Imagination in 3-D

 This Spring After School series is designed for young artists but can easily be adopted to challenge older students as well. Working with a variety of materials and supplies, students created expandable imaginary animal puppets and a gnome with his/her mushroom home. The gnomes are painted coconut cups (a donation that has rolled around the art room for 2 years) I primed most of them white to give the students a smooth base. Some chose the non primed cups. One coat of tempera was applied as a color foundation to block out body parts (face, dress, hands...) and left to dry.  Details and smaller bits of color where added later and last the cotton beard/hair and pointed hat/cap.

Green Art for the Garden

This Spring After School class focused on the use of recycled materials in the creation of art bird houses.

Where is your Mummy?

Supporting 6th grade World History Standards and Visual Arts skill building/design themes this 3 session mummy projects was both creative and educational (and lots of fun). Starting with a brief discussion of ancient Egyptian life and art supported with hand outs, prints and books students made sketches of their

royal tomb.

To create the coffin students had the option of using preprinted guides or drawing their own. This project used crayons, color pencils, beads, tissue paper and othe small decorative collage elements. Once the drawing was completed and cut out it was mounted on folded black paper (card like) and inside they drew-with white color pencil a mummy and or skeleton (once again with visual support materials)

Warm and Cool folk art landscape

This project was inspired by a post I saw on Pinterest (will find and post later). Students learned about foreground, middleground and background while creationg a very simple and stylized country scene.

Warm and cool oil pastels were used to add color. Last, they could ouline their completed design with a black oil pastel.

Great Birds of North America

Supported by observation and discussion students created several pencil sketches of North American birds. They were provided with table top hands outs and other visual supports to create these drawings and collect them in a sketchbook/portfolio.

This project supports skill building and  connects Early American History themes such as Mr. Audubon (explorer/artist)  and his work regarding the birds and wild life of early North America. These drawing were then transferred to soft printing plates using a wooden pencil. Plates were printed with water base wood block ink. Students learned to sign and number their prints and artist's proofs.

Rainbow City 2012

What is a City? What does it sound like? What does it look like?

Compare and contast city and country. I found art prints of famous paintings very helpful in this discussion.

All of the building rectangles were precut from scraps-great way to use up those bits and pieces at the end of the year.

This kindergarten project connects to shape and color identification and introduces students to using a ruler (to create a horizon line). Crayons, color pencils, metalic crayons and paper scrape details were added later to complete each cityscape and help it come alive!

Impressionist Inspired Landscape

Students in Ms. A's blend class created Impressionist inspired landscapes using tempera paint, tissue paper and lots of hands on fun.

I broke this lesson into 3 sessions, one painting the sky and ground, second adding the brown hand/tree and last tissue paper spring blossoms.

Torn Paper Self Portaits

 Students review the basics for creating a self portrait practicing on sketch paper with mirrors. Using head shaped patterns they drew a simplified picture of themselves on card stock. Construction paper and magazines were the materials used to complete this project. Students used glue sticks to apply the materials but scissors were not allowed, this was a torn paper art piece. I think they did a great job.

Mona Lisa Pop

This lesson combines an introduction to the Renaissance and the artist Leonardo daVinci as well as the Pop art approach to creating by Andy Warhol. Using a simple coloring book outline of the Mona Lisa, with a clear overhead and Sharpie markers student trace the lines and attach their work (with tape at the top so the overhead can be lifted up) to white card stock. 

Last color paper in a collage style, no scissors, torn paper only they are to add color and their design approach to this classic art icon.

Colorful Building Colorful City

Using one color per table students created a value scale rectangle that will be later be cut  to create one city building for an individual project and one city building for a class project. This art project explores color, shape, size, balance, line and design. We used observation and discussion to create the details and addition design components to complete the pictures. What is a city? What are the shapes do you see on buildings? Foreground, middle ground and background...so many connections

Kinder/First painted city