Sometimes I just like to take a picture of my door.

2014 Year of the Horse.

My fourth grade students learned about the Chinese New Year and how it is the year of the horse.  We celebrated by doing some ink drawings of none other than, well, a horse.  I tried to teach them to be free flowing with their brush strokes.  They also demonstrated that they could ink "horse" in Chinese.  

Kindergarten Chalk Drawings.

The Kinders got to experience the messiness of chalk!  They blended the chalk to create a snowman and then added details with oil pastels.  Next they cut a triangle out of a rectangle and glued in on where they wanted to (perspective).  In the end we finger painted snow in the background.  Whew!!!

Winter Wonder Land.





Fourth grade did some winter scenes using tempra paint.  They learned to paint in layers, what ever was furthest back in space they painted first.  This created a sense of depth.  They also practice mixing colors.  the object was to get the trees in the painting to be a slightly different shade.  

Clay Hands.

Kindergarten work with clay to create a hand print ornament for their family.  Your hand is only this big for so long you know!  They learned about what a slab is as well as the technique of scoring (which is basically scratching their name into clay here).  

Pointillism Cardinals.

Second grade learned about the painting style called "Pointillism".  It is where you just paint using points or dots.  They used only their finger tips for this painting.  We also went through some basic facts about the Cardinal.  I am pretty sure every dot landed on their paper during this process!

The Making of Van Gogh Sunflowers.

Van Gogh Sunflowers.

Fifth grade learned about Van Gogh and the process of painting the sunflower.  We used thick brush strokes to get the same feel that Van Gogh had in his paintings.  We tried to create texture through the paint.  We also discussed composition and how to lay out a peice of art.  Very nice results.

Perspective Sea Turtles.

Third grade learned about perspective and how there are many ways to look at something.  We painted sea turtle as if  we were swimming underneath them and looking up.  We also discussed tints and tones and learned about what it means to be an endangered species.  Ceramic sea turtles are coming!

Owls of pattern.

Second grade drew owls along with me and then used crayon, oil pastel, and tempera paint to create pattern and color.  A little bit of depth through overlapping thrown in there as well.  It was a good one day activity!  Whoo!

Analogous colors.

Third grade learned about analogous colors and created these wonderful O'keeffe inspired flowers.  We also discussed balance and what it looks like in a peice of art.  Tempera paint, scissors, and glue were used for this one.

Analogous colors.

Here is a short video of a third grade class doing this project.  Happy results!

More eye studies.

I displayed these right outside my Art Room.  That way I can see who is out there.

Mondrian study.

Kindergarten learned about the primary colors and did a cut and paste collage just using squares, rectangles, and triangles....just like Piet Mondrian.  They also made creative choices with their space.