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.  

Veteran's day, Husky Pride

Students in 3rd grade learned about the importance of Veteran's day this past week; we discussed how Veteran's fight for our freedom and Veteran's day is one way we thank them for serving our Country.

Students ripped paper and cut out stars to make 5 different types of United States flags from our Nation's history.  They carefully placed out the red and white spaces and made sure to make the flags look as neat as possible.

Students worked in teams to get these flags done for the Veteran's day celebration in 2 weeks.  They had to decide who was going to cut, who was going to glue, who was in charge of filling white spaces and where the stars go.

We also wanted to show our Husky Pride in school so a few groups made these great Husky Pride flags out of ripped paper

Contour Lines drawing, painting landscapes, perspective names

First and Second grade are finishing up their unit on Landscape drawing and painting, they are creating an interesting landscape making sure to show the foreground, middle ground, and background, they made things using outlines and added paint this week.

Fourth grade learned about 1 point perspective and the vanishing point.  Students created their names using block lettering and those letters always go back towards the vanishing point. This project is especially tricky, because students must figure out how each line will look as it goes back towards the vanishing point.

Third Grade is learning about Contour lines.  Contour comes from the French word for Outline.  Students practiced contour line drawing, continuous contour line drawing (Pencil never leaves the paper) and blind contour line drawing (Where students do NOT look at the paper and only look at the subject)

Here students are practicing their contour lines while drawing the contours of their hands

and here are a few examples of the blind contour line drawing, you can see the outlines of these student's faces, even though everything isn't exactly in the right place. (Pretty tough when not looking at the paper!)

Andy Goldsworthy

Well, it's October so that means it's time for a new artist of the month: Andy Goldsworthy

Goldsworthy is a Naturalist Artist, that means he uses only things found in nature as his tools and art.  He collects leaves, rocks, snow, and ice, and uses those items to make an interesting composition.  Goldsworthy loves to "capture the moment" by taking a picture of the work at its peak, or when the art is done, he then likes to watch wind take away the leaves, sun melt the snow, and allow time to age his gigantic wooden sculptures.

Fifth Grade is starting a new project: Designing a Minnesota state flag for Youth Art Month.

Youth Art Month (YAM) takes place during the entire month of March.  YAM is a celebration of our student artists! Each year, Students take part in a Youth Art Month flag design competition.  Students design a flag for their state containing symbols for art in Minnesota.  Each school has 2 winners, and from those winners, 1 student from Elementary, Middle, and High school, state wide, is selected as the Student flag design winner.  These winners get their flags made into an actual 3'x5' flag and that flag gets to be on display during the Youth Art Month art show at the Minnesota State Capitol from March 24th - March 30th, 2013.... here are a few examples of past entries.

Foreground, middle ground, background...Finishing Kandinsky and Portraits

Third grade will be finishing up their Kandinsky style artwork unit this week by painting with watercolors.  Students made circles using crayons on their paper, these crayons create a resist, so colors don't mix into each other and turn everything brown.  After drawing the circles, they painted each box a variety of colors. 

1st and 2nd grade learned how to show things in the foreground, middle ground, and background.  Everything in the background is really far away so it will look small, everything in the middle ground is normal sized and everything in the foreground is HUGE.  They also learned what the Horizon line is and where to place it on their background.

Below are a few examples from each grade.

Fifth Grade finished their self portraits; in the background they drew things about them that they liked or pictures that would help someone who doesn't know them, to know a little bit about the artist.