Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!

Our third grade artists started their clay unit by examining wood carvings from the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico.  We learned how the Oaxacan people made these animal sculptures by using soft wood of the copal tree and often times depicted mermaids, wild animals, and masks with bright stylized designs.  Students were excited to watch a video of a Oaxacan workshop, where these sculpture were being carved and painted with focus and precision. 

Oaxaca Wood Carving

Oaxaca Wood Carving

To create our own animals, we had one day to practice making a body and attaching parts by using the score and slip method.  The following week, we were ready to sculpt our animal and add texture using different clay tools. Finally at the end, students decided if they wanted to paint their animals stylistically or realistically.

Student Examples

Dog

Penguin on Ice

Killer Whale

Zeebra

Elephant

Snake

Bird Keeping Eggs Warm

Owl

Pig

Rabbit

Cardinal holding baby bird with feather

Mother Horse and Calf

Octopus

Penguin

Big frog with little frog

Cheetah

Dinosaur

Mother Cat and kitten

Mother and baby whale

Cobra

Unicorn

Snake

Penguin

Pysanka Pre-K Paintings

Our Pre-K young artists spent several weeks becoming familiar with watercolor paint and how they can use it with oil pastel to create a resist.  This week we took a look at the bright colored Ukrainian folk art designs painted on Easter eggs referred to as Pysanka.  Similar to how this tradition utilizes a batik method wax, we used oil pastels to first great our own designs of shapes and lines with a waxy surface that we then painted vivid colors on top of.

Traditionally Painted Pysanka

Student Artwork

Pre-K Circles Around Kandinsky!

After our Pre-K students became familiar with different watercolor techniques we added in oil pastels to create a watercolor resist painting.  We first examined Wassily Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Circles (1913) and students discussed the colors and shapes they saw.  Next, we used different objects to trace a variety of sized circled and created our own as well.  After our paper was filled with at least five circles we applied watercolor color to try and cover every ounce of white on the paper.  

Wassily Kandinsky, Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913

Student Artwork