The students were given the option of either drawing an animal from memory or looking at a reference that I had already printed out. They had dozens of options to choose from. Their first step involved them drawing their animal in pencil onto their papers. At first, the students were nervous about drawing realistic animals without tracing but they ended up surprising themselves and me with how skilled they were able to draw from their references. Once drawn, they broke the drawing down into at least 8 smaller shapes. They then outlined their animals and the smaller shapes in thick Sharpie. Switching to a thin sharpie, they filled in each shape with a different pattern in order to create texture. Although they knew how to recognize pattern, it was important that they were able to describe what pattern meant. Patterns can be created by repeating shapes or lines within a picture. Students repeated a variety of shapes and lines within each shape of their animal drawings.
The 4th graders learned about the artist Albrecht Durer and how his animal drawings showed a variety of implied textures in them. Although the pictures didn't have real texture, the artist created them to appear to have texture. The students were given the option of either drawing an animal from memory or looking at a reference that I had already printed out. They had dozens of options to choose from. Their first step involved them drawing their animal in pencil onto their papers. At first, the students were nervous about drawing realistic animals without tracing but they ended up surprising themselves and me with how skilled they were able to draw from their references. Once drawn, they broke the drawing down into at least 8 smaller shapes. They then outlined their animals and the smaller shapes in thick Sharpie. Switching to a thin sharpie, they filled in each shape with a different pattern in order to create texture. Although they knew how to recognize pattern, it was important that they were able to describe what pattern meant. Patterns can be created by repeating shapes or lines within a picture. Students repeated a variety of shapes and lines within each shape of their animal drawings.
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The students continued working on implied textures with this Jasper Johns inspired painting project. The 3rd graders looked at the artwork of Jasper Johns and the many different ways he painted the American Flag. All of Jasper Johns's American Flags had one thing in common: they all had textured surfaces. Johns layered news paper, wax, and paint in his paintings. The most noteworthy flag we looked at was a flag with reverse colors. The students looked at this flag for half a minute without looking away. When looking at a white wall, the rods and cones in their eyes adjusted to the visual change by showing each student a ghost image of the reverse of the colors they saw in the Jasper Johns flag, which was the red, white and blue of our real American Flag. The students were really blown away by this trick and wanted to try it again before moving onto making the actual art project.
To begin making flags with textured surfaces, the students used glue sticks to glue down torn pieces of news paper onto three different pieces of paper: two large pieces of paper and one small paper. Before painting their papers, they planned out which colors they wanted to use and where by coloring on Flag coloring sheets. When it was time to paint, I set up stations around the room of watered down tempera paint that they moved to. The watered down paint allowed for the details of the news papers to show through. When the painting was done, each student was left with three papers of different colors. For additional implied textures, the students gave the paper a scuffed, scratched look by dipping small squares of cardboard into gray paint and scraping it across their three papers. Once the implied texture of their papers was complete, they were ready to move onto cutting and gluing the pieces of the flag together. In order to save time, I used my cutting board to cut the students large papers into stripes to be used in their flag. The students used hot glue for the first time to glue down their stripes onto one of their painted papers. I supervised closely with this step in order to prevent students from burning their fingers. They glued down the small rectangular paper last, on top of the stripes. What resulted was an American flag without stars. On the last day, the students took turns using star stamps to finish off their Jasper Johns inspired pictures. The 3rd graders moved onto their texture unit by learning about embossed art. They saw how embossed paper, metal, and leather all had raised surfaces and they proceeded to make their own embossed styled art. They began by placing leaves and twigs of their choosing onto their paper, which had been coated in spray adhesive. Once glued down, the students placed a sheet of tinfoil, shiny side up, onto the paper and folded the tinfoil around the edges. They smoothed out all the wrinkles with their fingers and saw how the tinfoil formed around the leaves underneath it. This created a raised surface, much like embossed art. To create a worn metallic effect, students used plastic forks and knives to scratch lines into the surface of the tinfoil. To emphasize the embossed texture of their pictures, I went around and dropped Indian Ink onto their sheets of tinfoil. It was the 3rd graders' jobs to spread the Indian ink around their picture, creating an even coat. During another art class, when the Indian Ink has had time to dry, the 3rd graders used steel wool to polish away most of the Indian Ink on the surface of their embossed leaf pictures. The raised areas were polished while the Indian Ink in the crevices stayed untouched.
