My favorite Painted Pony 2015

I liked all the group project painted ponies but this one is my favorite because of all the great details! I am not even a big sports fan but you have to appreciate all the work the kids did on this sports themed pony.

Dragon Eyes! Pencil Shading lesson 5th grade

Another art blog discovery! The teacher who published this lesson did it in charcoal but since I do not have any we used plain old pencils.  I think they still turned out wonderfully and the other grades enjoyed having all the large dragon eyes staring at them from the art room walls.

 

We all drew the beginning shapes together using the document camera.

 

We reviewed the values of the value scale and students began shading.

 

Awesome details!

 

 

Spheres in Space Fourth grade lesson

This lesson is an old favorite that I used this year.  Love the lesson on tints and shades to make flat circles become 3 dimensional spheres! I had already splatter painted the black paper with white tempera (to save the art room) and the fourth graders enjoyed using chalk and paper towel as their medium for this art work.

 

 

People with Shadows (figure drawing) 3rd grade

Now that I have been moved to teach at only the Later Elementary for the remainder of the school year and have the kids twice a week, we are finishing projects much faster.  I needed a new project for my 3rd graders and I wanted it to challenge them for more than one art period. I found this on the internet and it was exactly what I was looking for. 

 

We started by drawing a person in pencil working together on each part to try to make it realistic.  Artists could draw themselves, a made up person, a famous person or a superhero. 

 

The person was then cut carefully out of the white drawing paper and laid face down on black paper. The kids traced with white colored pencil or crayon and then out the black shape as well.

 

After gluing down both the shadow and person on colored background, colored paper squares were added for a frame.  The kids did a great job and learned a lot about figure drawing.

 

Oil Pastel Kandinsky Trees Third Grade

 Third graders really enjoyed the process of making concentric circles like this artist.

I used a prompt found on another site and asked the students if they thought this was easy or difficult to paint.  What a great discussion we had! They were really thinking and relating it back to the cupcake painting they just finished.

                                                                    

 

                                                                They began by tracing and cutting a brown kraft 

                                                                   paper tree then glued it to white drawing paper.

 

 

Using oil pastels, third grade artists created concentric circle patterns in white space or touching the tree.  Limit was 6 different colored rings on each circle.

 

 

This student told me that the large center circle was the heart of the tree.

When they were done I decided the pictures looked like something was missing. We added marker lines and patterns around the edges of the paper to complete our composition. Several people stopped me to say these reminded them of something... either a painting they had done at a Wine and Canvas event or a movie they had seen about this artist. Love it when the kid's artwork sparks conversations in the hallways!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                               

First Peoples Cliff Dwelling 3rd grade

My 3rd grade artists have been doing a unit with several First Peoples/Native American art projects.  We made a clay project, watched a video about Maria Martinez, learned about cliff dwellings and adobe houses, looked at photos of Native American weavers, drew a picture of Native American blankets and are now weaving on our own small looms.

This is the cliff dwelling or adobe house project which was done with just construction paper and crayons.

Here is the three blanket picture we drew. I found this project on Pinterest and loved it!  I asked the students what their favorite part of the project was and many said it was designing the three blankets. Other kids really enjoyed blending the chalk in the background to make a beautiful sunset.

 
 

 

Great job third graders!