Djembe Drum paintings by 1st Grade

I LOVE this one...those colors!

My 1st grade artists have been focusing on musical instruments for their painting unit lessons. We had just made beautiful Mexican style guitars so I decided we would make some West African drums next. This lesson incorporated guided drawing, painting, sgrafitto, and printing processes.

I began by introducing the artists to a short drumming lesson shown in this video.

This video taught some Djembe drum history, how the drum is made, and how it is played...super fun! I had the kids practice the drumming techniques on their tables...it was loud...but they loved it!

We did a little guided drawing and they had to choose a primary and secondary color to paint their drum head and body.  After that, they could draw into the paint with the other end of their brush to create the rope part. They could add patterns to their drums as well with the sgraffito technique.

To finalize our painting process, I asked the kids to paint their hand...yep...you read that right. They could paint their hand any color/s they wanted to print onto their drum heads. If they wanted to add more than one print, they could make that artistic choice.

 

Needless to say, this was a HUGE hit. The happy sounds of giggles in my room were infectious. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

One the 2nd day, I gave the drums back so they could add more details with oil pastels and fill in their backgrounds. We shared our final works with one another and celebrated a job well done.

 

I loved this lesson and their work turned out beautifully. I mean look at that color! 

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2nd Grade Manila Jeepneys inspired by Robert Alejandro

What I love so much about the age of the internet is how much access we as educators have to our world teaching community. This year I've followed and learned from some amazing art educators here in the United States. One of which is Don Masse of Shine Brite Zamorano. He taught me that sharing living artists works with my students is a very effective instructional strategy. My kids are engaged in knowing that this particular artist is alive, working, and successful in their field. 

I took a riff off of Don's Jeepney stop motion animation lesson and adapted it for my ipad-less classroom. I designed a guided drawing, painting, and collage lesson instead. We had been studying landscapes in our painting unit, this city scape lesson was super fun!

I began by sharing an interview with the Filipino artist Robert Alejandro who's main message was to create, create, create!

I then showed my students examples of his graphic illustrations of Jeepneys as inspiration for our lesson. They discussed how Alejandro used color and pattern to design his Jeepneys. I also showed them real Jeepneys so they could compare them with buses they've seen in their community.

Their learning objective was to create a colorful, patterned Jeepney inspired by Alejandro's work and then add it to a collage cityscape using neutral colors.

Here are some of their results.

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Mexican style guitars by 1st Grade

 

 These fun and colorful painted artworks began on Cinco de Mayo and was inspired by Laura Lohmann's lesson over at The Painted Paper. I began by sharing some examples of Mexican guitars as a reference for colors and patterns.

I gave my first grade artists guitar stencils to trace since the learning objective isn't necessarily drawing but paint mixing. I demonstrated a variety of color mixing techniques and my artists made choices in how they wanted to paint their guitar shapes.  The following class we added more paint, oil pastel, and collage elements for details.

My first graders really liked this sgraffito technique of flipping your brush over to draw into the wet paint.

I have a TON of images from their work. Here are some of the results.

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"The Great Wave" by 2nd Grade inspired by Hokusai

These artworks were developed from a simple painting exercise and color theory review. I had wanted to review proper painting technique, paint blending, and the color order of the rainbow spectrum, so my students all painted a piece of paper to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.  After that...well...I wasn't too sure where to go next with their work.

As I stared at their painted papers I turned one vertical and thought that the warm colors could be a sunset and the cool colors, the ocean. "A-HA!" I thought! We will cut these up into layers and create a landscape inspired by Hokusai's "The Great Wave of Kanagawa".

By Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) - Restored version of File:Great Wave off Kanagawa.jpg (rotated and cropped, dirt, stains, and smudges removed. Creases corrected. Histogram adjusted and color balanced.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5576388

The art history geek squealed with glee! I love sharing important works of art with my students and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Even though the original work is a print without all the colors of the rainbow evident, but hey...we can make imaginative interpretations.

After I passed back their rainbow painted papers, I shared the original work of art with a presentation as well as this fun video to help motivate my artists.

I then demonstrated how we were going to cut and layer our painted paper to create our own versions of Hokusai's famous print. I also gave them brown painted paper to use for their boats.

They were then encouraged to add their own details with paint. Some students got really creative with their landscapes.
Here are some of the results!

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