The 3rd graders were not done here. They continued to create a border to mount their embossed leaf pictures. They chose a color to paint their background. While the paint was still wet, they used forks, knives, and cardboard to scratch designs into the paper. When this was dry, the students were able to mount their embossed leaves onto the background paper. I found that this made each project a little more unique to the student who made it. While the students learned about actual texture in working with the tin foil to create an embossed picture, the learned about implied texture by using plastic forks and knives to create a background. While actual texture really has a feeling you can touch, implied texture only appears to have feeling. I was quite pleased to see that the students came to this realization on their own, without me having to preface this main concept before they began working with the paint portion of this project. These third graders always find some way to impress me with each project we get to work on together. For the 1st graders' texture unit, they looked at the artist Jim Dine and saw how he used texture in his heart paintings. Although we couldn't touch his paintings, they looked like they would feel bumpy if we could touch them.
To begin, the students created textured paper by crinkling white tissue paper, tearing it into 5 large pieces, and placing them on paper that had been already covered in spray adhesive. This created a wrinkly texture for their paintings. Once ready, they chose several colors to paint in the background of their picture. The students were very eager to use tempera paint in class because it was a medium they do not get to use very often. I emphasized the importance of covering all their white spots and keeping the colors from mixing as much as possible in order for their project to look similar to Jim Dine's paintings. In another class period, after their paint has had time to dry, they were able to go overtop the painted layer with chalk pastels. This is another medium they were not yet used to using, which made this step exciting for everyone. Before using the pastels, they created heart shaped stencils out of paper. They were taught how to fold the paper in half, draw a hook along the folded edge of the paper, and cut out that hook for a heart that is even on both sides. The 1st graders were given an option of either using this method to create their heart stencils or drawing a heart on the paper without folding. This paper stencil was taped to the paper and they used chalk pastels to color in the area around the stencil. The stencil prevented the chalk pastel from coloring the area inside the heart. When the paper stencil is removed, the faint outline of the heart is visible on the colored paper. To finish, the students chose different colors to draw on the inside of the heart. This gave the heart an extra pop that helped it come off the paper. The students noticed that the textured paper worked with the chalk pastel to create an interesting effect. The chalk pastel would show up on the raised up wrinkles and not in the creases. I think one of my most exciting teaching moments with this unit was when students started identifying textures in every day items. During work time, students would point out when they saw or worked with something that had a unique texture. Although students have always known what texture was, using the term "texture" and finding a context for this word in art appears to be something new and exciting for them. The second graders moved onto their color unit by studying the art of Hans Hoffman. They came to recognize his style as well as analyzed how color was used in his paintings. They quickly saw that art often uses color to convey different emotions. They were even able to view a small clip from "Inside Out" and discussed how the different emotions in the main characters head was associated with different colors. Each student drew a different emotion out of a container and were given the opportunity to trade with the people sitting next to them if they wished. The class then brainstormed different colors they might want to use in their Hans Hoffman inspired pictures that might convey the emotion that they drew out of the container. To help, I had a color wheel with different emotions placed on the spectrum. Their first steps were to pick out four to five different colored tissue papers and cut squares and rectangles of varying sizes, much like the squares and rectangles that Hoffman used. Once all their shapes were cut, they were able to jump right into using Mod Podge as a glue to stick the tissue paper shapes onto their paper. They were able to see how the different colors related to each other and how they changed when they overlapped.
The second graders learned about texture and pattern in this embossed picture project. They learned what embossed means and examples of embossing in paper, leather, and metal. The word "texture" was introduced and they saw how their embossed pictures will have texture if they run their hands over it.
They began by picking out a piece of cardboard that had notches cut into the sides. They threaded yarn through these notches, making sure to cross and overlap the yarn from one side of their picture to the other. Once completed, they taped the yarn down and covered the surface with tinfoil to create an embossed metal look. Within the spaces created by the yarn, students drew different patterns by making repeating lines or shapes. The second graders moved on from line to shape in this Paul Klee cityscape project. They learned about the artist Paul Klee as well as geometric shapes. They learned what cityscapes were and then spent time identifying the names of geometric shapes within Paul Klee's artwork.
