Clay Clay Clay

It has been a big couple of weeks with clay as students are finishing clay coil pots in 5th grade and starting pinch pots in 1st grade. Here are some finished 5th grade coil pots.

and first grade pinch pots!

Second grade has also been working on replicating the work of Claes Oldenburg, our December artist of the month.  Claes is best known here in Minnesota as the artist of the Spoonbridge and Cherry

 Bowl of cherries

 Fruit Bowl

Bacon and eggs, waffle (Bottom right), Pie (Top left)

5th Grade Coil Pots

5th graders have been working on coil pots.  They all started with a chunk of clay and had to work that clay into a long rope like coil.  After working the coils out, they stack them up and create these fantastic coil pots.  They will be glazing them this week and sent into the kiln early next week!

Here students are glazing their coil pots to be fired later.

Winter wonderland!

Third grade is learning about drawing shades, tints, and shadows; and with no snow to be found, it was time to let the snow fly!  Third graders made snowmen using vine charcoal, chalk and blending paper to create a snowman scene.  They made sure to have a shadow, show depth and make the snowmen look a little 3-D using their shading and blending. Thanks to one of my favorite art bloggers Ms. Young!

Oil Pastel Color Wheel

Third Graders continued their explorations in oil pastels this week by creating a blended color wheel.

Students traced a circle, marked where each of the colors go, then blended the colors using Primary and Secondary colors to make intermediate colors.

Positive Negative Space

Fourth Grade is learning about positive and negative space.  In this project they demonstrate an irregular pattern on both sides of this diptych piece.  One side shows the tree in the positive space, and the other side has the patterns on the outside of the tree creating a tree shape in the negative space. 

Next week students will paint over the crayon to further demonstrate their knowledge of positive and negative space.

Mosiac Trees, people drawing, and Organic Abstractions

First Graders started making ripped paper mosaic trees.  They first had to cut up 35 pieces of brown paper without knowing what they are going to make, they then drew an outline of a tree with 5 branches, the branches and tree bark were covered using an overlapping technique similar to the mosaic tile technique

Students finished 1-4 trees and will be covering them with the 4 seasons of tree colors next time in art!

Second grade started learning correct human proportions.  They learned about how tall an average adult is, and how tall the average 2nd grader is.  Students practiced drawing using circles and ovals and then erased the inner lines and created a clothing design.

Third grade learned about Organic shapes.  They practiced matching organic and geometric shapes and colored in a cool (Blue, purple, green) or warm (red, yellow, orange) color scheme.  It was a fun activity for students, coloring with oil pastels and without even knowing it, ALL students made an organic abstraction.

After students finished their cool/warm color scheme, they cut out around the shapes and made a large organic shape, that shape was glued to black paper and all students ended with a large organic shape.

Shape People, collage

1st Grade painted with the 3 primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and they made sure to mix those colors, they then reviewed geometric shapes they learned in Kindergarten.  Students traced geometric shapes to make their faces, eyes, nose, mouth, hair; traced them with a sharpie and colored them in.

Fourth Grade started a collage unit, first learning about the collage work of Henri Matisse making sure to have a theme in mind, they cut out backgrounds, people, animals, and words and started putting those together.