3rd grade Eric Carle Inspired Collages

Eric Carle is a great source of inspiration in the Art room. Second grade created mixed-up chameleons and now third grade is finishing up their Eric Carle collages. We spent an art class dedicated to creating texture on paper with paint and some very neat paint-scraping tools. There are so many color combinations and ways to use the tools, the possibilities are nearly endless.

After this, we looked at some Eric Carle books, like "Animals, Animals" for inspiration. Students drew a sketch on newsprint paper (not pictured) to get a better understanding of the shapes of the objects and/or animals and then drew those objects and/or animals on the back of the textured paper and cut them out. Since everyone needed many colors, we created a "community" texture paper bin so we could all share.

(Eric Carle's work pictured above)

Finally, we chose a color for a background, arranged our pieces before gluing them down, and added small details with oil pastels. Their ideas blew me away... I am one proud art teacher!

1st Grade Rocket Ship Art

First Grade is currently working on rocket ships in outer space, which is a mixed media piece. First we built our rocket ship (or space shuttle) out of a variety of matte board shapes and popsicle sticks with glue. We worked on a "launch pad" (manila paper). After the glue dried, we painted our rocket ships with a variety of metallic colors:  gold, silver, bronze, copper, and antique gold. To research our background, we browsed the NASA websites for images of the sun, the planets, and other outer space objects like comets, asteroids, moons, etc. I highly recommend the student website:  http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/index.html  (I was mesmerized by the images!) Our background is being drawn on dark paper with crayon and soon we will arrange and glue our rocket ships down. Here are some pictures from Mrs. Allen's class:

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!

1st Grade Spiderwebs

First grade are completing their spiderwebs in Art right now... We learned and used directional lines like HORIZONTAL, VERTICAL, and DIAGONAL to draw a spiderweb on a black piece of paper. Next we traced our lines in glue and after the glue dried, we used oil pastel to create a pattern with colors. We read "Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti", learned about the characteristics of spiders, and cut and glued a spider from geometric shapes. They did a great job with the glue and these are just in time for Halloween!

5th Grade and 4th/5th Multi-age Silhouettes

5th Grade just finished up their silhouette mixed media pieces. These were painted in tempera first and then the silhouette was cut and glued on top. We discussed using similar colors on our paper, like warm, cool, or analogous (next to each other on the color wheel) colors and then painted our paper. Next, we created a sketch in our sketchbook for our silhouette that used the space on our paper well. Learning about contour lines from our previous lesson helps us fully understand the outline and shape of objects, so that we can create interesting and recognizable silhouettes. Finally, we cut our objects out of black paper, arranged them, and glued them to our painting.