1st Grade Newspaper Owl paintings

First grade students just finished forming owls out of clay. While we waited for them to dry out and cycle through the kiln, we read Jane Yolen's book Owl Moon, studied characteristics of owls, and created a 2D project using watercolor resist and newspaper collage.

Class 1: students prepared a background by drawing a full moon, stars, and snowflakes on a piece of 9x12" watercolor paper with white oil pastel. We used dark colors of watercolor paint to fill in the night sky. Students were impressed that the white pastel still shows up after the paint is brushed onto the paper!

Class 2: Using a black crayon, students drew owls on a piece of newspaper (after discussing how the texture of the words reminds us of the stripes on an owl's feathers). We glued our owls to the background, then added yellow eyes, a brown branch and owl feet. We added the textures of feathers and bark to complete our work.

Next week we will glaze our freshly-fired ceramic!

1st Grade Fall Tree

Now that the season is rapidly changing from fall to winter, the first graders' lovely tree is coming down! For the past month, our tree has stood in the front entryway to the school.

Materials:
coffee filters (I used the large size)
washable markers (red, orange, yellow, brown)
black crayon or oil pastels
pre-cut leaf tracers fit to size of coffee filter
Spray bottle with water
scissors
tree branch & base (I used a big bucket filled with bags of clay scraps)

After our study of warm and cold colors, 1st graders each wrote their name on a coffee filter with a black crayon, then colored the opposite side with warm-colored washable markers. We placed newsprint beneath our work while we colored since the ink easily bleeds through the paper. Students were encouraged to fill the circle with as many shapes of color as possible, but if they missed some places, the work turns out beautifully regardless. As they finished, students held up their work to pass through the "mist machine..." otherwise known as Ms. Jabs with a spray bottle of water. Much giggling. I stacked the damp filters together on a tray and let them sit over the week to blend and dry.

The following class period, students traced a leaf shape to their paper (I don't like to use tracing for very many projects, but it can be a difficult skill for the younger students and this is a great short project to gain practice). They cut the leaf out, which was more difficult than you might expect due to the thin paper and complex outline to the leaf shape. When complete, students helped choose a spot on the branches to hang their leaves with masking tape.

5th Grade Pop Art Shoe Project

5th grade students viewed the shoe drawings of Andy Warhol, completed earlier in his career as illustrations for advertisements. We discussed how Pop Art developed as a reflection of the culture of mass production in the United States. Pop Art frequently uses repetition of images, bright colors, and everyday images as subject matter.

Students made contour drawings of their own shoes (how VERY exciting to be allowed to take off your shoes in Art class!!). We used textured stamps to create repetition in our backgrounds, painted our shoes with bright colors, and added bold outlines with permanent markers.

Artist of the Week

Something new for this school year: inspired by a fellow Art teacher in my district, I set up this display in the hallway outside the Art room. Each Friday, I post a new piece of student art. The artist's name is revealed during morning announcements and the student comes to the office for a certificate and gift of a sketchbook. It is exciting to have another way to recognize students for their hard work!

1st Grade Warm Suns & Cold Moons

First grade students have been working with the warm and cold color families for the past two sessions. We brainstormed different things these colors reminded us of: the warm colors red, orange and yellow reminded us of things like sunshine, fire, and hot lava. The cold colors blue, green and purple (although purple can technically be either warm or cold, they tell me) reminded us of water, cloudy skies and blueberries.

Each student chose whether to create an artwork with warm or with cold colors; behold some of this year's Warm Suns and Cool Moons!

1st Grade Art Activity: "The Crayon Box that Talked"

All 3 first grade classes have now attended their first Art class at my school! After making introductions, discussing expectations and receiving a "tour" of the Art room, we read Shane DeRolf's book The Crayon Box that Talked. Having a character-education theme, this lesson was a good fit for the day's objectives!

Ahead of time, I prepared 3"x8" white stips of "crayon paper" and pre-cut construction paper "crayons" of various colors. Students practiced writing their name and class code on their crayons, and drew self-portraits. I found it to be a good way to practice names and pre-assess skill levels.

Check out our fantastic "box of crayons!"

5th Grade Jasper Johns Collaborative at the Museum!

In a previous post, I shared our 5th grade Jasper Johns collaborative of the year featuring the work Numbers in Color.

