A Winter Wonderland

The focus of this lesson was to demonstrate an understanding of the illusion of space in an art composition.   First grade students enjoyed creating the crayon/watercolor resist and salt technique to create the background.  I have done a similar project with my students for years.  However, we added a new twist to the project in the way we created the trees this year.   Students first colored a coffee filter using markers in an analogous color family.  The filters were spritzed with water and laid aside to dry.  Once everything was dry and the extra salt had been wiped away from the watercolor background, the coffee filter was cut into a variety of sizes of triangles.  These would become the trees in the winter wonderland.  Students review the important methods for visually creating the illusion of space and attempted to include as many as possible in their composition.  These examples demonstrate size, placement, linear perspective and overlap.  Final touches were added to the trees using a drawing marker.

What October looked like in the Art Room

1st grade Piet Mondrian

4th grade Observational Drawing of a Harvest Still Life

5th Grade 1 pt Perspective Review

3rd Grade Dia de los Muertos Mask

2nd grade 3D color mixing pumpkins

Kindergarten - What I saw when out Trick or Treating

Final projects - perspective!

Fourth grade students discover one-point perspective as their final project each school year.  This year I had them to color the planes of the shapes using analogous colors so they demonstrate an understanding of analogous color as well.  I try to revisit techniques with consecutive year projects to reinforce learning.  After students successfully completed the basic one-point using geometric shapes, they are then invited to use box letters to create a second project.  I love the enthusiasm for this project.  I hear many comments as they finish that "this one will go on the wall in my bedroom." 

Good days as the year winds down

Here we are in the final month of school and I have to say, today's classes were fabulous!  I began one-point perspective with fourth graders.  I love introducing students to this process.  They become genuinely excited and really quiet as they concentrate on making their shapes disappear to the vanishing point.  I started the lesson by having all the students join me at the front of the room to view the ceiling tiles.  Then I ask them to share what they were noticing.  I had some great answers mentioning shapes, "they are rectangles", patterns "the tiles make a repeating pattern" and then finally "they look smaller and they are closer to the other end of the room" .  Bingo!  Just the answer I was hoping to achieve.  Students returned to their seats where they practiced holding their rulers to successfully create diagonal, vertical and horizontal lines.  I've learned in past years that the skill of holding the ruler and drawing a straight line is not being taught anywhere but in the art room and began to incorporate the skill building at the beginning of this project.  Students then draw five simple geometric shapes using their rulers to ensure nice straight lines.  They add a vanishing point and work around the paper, beginning with the shapes closest to the point to put all of the shapes into perspective.  To build the excitement, I tell them we will be writing their names in block letters in a following class and they will follow the same process.  This is a terrific way to end the school year on a big high.  I'll post work as soon as some are finished.

worksheet from pinterest that was used as a practice tool prior to personal projects

In second grade, we took advantage of the warm sunny day to create some sun prints.  I had seen on a blog or pinterest, an idea of using the stain glass scratch art paper to make a stencil for sun printing.  2nd graders reviewed shapes and filled the scratch art paper with a variety of geometric and organic shapes to fill the paper.  I wrote each students name, in reverse, on the paper for them so that it would print correcting on the sun print paper.  With five minutes left in class, we all headed outside to use the new stencils, a terrific piece of work by itself, to make a sun print.   I plan to mount both pieces together for the completed work.




Kindergarten students are weaving bookmarks using rubber shelf liner and gimp.  Last year's classes took a complete 4 weeks to complete these.  I already have two talented little ones that have finished in just two weeks.

This years balloons in the works.

I've brought back an old favorite project for third graders.  They are working with tooling foil to create hot air balloons.  I have adjusted the lesson a bit.  They are also weaving small baskets for the basket on the balloon that are being attached with twistee wire. Here are a few finished ones.

Previous project, watch for an updated version when more are completed.

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.