For this lesson, we learned about the artist Grant Wood and his painting “American Gothic.” The kids read a magazine article about this painting (It was from the 90’s and I think from the New Yorker). The students discussed what a parody is and saw many examples of parodies of this iconic painting. Then, the students drew their own version of the “American Gothic”. I highly recommend this series of books!
Cross-hatching is fun, but a difficult art technique (at least in my opinion). The third/fourth grade class picked out some animals from Zoobooks magazines and drew them in pencil. Then, we looked at Brian Selznick’s books for inspiration. Wonderstruck His novels are full of beautiful cross-hatched drawings, alternating with the chapters. Plus, the two books I have read by him are charming and wonderful stories. Read them! You’ll love them too, I guarantee it. They are listed below. I think … Read more…
These beautiful bird paintings were drawn and painted by first graders. The students learned about the artist John James Audubon and we read a book about his life. I love this book about Audubon, because it has beautiful pictures and ties science and art together nicely. The students looked at pictures of birds and drew them with crayons. Then we painted the background with tempera cakes. This is a lovely picture.. too bad we didn’t use thicker paper, it wrinkled … Read more…
5th/6th grade Castle Drawings The 5th and 6th graders have been studying the Medieval time period in their Social Studies class. For this project, the 5th and 6th graders looked at pictures of castles and drew their own castle using pencil and pens. Then, they added watercolor washes to the picture. Some of the students discovered that it looks really nice when the castle is left white.
This was a project that my first graders started when I was absent from school. I printed off the handout from Art Projects for Kids and the children got their first introduction to perspective. Thanks for the great project!
These are drawings by 4th/5th graders. Who was Keith Haring? What is gesture drawing? The 4/5s learned about the artwork of Keith Haring and practiced figural drawing. In pairs, the students posed for each other and practiced gesture drawing and longer posed drawings. Then they drew stylized people, kind of in a cartoon-like way. We read pages from this book about Keith Haring and analyzed the meanings of his artwork. The kids were encouraged to add their own symbols to … Read more…
Juan Miro is one of my favorite artists. I used artwork by Miro to help the kids learn the difference between abstract and realistic art. The kids analyzed his artwork and we categorized prints. Then, they drew a squiggly line with their eyes closed. Then they turned their paper around to view it from many angles. The kids tried to find different things in their picture.. faces, hands, animals, etc. They could add details to their drawing. Some added … Read more…
These charming pictures of hands were a lesson on warm and cool colors. The hands are colored in cool colors and the heart is colored in warm colors.
In Art class, the 1st graders looked at Claude Monet’s artwork, especially his paintings of ponds. Using a variety of painting techniques the 1st graders painted a pond with watercolors. Frogs were drawn with crayons and markers. Lilypads were added with construction paper and tissue paper. The children were studying frogs and toads in their Science class and read about them in LA/SS/D.
The focus on this project was learning about texture. The children used texture plates to create texture rubbings on the fur. On the inside of the teddy bear’s stomach, they drew a creative design. Then, they learned about patterns and read the book Lots and Lots of Zebra Stripes. The border was decorated with patterns. Yeah, they look like Care Bears, don’t they? Sooooooo cute!
Tom Lichtenheld, an author and illustrator, will be visiting EAGLE School at the end of October. To prepare for his visit, many of the classes will be seeing his art and listening to his books. The Intermediates are focusing on his book Everything I Know about Pirates. After reading his book, the students are drawing pirate pictures!
During the summer, I’m going to dig back to some of my old lesson plans that I had posted on artsonia.com to show to you. Maybe I will revisit these again during the upcoming school year. This was favorite of mine and I don’t know why I stopped teaching it. The pictures all turned out gorgeous. CUBIST CATS for Second GradeThe kids learned about Picasso and his dynamic, fragmented Cubist artwork. 1. First we did a step-by-step drawing of a … Read more…
This unit focused on recalling a family memory and creating a picture about this story. We read about the artist Faith Ringgold and her story quilts.
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