The finished work is ready for viewing at Manitowoc's Rahr-West Art Museum for Youth Art Month, March 3-30!

How to Paint the Mona Lisa

Here it is: the grand unveiling of the 6th graders' rendition of Da Vinci's masterpiece! I couldn't be prouder of my students for the fine work they have done--and the dedication they showed to the work's completion by giving up valuable lunch recess time to finish in time for our Youth Art Month exhibit!

 

There is the product, smiling in all her enigmatic glory on the walls of the Rahr-West Art Museum in anticipation of Sunday's opening! And now for the process:

1. The prep work: students are more than capable of helping with this, but I was an Art teacher on a mission to finish this job in 3 class periods, so I prepped the materials: 60 9" squares of canvas cut and primed with gesso. I did not gesso all the way to the edges, in order for the cloth to be more flexible for sewing purposes and also to provide students with a "boundary" and not paint all the way to the edges. When students received their squares, they traced a slightly smaller 8" square with pencil (leaving a 1/2 inch border around the edges) before drawing their section.

Other materials for step 1:
-photocopied outlines of Mona Lisa with grid drawn & numbered on top. We used 10 rows, 6 columns.
-I made little "viewfinders" to make it easier for students to isolate their assigned square on the grid.
-projected or posted copies of Mona Lisa in color for student reference.

2. The work begins. First task: assign squares. I called each table up to the front one at a time and helped students choose a square individually, keeping a master copy in my possession of who was responsible for each number. Students labeled the back of their canvas with name, number, and a convenient arrow pointing to the top of the composition. When we were all set, it didn't take long for students to transfer the contents of their square to the canvas using pencil.

3. Paint. We used a limited palette of acrylic paint: black, white, skintone, brown, green and a purple/brown mixture were the only colors offered to students. We demonstrated and practiced different techniques for hair, skin, cloth, sky, and foliage.

4. Most of the students finished within 3 class periods, but those who needed more time were motivated to come in during recess when they saw how it looked when puzzled together!

5. The part where I use a sewing machine for the first time since Home Ec. class in 8th grade!!! I am deeply grafeful to the wonderful 6th grade teacher at my school who came in, ON A SNOW DAY, to bring her machine (and trust me to use it) in order for this to happen! My stitching may not be even, but I had a grand time and am thrilled to see the work come to completion!

6. Reflection: Before taking the quilt to the Museum, I dedicated one 6th grade Art session to a grand unveiling. We used the first part of the class period to learn about Leonardo Da Vinci and view/discuss his work. At the very end, we unfurled Mona Lisa to a "drumroll" that the students were only too happy to provide! They each got to find their squares, admire the textures and styles represented in the squares of classmates, and bask in a sense of accomplishment at a job well done!

6th Grade Mona Lisa Quilt Preview

Enjoy a sneak preview of the 6th graders' collaborative masterpiece! Many of the students are not finished painting their canvas squares quite yet, but I arranged the pieces in order for the first time after school today and was too excited not to share!

Next up: the episode where Ms. Jabs uses a sewing machine for the first time since 1997...

5th Grade Slab-Constructed Vessels

Clay Day: favorite Art class of the year for many students! It is a true workout for both the students and I to get these accomplished in one 45-minute class period, but the 5th grade artists were up to the challenge. Many of the vessels are destined to be flower vases, pitchers, and coffee mugs (overheard: "I missed Mom's birthday, so good thing I will be able to give her this coffee mug for Mother's Day!"). Students demonstrated good clay-building technique; rolling their own slabs to the proper width, embossing textures, and attaching elements securely using the "slip and score" method. One young basketball fan helped his peers commit this technique to memory: "He slips... he SCORES!!!!"

Roughly 65-70 clay mugs were constructed on Tuesday afternoon and are now drying out on the shelf awaiting a turn in the kiln. The imprinted textures are beautiful in the surface of the clay, and so far, no handles have broken off!

5th Grade Jasper Johns Collaborative: Numbers

***UPDATED: here is the final product on display!

As in the past years, 5th grade students collaborated on a large-scale Jasper Johns-inspired piece as we begin to explore the concept of Pop Art. Past cohorts of 5th graders completed Flag and Map, so this year we are moving on down the line to make our own version of Numbers in Color!

