City Country Starry Night Sky

City Country Warm Cool...Starry Night Sky

5th grade Up Up and Away

Connecting to classroom Science standards and building on VAPA standards regarding student understanding of a Landscape, this mixed media project offers lots of creative expression within a structured step by step framework. 3 Part project...

Community Building Circle Painting

Our first project for the the 2014-15 school year will be community based project involving the entire school. Every class is invited to the art studio for a 10-15 minute silent painting sessions to create banners filled with color and circles...Welcome to your First Art Adventure of the New School Year Circle Painting 



* " Hiep Nguyen created the first Circle Painting when he returned to his native country Vietnam in 1999. Driven by his desire to connect with neighborhood children in the mountain town of Dalat,Hiep invited them to paint circles with him in his studio. To his surprise, the children kept coming back for more,sometimes even with their friends and families. This experience inspired Hiep to continue exploring the circle theme as a way to create and connect with others.

 Circle Painting’s first breakthrough took place in 2007 when Hiep was invited by the Southeast Asian Leadership Network, a service learning organization from Stanford university, to train 100 youth leaders and to help integrating art into their community service projects."

*http://www.circlepainting.com

This project introduces vocabulary such as community, mural, concentric and balance, builds on curricular themes of Unity and connects to the work of numerous art masters such as Kandinsky and Hundertwasser.

I am so excited to see how this turns out...Let the Grand Art Adventure Begin!

Weber Town II building the City

3-D sculptures-What is a City?

Bird Print Portraits

4 part project, life study drawings to finished prints.
Part I: drawing from life introduce Audubon (brief history connects to 5th grade standards). Using bird prints and coloring book drawings, students create a series of bird portrait sketches
Part II: artists refine their sketches and introduce the printing process
Part III: one drawing is selected and transferred to the printing plate-model process and allow for practice with materials
Part IV: Printing Day-set up large tables and work in small groups.

Kinder A for artist L for line...

A is for artist...Kinders draw a self portrait the first week of art, this is a great meet and greet lesson and a way to evaluate and observe the artists at work in very free form project.

Royal Dogs

This fun end of the school year project for 5th grade takes a leap from the American History text of the Revolutionary War.
2-3 sessions to complete using lots of dog images and print of 18th century royal fashions. Drawings were done in pencil  including a frame or boarder,  outlined with sharpie and crayon and last watercolors.

Western Expansion

Starry Nights meets the Oregon trail.
Students created a Starry Night inspired sky with watercolor, sea salt and crayon. Torn black paper was used for the ground. Working in teams they connected their ground and developed a story based on their knowledge of the 1800's journey out west. We looked at art prints from the time and table hand outs of the west (animals, landscape and clothing styles of the Old West) for inspiration.
With scissors, more black paper and Sharpie markers they added the final details to their composition.

I think they did a great job!

Bird Prints

This is such a fun 4 part project that connects to 5th grade social studies while reinforcing skills and introducing students to print making as an art form.

I use a lot of handouts to support this project and allow a lot of time for students to develop a collect of bird drawings for their portfolio. They are encouraged to make notes and compare the line drawing resources with the color prints provided.

This project also integrates the travels and art work of American Artist James Audubon.

http://web4.audubon.org/bird/BoA/BOA_index.html