Doing the basics in September

September is a good time to hit some of the basics and see how well and comfortably the students draw. I also get to assess how well they work with basic supplies like glue and scissors at all grade levels.  Most of the grades did a name based project and  projects using types of lines to create designs. The 3rd grade spirals were a lot of fun and quite popular.  The  kindergarten names went well with the paper plate faces and hand prints from the week before. Lots of the artwork made it onto the walls in the hall or the classrooms. 

We also did projects identifying textures and shaping them which is very popular. students brought items from home to add to my offerings to have a "touch table" then used the items to create the designs. The picture at left is from the 2nd grade class.






The 4-5 grade did an interpretive mixed media picture using yarns, tissue and drawing based on the story of Moby Dick. Great depictions of whales with its blow hole and other detail of a wily whale that had survived many hunts. One of the students added the boat and little speech bubbles. 

Our lines and curves drawing day turned out so much better than the examples I brought. 2nd grade did scarecrow complete with crows and  the 3rd grade is abstract blocks. 




This year our 6-8th grade students are all participating in art instead of signing up for an optional group after school  I had them draw the Spanish buildings then paint them in watercolors. Watercolors are a bit of a challenge to get just the right amount of wet into everything but by the end they did a great job and some went on to do a 2nd picture. 

After school group completes Vincent's boats

Amid the hustle of working on the history fair board, the after school art group was able to complete their watercolor painting of Vincent Van Gogh's boats on the beach. They spent 3 weeks on this to get it from a blank sheet of paper to the completed painting. They learned how to mix the paints to the right wetness for each stage of the painting. They created white space by not painting it. They learned a variety of techniques to get the paint onto the paper. Truely impressive!

Vincent's boats are getting color afterschool

This week we started putting color on the boats and finishing the detail on this painting. We hope to be done next week. The students learned how to mix different concentrations of color and how to put 2 colors side by side without them mixing. We did not use a resist but painted wet-on-dry with great results. Some of the students will refine their masts next week as a few lost proportion in the drawings.

4th grade takles water color technique

We took a step back this week to work on technique before finishing the water color picture. Water colors are not an intuitive medium and need a bit of practice to see how they work. The students were to work step by step and use 3-4 colors wet-in-wet and wet-to-dry. They discovered that water on the paper creates a barrier between wet and dry paper, tipping the paper helps colors to run into one another and make new colors, the water does the work if you let it, putting more water next to a color will cause it to move. All in all it was a good lesson and one that turned out well.

2nd grade learns how watercolors work

It was hard and scary to let the paper do the painting but for the kids who let themselves go, it was an OH, WOW moment. We started with painting with water to wet the page. Almost no one got the paper wet enough the first time. We did a simple landscape with a tree, sky, sun and some ground. Quite a few of them really let the water and paper do the work and had great results. We did not get to use other elements like salt today butr we will.