1st Grade Owls - Pattern & Texture

 

My first grades just finished up some really cute owls.  The inspiration came from some cute patterned owls from The Elementary Art Room.  This lesson covered several things...  We reviewed drawing with shapes to create the owls, they added patterns to the bodies, then learned about visual and tactile texture and incorporated them into their backgrounds.  This lesson took us three 40 minute classes to complete.  During the first class the kids drew their owls.  I demonstrated several ways to draw their owls and discussed patterns using lines, shapes and colors.   The students drew them out in pencil, outlined them with black marker and added their patterns with construction paper crayons.

In the second class I discussed visual and tactile texture with my first graders.  I showed them how to use our rubbing plates to create a visual texture in their skies.  Rubbing plates are always a fan favorite!  I gave them Crayola Color Sticks to do their rubbings.  I purchased a class pack for this school year and had not used them yet.  They are excellant for rubbings!  The colors are bright, they go on easily without a lot of pressure and best of all did not have to peel a thousand wrappers off of them! 

To create the bark texture in their trees I had the students draw into their paint with the opposite end of their paint brush while the paint was still wet.  They loved the process and it made a nice tactile texture when the paint was dry.  

In our third class the kids glued on their owls, had a chance to add some green leaves (if they wanted to) with some painted paper scraps and students who were behind for one reason or another got a chance to catch up.  

 

 

The children loved their finished owls and couldn't wait to take them home! 

Color Wheel Pumpkins & Zentangle - 4th Grade

 

This lesson was inspired by this pin, I found on Pinterest some time ago.  I needed to do a color wheel lesson with my fourth grades but I wanted it to be something that would hold their interest.  Since it is Autumn and Halloween is just around the corner, I decided to go with pumpkins! 

I instructed the students to start by drawing six overlapping pumpkins.  Every time I was asked:  "Why do they have to overlap?"  In return said:  "Think about it."  They knew we were using the color wheel in order to paint them in.  Happily, there were a few students that quickly answered:  "Where the pumpkins/colors overlap we will get the tertiary colors, red-orange, blue-green, etc..."

 

The first steps looked something like this.  I reminded the students the major objective was to keep there colors in order of the color wheel starting with red.  They outlined their drawing with black Sharpie marker before painting.

If they had more than six pumpkins, they were to go full circle and repeat their colors from red until they were out of pumpkins to paint.  It took one 30 minute class to draw out, trace and paint their pumpkins.  Very few students needed extra painting time the next class.  The students kept asking:  "Can we paint the background?"  Mind you they are used to me always saying:  "Paint everything!"  "No, we are not painting the backgrounds this time."  I didn't know what I wanted to do with the backgrounds at that time.  Something that would give it some pizzazz!  Something that would make you say:  "Wow!"  When you looked at them.  So I thought about it all week.  I wanted a background element that would contrast with the colorful pumpkins.  I came across this pin.

That was my "AH-HAH " moment!  Zentangle the background with black Sharpie!  The black and white designs would be the perfect companion to the colorful, simple lines of the pumpkins!  When the students saw the completed sample they were very excited to start their own designs!  All the classes are doing an excellent job and loving the end results! Here are a few finished and in progress pieces from this week! 

  

 

Liquid Watercolor Love!

 

This school year I bought liquid watercolors for the first time ever.  I purchased them in my school order for my 3rd - 5th grades.  "Love Them!"  Since my district has a contract with School Specialty, I purchased the Sax brand.  I spent some time yesterday morning getting them prepped for my afternoon third grade classes.  Did I say;  "Some time?"  Okay, make that A LOT of time!  I had a class that went on a trip so luckily I was able to utilize the time to finish up!

 

I started by setting up my paint trays with eight of the plastic cups I use for paint.  I order them from Sax as well and made up six trays altogether (six tables, six trays).

 

Then I cut a hole in the middle of each of the plastic lids.  This way if the cups jiggle or tip a little, the paint won't come pouring out!  That's a trick I came up with when I was on a cart and had the students painting in their classrooms.

Okay, so cutting each one took me a bit of time since I realized that I had forgotten to bring them home with me the night before to cut while I was watching TV.  I use a really sharp pointy scissor to carefully poke a hole in the top and then use one of the student scissors to cut out the larger hole.  Notice the purple finger?  Some of the bottles didn't pour very well so I ended up wrapping a paper towel around the bottle to catch any drips! 

 

I ended up adding more of the concentrated watercolor to the cups.  After mixing one of the trays with water I found that the colors were too diluted.  I poured in enough watercolor to cover the bottom of the cup (more time).  See the drip of red in the yellow?  That's when I started wrapping the bottles with the paper towels.  No more drips in my colors after that!

 

These cups of red-orange are my "Oops!" cups.  As I was adding the extra color to each cup I soon realized that I had started to pour red into all the orange cups! (more time) I capped them to save for another project.