Preparation of materials: thankfully, the materials were much easier to come by this year! I cut one 6"x 8" yellow base of tag board per student, as well enough numbers 0-9 (1 for each student) using the school's Ellison Cutter-- this took a little time, since I could only cut one letter at a time due to the thickness of the tag board!

To add some sculptural relief to our work, I also set out sheets of 3D styrofoam sticky "dots." The jury is still out on whether the 3D effect will enhance or detract from the final effect, but I thought it was worth a shot!

 We painted with primary colors of acrylic paint; I mixed white with the yellow and the blue to make them more opaque.

 

When students came in for class, we spent the first 10 minutes looking at Scholastic Art's Jasper Johns edition and discussing the use of symbols as subjects for his art. I distributed numbers; students painted the yellow base first, then added and painted the number stencil. Now all I have to do is figure out the best way to combine the works into one large collaborative piece-- check back in soon for the finished work!

2nd Grade-- Visualization Exercise with Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition"

2nd grade students are preparing for a unit on Wassily Kandinsky. To get into a proper Kandinsky mindset, I decided to have students listen to four selections from Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and produce images based on visualization of the music, just like Kandinsky did.

Students divided a 12"x18" sheet of drawing paper into quadrants and used markers and colored pencils to record images that came to mind as they listened to each selection. I am always impressed by the consistency from year to year as 2nd graders recognize themes that are scary, silly, or proud and important-sounding.

The selections:
1. The Gnome

2. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks

3. Baba Yaga: The Hut on Fowl's Legs

4. The Great Gate of Kiev

Here are some of the results! I encouraged the students to write descriptions of their work, but as we had about 5 minutes to work on each drawing, our spelling was a bit rushed!

Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. giving his "I Have a Dream" speech

Lots of spider-chasing in this series! In selection four: "army men saluting the [unintentionally backwards] flag;" I cannot decipher #3 but judging by the arrows it appears that the small brown creature comes to an unfortunate end in the alligator's jaws!

First Grade Clay Owls

Fresh out of the kiln today after a glaze firing!

First grade students are finishing up our owl unit. The adventure began with a reading of Jane Yolen's lovely book Owl Moon, followed by slides of various owl species and the formation of a KWL chart (what do we Know, Want to know, and after instruction, what did we Learn) of owl facts.

When the anticipated clay day arrived, students traced basic owl templates into slabs of clay. They practiced the slip-and-score technique for adhering a beak, wings, and eyes to the body of the owl, then embossed textures to their work using assorted clay tools.

Owl Template:

Once the three classes have rotated through, I go through and poke a small nail hole in the top of each project. It warms my heart when students of years past tell me they still have their first grade clay owls displayed at home!

5th Grade Monochromatic Self-Portraits; 2013 Edition

I have now repeated this project for several years due to the consistently outstanding results (here is last year's post)! This year, I asked students to practice for the painting by creating 10-step value scales with tempera paint; steps1-5 being tints of the color and 5-10 being shades, increasing incrementally in value.

Painting these self-portraits in a monochromatic scheme teaches students about using and mixing values, but also releases them from the expectation that the portrait should be strictly representational. I find the abstraction of the color, values, and brushstrokes to be very intriguing and always leave these out on the bulletin board in the hallway a little extra longer!

1st Grade Warm Suns & Cool Moons

Okay, these have been finished for a while already. As in... this may in fact have been one of the first projects we did this school year... but they finally made it into the bulletin board rotation about a month ago and I snapped some photos as I took the display down.

I thought that the first graders were especially expressive this year with the faces drawn on celestial bodies! After discussing the difference between warm and cold colors, students chose to portray either warm (sun) or cold (moon). We discussed facial expressions and different kinds of lines that could make our drawings interesting. Pencil drawings were traced in permanent marker then colored with crayon and resist-painted with tempera pucks. The product was well-worth a chuckle of endearment or two; more than one "cyclops moon" was spotted!

3rd Grade-- I and the Village

In 3rd grade Art, we pretend to travel around the world to "visit" different artists in their home countries, filling out our "passports" as we go.

Our latest imaginary journey took us to a small village in Russia to visit the childhood home of Marc Chagall. We looked at a number of his fantastic paintings, focusing on I and the Village.