The students started off by drawing tall rectangles of different heights on their papers to make skyscrapers. They then broke down the rectangle into smaller rectangles and squares. They found that if they could create triangles in the skyscrapers by connected the corners of squares with a diagonal lines. Some students chose to put triangles on the top of some skyscrapers and draw circles in the sky for moons or suns. Once drawn, the 2nd graders outlined their pencil lines in black crayon. Within the shapes, students colored different colored crayons in the style of Paul Klee. They learned the importance of drawing dark, rich and waxy in order to cover up all their white spaces. Their last step, in order to create a look similar to Paul Klee's paintings, they crinkled their papers, painted black watered down paint on their drawings, and had me rinse the paint off. By crinkling the paper, small cracks formed in the crayon, allowing the black paint to set in the creases and resist the crayon. After learning about geometric and organic shapes with their Gustav Klimt tree paintings, the 5th graders continued organic shapes with this Rose Window project. The students learned what Rose Windows are and how they are present in architecture. One class had enough time to view an online tour of the Notre Dame cathedral, keeping their eyes open for Rose Windows. The students began by tracing and cutting circles into black construction paper. Much like making paper snowflakes, they folded the circles several times until they were left with a fraction of the paper. With that piece of folded paper, they cut shapes into two of the sides of the folded paper. They were advised to cut shapes that fit into each other, much like puzzle pieces. After opening the paper up, they got to work layering different colored tissue paper to the black circular construction paper with Mod Podge.
The 5th graders were introduced to the Art Nouveau artist Gustav Klimt, while learning about geometric and organic shapes. While they viewed several of Klimt's paintings, they specifically focused on "The Tree of Life" as they made their own Art Nouveau styled trees.
They began their projects by using gold paint to create the swirly organic shape of the trunk. It was easier for the students to paint a tree if they broke it down in terms of the Papa Bear trunk, Mama Bear branch, and Baby Bear branch. They made the Papa Bear trunk with a big brush, making it break into two main branches that resembled a swirly "Y." From the Papa Bear trunk, they painted several additional large branches. The branches started off thicker near the base and got thinner near the ends. From the Mama Bear branches, they used small paintbrushes to create smaller branches. When they were ready to move on, they used brown, black and white paint to fill the inside of their organic tree shape with geometric shapes. At this point, they could easily differentiate the curvy lines of organic shapes from the straight, rigid lines of geometric shapes. Many students took additional artistic liberties to add additional details to their tree paintings. The 4th graders tackled many big concepts in this project as they made batik style trees. They started by learning the difference between organic and geometric shapes. They used squares as their geometric shapes to fill the whole paper with a grid. This was probably the most difficult part of the project because they had to become familiar with rulers and how to measure out 1"x1" grids. Once they traced a circle to be used as the leaves of the tree, they moved onto drawing the trunk and branches of their tree, which was the organic shape of their Batik tree picture. They used what they learned from their Keith Haring project to create repeating line patterns in each of the squares of the tree. They were then introduced to warm and cool colors and chose to use those colors in either the background or the leaves of the tree. The 4th graders were very good at coloring dark, rich, and waxy inside their lines. In order to truly transform their crayon drawings into a Batik-style picture, they had to crinkle their drawings to make tiny cracks in the wax of the crayon. They then painted watered down black paint onto their pictures and I rinsed it off into the sink, to make sure the pictures didn't get too soggy. The black paint resisted the crayon and stayed on the paper that was exposed in the cracks after crinkling the paper.
This project took a while to complete but the students never once got tired of working on it. They seemed very engaged, since day one, as they moved from one concept onto another. Even though they all had similar requirements, each tree was very unique in its own way. |
Student ArtworkWelcome to the Sharon Community School art page! Here, you can see what your child is doing in the art class room. Hovering over the image will reveal the young artist's name. You can enlarge the picture of your child's art by clicking on the image. Categories
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