Roll a Picasso!

Every year I try to do something a little different on the first day of art class for each grade.  Typically we go over rules and routines, but I feel it is extremely important to still have time for a short art activity.  For fourth grade this year, we will be starting the year with cubism, so for the first day without having a complete introduction to the movement made famous by Pablo Picasso, students worked as a table to create one cubist portrait.  We started by reviewing how a portrait is an artwork of a person (usually head, neck, and top of shoulders).  

Next, students used the laws of CHANCE to create these fun portraits.  Students were so excited when creating these large scale portraits, because they did not have to worry about the pressure of making something look real as well as having to have a plan of what their artwork was going to look like from the start.  After all the portraits were created, we viewed them next to the original Picasso portraits and tried to match up which feature came from which painting.  See below and you can try and guess too! Next class, we will have a very in depth talk about cubism and the different techniques. 

Student Work 

 I found this great project at Teachers Pay Teachers and adapted it to work for our class,

Third Grade Makes Their Mark

For the first day of art class, third grade examined how the element of design LINE is used in drawings by Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso.   Students described these different types of marks as wavy, curly, dotted (stippling), cross hatched, vertical, and horizontal.  The challenge for third graders was to cut a circle from their square cardboard and create their own mark.  Some young artists repeated the a line, while others used several types of lines and incorporated them into a pattern.  This exercise is preparation for a mark making lesson we will do later this year when we use tooling foil.  

Vincent Van Gogh

Falling Into Art

Pre-K has been busy rubbing and rubbing and RUBBING in the art studio! The first day each artist was given a blue textured plate, which they quickly learned was very different from the type they eat off of or see at the dinner table.  Each plate had a different texture/pattern.   Some of the designs reminded students of spider webs,  blocks, and raindrops.

We learned that in order to make a print we needed to pinch our crayons and lay them down as if they were going to sleep.  Then we use our muscles to RUB RUB and RUB.  After we had some practice with this,  for the second day students were able to use real leaves to make their prints.

Student Artwork

Welcome Back Young Artists!

After spending 8.5 months with my new son Sebastian on maternity leave, I am so excited to be back at Woods Road and CAN'T WAIT to see my little artists arrive on Tuesday morning.  I have planned some new and and exciting lessons for this school year and have kept and tweaked some the most popular projects.  Below is what we have in store for the first few weeks:

Pre-K: Printmaking with a focus on rubbings and stamping. They will explore different patterns and textures and see how to replicate those designs with a variety of materials.  The first artist we will learn about is Friedenreich Hundertwasser, when we create our own landscape by collaging our prints together.

Kindergarten: As a tradition, we always start out with collage.  Students will explore a variety of textures and how to arrange them on a page to make a picture or design.  The unit will culminate with a texture stick puppet of an animal or person. We will study artists Paul Klee for his use of shape and Avant-Garde style puppets.

TP: Students will focus on how artists use line in their art.  We will use non traditional materials like tape to create line compositions and explore graffiti artists such as Keith Haring and Buff Diss.

 

First Grade: Abstract art will kick off the year with a focus on Spanish painter Joan Miro and French artist Piet Mondrian.  Students will become familiar with distinguishing different styles of art such as abstract, realistic, and non objective.  

Second Grade: These artists will be exploring a variety ways of making sculpture from paper techniques to arranging found objects.  I am extremely excited for the new lesson on Leonardo Da Vinci, where students will learn about his inventions and create their own artwork of the future.

Third Grade: Artist Georgia O'Keeffe will  be examined carefully similar to prior years, however this time we will create a different type of artwork inspired by her zoomed in abstract process. Unlike in the past where students worked with objects only from nature, now they can bring in anything that is meaningful to them and we will be using a different media as well.  

Fourth Grade: We will be starting off the year learning about Cubism.  On the first day, we will play a fun game called Roll a Picasso where students can become more familiar to this style of work in a fun and stress free way. After this exercise, students will create their own portraits using a combined effort of technology and traditional art make techniques.