Thursday, December 11, 2014

Friday, December 5, 2014

Mixed Media Art with Mondrian



Piet Mondrian

Students identified the primary colors and geometric shapes in the paintings of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.  We used similar color shapes and rectangles to make a collage.  Next, we built on our stamping skills from the last unit and added lines in a variety of directions by using cardboard scraps and black tempera.  Students learned that mixed media art is when artists use more than one type of art material in their work.






Student Artwork






Kente Cloth Collage




For the second day of making collages, Pre K looked at some kente cloths and learned how these are fabrics weaved together and originally worn by royalty in Africa.  We used similar patterns and shapes to make our own kente cloths, inspired by similar colors as well as geometric patterns and shapes used in theirs.  We continued to practice arranging our shapes by overlapping, spreading far apart, and touching, to create an interesting design.  The last step, was gluing them down to make them stick!


Traditional African Kente Cloth.




Weaving of a Kente Cloth.






Student Artwork















Balancing the Idea of Sculpture



Nancy Graves


Student Sculpture


Students examined artist Nancy Graves and discussed how her work appears to defy gravity, by looking as if it could fall over at any moment, while at the same time maintaining complete balance! Next, we learned about the three c's of sculpture, which are construction, carving, and casting and even watched a video clip of Nancy Graves in her art studio demonstrating a few of those techniques.  To start our own sculptures, we spent the first day exploring how we could create a sculpture that stands up, but appears to be imbalanced in one or more areas.  Many students realized they could hide where certain objects were being supported, as well as use strong wood glue to help with the construction. 

On the second day, students were able to bring in their own found objects from home to add a more personal touch to their work.  Our young artists also became inspired by Japanese artist Sayaka Ganz and how she, similar to Nancy Graves, uses found objects to construct her artwork with recycled kitchen tools. When it was ready to paint, we explored the color wheel.  Students were able to choose a primary color and a secondary color that are next to each other on the color wheel, to create a tertiary color, in addition to white on their sculpture.  Can you locate where you see a tertiary color?  We will give you a clue:  The six tertiary colors are red-orange,  yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet,  and red-violet.



Nancy Graves

Sayaka Ganz












Student Artwork


















Assemblage Puppets






Kindergartners created people stick puppets inspired by the works of  the work of Paul Klee and In The Heart of the Beast. We learned that a puppet is a type of art that can be used in a performance to tell a story.   Students used different geometric shapes to form a human body or an animal and added different textured  and patterned papers.  Additionally, we discovered how texture is how something feels and thought carefully about which fabrics could help bring our puppets to life!

Building our puppets with shapes.



Shopping at the material store.


Paul Clay's son holding his father's puppets.


In the Heart of the Beast