Soft Paper Sculpture

I have been inspired by my fellow art teacherin pals to flip a few of my lessons. Flipping a lesson is recording yourself teaching the lesson and have the students learn from the recording. This allows me to pass out papers or clarify any questions along the way.  It allows students to see the lesson on the large screen and will be useful for students who were absent, and for sub plans.  Here is a link to Mini Matisse, where flipping lessons is being perfected (Thanks Nic!)  Here is my first attempt...

So there you have it, soft paper sculptures, I will post the results as students finish the sculptures!














....and thanks for reading, Dad.

Kindergarten Snow Families

My K's have been working with line, shape, and color so far this year. This lesson incorporates all three.  Students counted how many people in their family, and drew them as snowpeople.  We watched a video that explained about the artist George Seurat and pointillism. (Art with Mati and Dada) Students drew their families using circles for the bodies and qtips to paint the snowpeople bodies using pointillism dots.  Typically pointillism uses dots of many colors and the human eye naturally blends the colors, I feel that students understanding the process behind pointillism, will help them to understand the visual blending even with only 1 color. They painted the bodies of the snowpeople in one class, and added details with oil pastels in the next class. The results are an explosion of adorable.

This project was fun for students for many ways; trying new materials, painting with something other than a paint brush, and telling a story about their families.

Symmetry names

Students in 4th grade and Art Edventures class (After school art) created these symmetrical creatures using their names, the negative space created things like eyes, mouth, ears, and arms, the creativity behind these works really makes for a fun lesson!

Emma

Cody

Jeanna

Samara

Fold the paper in half, hold the fold, make sure name is touching the folded sided, cut the name out and glue to another sheet and add features to your name creature.

Cutting names

glue and adding features

Lila

Chase

Eric

Kevin

Logan

Isaac

Emma

 Annie

Cidney

Zentangle

5th Graders have been hard at work creating Zentangles.  A Zentangle is an abstract drawing created using repetitive patterns, it is designed to be fun, relaxing and accessible to all. Students started on a small square of paper and continued to work larger until they came up with these creative designs below.

Elements: Color, Shape, Texture

'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884'

Pointillism is essentially the creation of an artwork using only dots; the most famous example happens to be my favorite painting. (Above) (More Here)

Third Graders have been working on the elements of art (Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Value, Space, and Form) to start off the year; and pointillism lessons happen to contain the majority of the elements of art.  I love starting the year with this project for establishing painting procedures, expectations, and the full submersion into the elements of art.

Students spent a day practicing tree drawing, learning the simple Y shape goes into each branch, and adding more Y shapes makes the trees more detailed. The following day, students chose warm or cool colors to fill the leaves in the tree, and used qtips to paint the leaves in the trees.

They completed the project by adding a texture to the trees with that same pointillist process.  It was cool to see their frustrations of "Only using dots" turn into amazement with how the final product was beginning to turn out.

 Students added a horizon line and mixed different values of green and yellow for the grass

The finishing touches of this project will include a watercolor wash over the sky and finishing touches of leaves over some of the tree branches..