The 1st graders looked at the art of Stuart Davis and read some of the words, letters and numbers in his artwork. They analyzed his pictures and tried to figure out why he might have included text in his art. I teach about him every year and the kids create artwork with letters and numbers. You can see the ones we made last year at with this blog post. This year the students wrote words in an artistic way and … Read more…
Did that get your attention? How about this? The Science teachers at my school often have the kids create drawings about what they are studying. One of them asked if I wanted to coordinate and have my third graders do more observational drawing. I borrowed these fun scientific specimens and some plants from the school greenhouse for my students to draw. If you want to buy some of your own specimens, they are not cheap, but once you have them … Read more…
Have you seen the art installation of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London? It is amazing! If you follow that link, there is a video about how the installation was made. The poppy is a remembrance symbol for soldiers who have died in war. The symbol comes from the poem “In Flander’s Field”, where poppies grew in a field over the graves of soldiers. Each year, our 5th/6th grade class gets a visit from the wife of a veteran, … Read more…
My students made self portraits with construction paper, tissue paper and paint. This project is always a hit with the kids and parents. I love it because it involves lots of good art concepts such as color mixing with paints, shades and tints, proportion, facial details and collage techniques. We start by creating the background with tissue paper and paint. The kids are encouraged to experiment with color mixing. I demonstrate how to make colors lighter by adding white and … Read more…
October 31 to November 2 is the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead. My first grade students learned about the celebration a bit in their Spanish class and then in art class, we read a story about the holiday and drew these symmetrical skull pictures. The book we read was Day of the Dead, by Tony Johnston. It’s a nice story with great pictures. My only complaint is that the book is very very small, so the kids have to … Read more…
Sometimes when the scrap box gets too full or it is holiday that gets the kids all hyped up (like Halloween) I will give the class a “scrap box challenge.” What can you make by using the scraps in the scrap box?! Here are a few of their fun creations.
I came across this beautiful technique at the Happy Hooligans blog. She practiced letter writing with glue, salt and paint. I thought this technique would be a fun experiment for my third graders and make beautiful fall leaf paintings. Here’s how this works. First, we used real fall leaves for inspiration while drawing. We drew leaves with pencil on watercolor paper. Then, we used regular Elmer’s white glue to outline the leaves. While the glue was still wet, we poured … Read more…
