Mixed media still life, 1st grade

First graders continued their exploration of Nouns in Art - people, places, and things - with a mixed media still life. We looked at Van Gogh's sunflowers to get an idea of our composition, and we made a simple tabletop and vase. On a sheet of printing Styrofoam, we drew different shapes of flowers like roses, tulips, and sunflowers. We printed them using printing ink and cut them out to add to the picture. Andy Warhol is a great example of an artist who uses flowers in printmaking.

Thanks to Arteascuola.com http://arteascuola.com/2017/01/flowers-printed-with-craft-foam/ for the inspiring idea!

Abstract Evergreen Collage, 2nd grade

Matisse's collages were our inspiration for these winter-themed cutouts in 2nd grade. Students had studied a bit about Matisse when we made a goldfish still -life painting, and we also learned that later in his life he had to work in a wheelchair and found it easier to work with collage, or cutting and gluing shapes. We used both the positive and negative shapes of our evergreen tree drawings, and dotted out papers with tiny white snowflakes before cutting them out. Matisse's collages are abstract, so we turned our shapes in different ways and used a variety of colors for that fun, abstract look. We finished it off with some hand-stamped larger snowflakes in the empty areas.

Pumpkin Landscapes

Second graders have completed these charming pumpkin field landscapes while learning about observation drawing and space in a landscape.

We began by drawing pumpkins on a variety of orange papers, looking closely for details and form. Since the pumpkins would be placed in the foreground of our landscape, we would see lots of details in them, unlike the background forest, which is too far away to see details. We also painted a glowing moon by mixing shades of gray and creating rings around the white spherical moon. 

Happy fall!

Monster Picture Day, kindergarten

We had school picture day recently and we made some mixed media collages of monsters as if they were dressed up for picture day as well. The results are just adorable and so funny!

We covered lots of concepts and skills, like color mixing, texture, craftsmanship, and working from our imaginations. On the first day, we painted two papers - one primary and one secondary that we mixed.

The next lesson we cut a large organic shape from one sheet for the body and glued it to the other, then used the leftover scraps for things like horns, arms, or teeth. On the last day of the lesson, we used a "fancy scrap" of scrapbook paper to make accessories like hair bows or neckties, and added texture with our construction paper crayons. That simple step of adding the crayon texture really made a big difference.

We had an art walk at the end of the third class, walking around to see everyone's art and offering compliments. It was a really wonderful time in the art room.

Kindergarten paper molas

Kindergarten artists used a mola technique of stacking shapes from small to large to practice their cutting skills. A mola is a textile art from Panama that involves sewing layers of fabric in this way, as seen here from molamama :

Some classes used photos of themselves in their designs and added extra shapes, keeping to the spring theme. 

1st grade snowbirds

Texture was the focus here - we used rubbing plates to texturizing the papers for the birds and printed newspaper for tree bark texture, topping it off with a real feather or two.

Winter collagraph prints, 3rd grade

These charming prints were created by gluing a variety of foam and corrugated paper shapes to a mat board printing plate, then rolling with white printing ink and printing on colored paper. Finally, we folded a white paper into fourths and cut paper frames - we even made snowflakes from the remaining paper for no waste! The plates took two sessions to assemble, with one session for printing (3 per student) and one more session for framing and uploading to Artsonia.

Most of the shapes were cut by hand, although the snowflakes and snow men were precut.