety of sizes to use on the cool color paper.  They needed three trees in three different sizes.  When I peeled away the tissue paper from the warm color work, I was disappointed with the coverage or I should say lack of coverage.  I couldn't imagine how the project was going to turn out to be anything near to what I had envisioned in my planning.  Here are a few of the results.

student work

student work

I decided to shift my focus to perspective and introduced students to creating space in their composition.  They could overlap or use size to demonstrate the illusion of space. They began by drawing curved lines on the tissue painted paper to create three different lines in space.  We talked about the outline of mountains and imagined what that might look like.  Then students glued their trees, one on each of the different levels.  They were reminded to place the smallest tree in the background and the largest in the foreground.  They finished up by adding black crayon lines to create the trunks and the limbs of the trees.  This is definitely not what I anticipated this project would turn out to look like but I am really drawn to the abstract qualities of the work.  The goals and vision changed but I do feel like the project is a success.

Snowmen in Perspective

I found multiple references for this form of perspective on pinterest in the past along with this very helpful poster.  I generally do a lesson on space or perspective with first and second graders at this time of the year using the terrific books of Caralyn Buehner, illustrated by her husband Mark.  If you haven't check out the series, it is a must have in the art room.  The short rhymes are catchy and cute and I am in love with Mark's wonderful illustrations..  Most all of them are done without using the color white even though most of the pictures are primarily of snow.  It's a great way to get students to expand their thoughts concerning color and to maybe explore what they see in a new way.  After the reading, we study the illustrations to identify the colors that are actually used for the snow and then investigate our own snow outside the windows to see if we can really see colors in our natural landscape.  The discussion leads to shadow, reflection, and light and color.

First graders explore the multiple ways to show space.  We use the words "Near and Far" in art so the poster is a very good visual.  I decided to try the aerial perspective approach with second graders.  First they cut three "snowballs" from white paper to form their snowmen.  Oil pastels were used to colored around the edges of each circle so they would be visible when stacked to form the snowmen.  Constructions paper was used to collage the features of the snowmen.  Consideration was given to the direction the snowman would be looking.  You can see from the student works, some look forward, some look up.  Finally, snowmen were glued on a dark sheet of construction paper and splatter painted using white tempera and a toothbrush to create the appearance of falling snow.  The students really enjoyed this project.  First graders are still working; I'll post some of those when they are completed.

Defining space with Kindergarten students

My Kinders created these cute little drawings today as we talked about space and drawing things near and far. Everyone followed along to draw the road and the parallel lines with triangle trees then they were given creative liberty to finish their composition. I love the endearing quality of kinder work.
Kindergarten lesson on space (near and far)

supplies: pencils, crayons, 9x12 white paper
vocabulary:  vertical line, diagonal line, triangle, color (value) dark to light, pattern

Define and discuss the use of space in art. 

With pencils only, model as students draw a diagonal line from the top right corner to the lower left corner of their paper. Draw a second diagonal line beginning at the top right corner and going down to about the middle of the bottom of the page. Place 5 vertical lines across the left side of the paper extending from top edge of paper to one of the diagonal lines and draw triangles for trees on each line. The triangles should start small at the top of the page and get larger as they go down the page. Draw a large tree near the bottom of the page on the right side. It can over lap the road (the v shape made using diagonal lines). Have the students to select 3 different shades of green color, beginning with the darkest green, they should color the triangle on top, use the next darkest color for the next one down and the lightest green for the third tree down. Tell them to continue coloring to create a pattern. They should color the sky blue or gray( for winter) the road a color of their choice, and the ground a color of their choice. Encourage them to add details of their choosing. They could add birds, cars, people etc.