Kindergarten Self Portraits

Learning to draw yourself (and just anybody in general) is a difficult task. Kinders learned what a self-portrait is and saw examples of my own self portrait in different materials. Students started their self portrait by tracing an oval on a piece of paper. Students were shown easy ways using shapes and lines to draw different parts of  the face. Students drew their face in pencil and traced the face in sharpie. We discussed how to choose appropriate eyebrow, eye, and skin color (choosing a few colors, testing them on the back of the portrait, and then decided what was best) and then colored in our portrait with crayons. Students cut out their portrait and then used yarn to create loop-knots in the holes for hair. I love all the different expressions found on the self portraits!

1st Grade Self-Portraits

First Grade are finishing up their self-portraits. We looked at all different kinds of portraits-paint, clay, drawing, collage, to understand that a self-portraits can be made out of many materials. I guided the students in drawing the accurate shapes and sizes for facial features, and we even used mirrors to help us along. They were colored with markers, and the background was created from another paper that we printed (or stamped) on with different objects. Most of the students made patterns with the printing, some created a frame around the self-portrait. Here's a few to enjoy, more will come soon!

Happy Dia de los Muertos!

Happy Dia de los Muertos! (Day of the Dead). Art class is a great opportunity for learning about other cultures. If you're curious about all these skulls you might be seeing, these are calaveras, which is spanish for skull. We have been looking in particular at sugar skulls, which are a popular figure of Dia de los Muertos. We've been learning about this holiday and creating calaveras in different ways for the grade levels: 2nd grade painting, 3rd grade mask-making, 4th grade permanent marker drawing, and 5th grade printmaking.

First Grade Abstract Art

First Graders learned about the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky for their first lesson. We looked at Kandinsky's paintings and found and described the different shapes, lines and colors he used. Since Kandinsky was inspired by music to create his paintings, we listened to "I Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash while we drew a moving and changing line all around our paper. We traced the lines in Sharpie and then added more lines, patterns, and shapes in crayon inside the different sections created by our line. To add much more interest and color, we used watercolor paints on top of our crayon. We sure have some fabulous first grade abstract artists!

3rd Grade Geometric/Organic Shape Designs

3rd Grade has been working on these Geometric/Organic shape designs. We used geometric shape stencils to create an interesting composition or arrangement on our paper with pencils. Some of us built a specific animal, person, or object, and some of us created an overlapping design. We traced the shapes in Sharpies, added color using markers, and then painted with water and paintbrushes. Since the colored markers are water-based, the ink dissolves in the water and you can paint your paper. Our last step was to look for changes of lightness and darkness, as well as changes of color, and to trace these interesting lines and organic shapes with a detail Sharpie.

4th Grade Pumpkin Patches

4th Grade is finishing up their Pumpkin Patch chalk drawings this week. First, we sketched our ideas, and were asked to create depth by using a Horizon Line and the size and placement of the pumpkins and other objects. Next, we drew our image on black paper. We learned how to blend our chalk to create richer colors, as well as using white and black to create highlights and shades (to make our pumpkins look more realistic).