 

All the trays with lids, ready to fill with water and cap! (this photo is before I realized I needed to add more watercolor to the cups.

 

These are the final prepped trays.  After filling them with water and capping them, I realized that it was difficult to distinguish a few of the colors from each other!  I knew if I had trouble telling which one was which the third graders definitely would!  I grabbed a roll of masking tape, a Sharpie and my scissors and began to make little labels for each cup (more time).

 

I painted a color chart to hang up so the kids could see what each color looked like.  The color is more vibrant than it looks in the photo. 

 

This is the display I made to show the third grade students different design options for drawing out their Horizontal/Vertical designs.  They are inspired by this lesson from Fine Lines, and found the blog post from a pin on Pinterest last Spring.  I demonsrated how each design could be created and let the students choose which one they wanted to draw. Several Students even created their own versions of a Horizontal/Vertical design!  They used rulers to get the straight edges.  It was good ruler practice.  Some of them still have some difficulty holding the ruler in the right way so that it doesn't move on them while they are drawing with it.

 

Once the Horizontal/Vertical lines were drawn, the students designed each section using construction paper crayons.

 

The kids were so intrigued and excited when they saw the watercolors!  They're used to using the Crayola 16 color pan sets.  I think the liquid watercolor made them feel very grown up and professional! 

 

Here is a few of the finished ones together for a photo op!  They will still need one more class to finish painting all of them.  One of our classes was cut short because we went outside to see one of the Monarch butterflies that had emerged be released so it could migrate to Mexico!  Our Spanish teacher has a beautiful butterfly house in her classroom that is filled with Monarch butterflies in transition!  This one was the first to come out of it's chrysalis and needed to be set free!  These next few pictures are a sneak peak of the projects the fourth and fifth grades are working on.

 

These are sketches my fifth graders are working on.  The inspiration came from Shine Brite Zamorano.  The shading and shadowing of the crayon shapes is great practice for the still-life they will be doing next.  They loved the idea of the crayons drawing lines on their papers!

 

 

The fourth graders are working on leaf abstractions.  The inspiration for this lesson comes from Adventures of an Art Teacher.  We studied the vein patterns of real leaves and pictures with magnifications of leaf vein patterns from different plants.  I laminated the pictures into table posters so they could look at the pictures while working on their own leaf abstractions. The students also needed to blend at least two colors together in the sections.  The students really love blending and mixing the colors together in different combinations!

 

So, that's what we have been up to in third, fourth and fifth grade.  Next week I will post some Kindergarten, first and second grade pieces the students are finishing up.

I broke out the paints today for Kindergarten and first grade for the first time.  Second grade has been painting since the first class.  When my first grade class walked in this afternoon and saw the tables ready for painting they all started to squeal with excitement! Kindergarten and first grade did an excellent job following directions and are creating some beautiful pieces I can't wait to show!  I bought some tempera cakes for my K-2 classes to use this year and they are definitely an improvement on the ones I used to buy 15 years ago!  More on that in my next post!

Enjoy the first official weekend of Fall!

4th Grade - Flower Watercolors

Things are crazy around here lately!  Third, fourth and fifth grades are testing for the next several weeks and we are trying to wrap up projects that started before vacation.  Due to the Spring Break, class trips and assemblies...  We are very behind in getting our art work done!  We only have five more weeks of school left until summer break and I have to squeeze in a few more projects!

I was looking in my archives of art work from this school year and found these watercolors my fourth grades created back in September.  It was a great starter project.  We looked at Van Gogh's Sunflower paintings and talked about how they could create their own flowers using simple shapes.  We also discussed ways they could draw their vases and reviewed using pattern to highlight parts of their picture.  The students began by drawing with pencil. When they finished their sketches, we outlined everything in oil pastel.  To finish up, they painted the everything else in watercolor.  This project covered a lot of the basics to get us out of our summer mode and back into thinking creatively.  We covered shapes, lines, pattern, drawing with basic watercolor technique and painting procedure. 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laurel Burch inspired Cats

My Example

We're working on some patterned designed cats inspired by the Fantastic Felines of artist, Laurel Burch.  My second graders LOVED drawing these cats!  After we looked at some of Laurel Burch's cat paintings, the students got right to work on creating their own patterned cats!
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I created a "How to Draw" sheet for the students to refer to while they were working, using the same directions to demonstrate on my white board how to draw their cats. I also showed them all the what not to do and how to fix common problems the students were having while sketching.  For example, too small, too short faces etc...



Beginning to sketch cat onto colored paper

Next the students chose from several colors to begin sketching their cats.  They drew them in pencil first and then traced them with a black Sharpie marker.



Next the Students began to add color,pattern and design to their cat sketches using construction paper crayons.



finished cats were cut out and glued to a white background

Students began to add border designs to complete their picture

Some completed cats