Kandinsky Inspired Abstract Painting

First grade artists were introduced to the artist Wassily Kandinsky. I shared the book, "The Noisy Paintbox" written by Barb Rosenstock.
I appreciate the rich language and artwork in this book, though some of the vocabulary is beyond the 1st grade lexicon, it can be adapted for the younger set. For example, when the word cobalt is used, I say, "Cobalt Blue". Just so my kids, have some bearing on what is being communicated.

We discussed the lines, shapes and colors of his paintings and how they were named using musical words.

Students offered their interpretations of his paintings and then set to work creating paintings using red, yellow, and turquoise crayola tempera paint. I encouraged them to work with yellow first, then red, then turquoise, mixing colors directly on their paper. They rediscovered/remembered that these colors create orange, purple, and green...the secondary colors. Last,  they used black to create final details. I did give some guidance in asking them to paint 2 shapes with yellow paint, 2 lines with red, and 2 more shapes with blue. They could make any shapes or lines they wished.

 

Of course, I made sure to play some Tchaikovsky while they painted! 

The goal was to review primary and secondary color mixing and use lines, shapes and colors to create an abstract painting inspired by Wassily Kandinksy. Here are their results!

What I discovered is my students began to mix complementary colors to create neutral tones and were saying, "I made brown! I made a golden color!" They were so excited about the range of hues they were able to make by just mixing the primary colors. Each painting was unique. 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

"Cat and Bird" mixed media collage

1st graders are wrapping up their studies of mixed media collages with this book, "Cat and Bird", by Geraldine Elschner.   I began the lesson by reading this book aloud to my students and then we discussed the artwork together.

We used some visual thinking strategies in our talks about the landscapes in the book. My students pointed out that the cat was chasing the bird over rooftops, bridges, and that the horizon line was important in knowing where the sky was separate from the ground.

Next my students used oil pastels on construction paper to draw a horizon line and a city landscape inspired by the story. They then used geometric shapes to draw their buildings and bridges. 

On the second day they added painted paper collage details such as additional buildings and bridges. Lastly, they followed me in a directed drawing of the cat, that they then cut and glued to their compositions.

I was pleased to see that these artists were able to show me their understanding of using a horizon line in a landscape. The demonstrated their use of collage techniques as well. 

Thanks for stopping by . 

"Creepy Carrots" collages created by 1st grade

Have you read the picture book, "Creepy Carrots", by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Peter Brown?  My students absolutely love the artwork in this fun story about Jasper Rabbit and his love/fear of carrots. We were inspired by the illustrator, Peter Brown and created our collages.

 

I began this lesson by reading the story to my 1st grade artists. We looked closely at the artwork by the amazing Peter Brown. We noticed how he used black, white and grey to create the backgrounds and used orange for the carrots. It really made the carrots pop!

Next, we created the background landscape with black and gray construction paper plus white chalk.
 
I asked my students to create a white cloud with the chalk and rounded hill with gray paper.
 Next we drew organic carrot shapes with our orange painted paper, cut them out and glued them to the background.

The next class we added fun facial features for our creepy carrots, carrot textures, and even Jasper Rabbit!

We had a blast creating these collages! We practiced our collage techniques of drawing, cutting, and gluing as well as visual story telling.

Thanks for stopping by!

Painted Paper Pumpkins created by 1st Grade

I really love the look of painted paper and my students seem to REALLY enjoy creating them. I was inspired to teach this lesson by looking at the work of Laura Lohmann over at The Painted Paper. She is the master in my opinion and the work her students create in the Fall is absolutely stunning. You can check it out here.

We spent a lot of time exploring and using a variety of painting tools in creating textures in paint. It was a blast!Then we set to creating warm & cool color painted papers.

The next class we looked at geometric vs. organic shapes. With their cool papers, they were to create 2 geometric rectangles. With their warm papers, they were challenged to draw organic pumpkin shapes and cut them out for collage. They demonstrated their understanding of drawing, cutting, overlapping, and collage techniques in assembling their Pumpkin landscapes.

The last class, they were given oil pastels to add details like highlights, shadows, vines, stars, a moon, and more. Most students were compelled to transform their pumpkins in to Jack-o-lanterns since Halloween is closing in and it is a huge part of their visual culture.

I love to see their imaginations come alive in the last part of adding artistic details.

Thanks for stopping by!

Printmaking Bonanza Part 1: Kinder -2

It is Summer and I have to admit, my blogging fell to the wayside. I got married a couple of weeks ago and let's just say writing up posts wasn't a priority in the final weeks of school.

I finished my last day of teaching this year on June 20th and was married 5 days later. The last big unit I taught my kiddos was printmaking and now that I've had some time to reflect, I am ready to share our successes.

This is only my 2nd year teaching art at my elementary school. Most of my students haven't had many or any art classes before they met me. I didn't get to printmaking with them last year because I had so much groundwork to lay down but I made sure to cover it this year.

Here is what we did in the primary grades. I'm not going break down all of the steps here on the blog because I made some videos on my youtube channel. If you want to know more, please submit comment below.

Kindergarten: Wayne Theibaud inspired Gum ball machine prints.
We have been studying pop art in Kindergarten and what more fun way to experiment with printmaking than be inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's 1963 painting "Three Machines".

Wayne Thiebaud "Three Machines" 1963

oooooo! gold paint!

We practiced printing lines with cardboard, and circles with recycled glue stick caps.


1st grade: We practiced printing by using styrofoam plates and used the crayola marker ink to color and print them  on wet paper. We drew cupcakes and angry birds to go with the whole Pop Art theme. Unfortunately didn't get any photos because I have 30 kids in these classes at the very end of the day....I'm usually running on fumes at this point of the day.

2nd grade: We first experimented with mono-printing by painting colorful landscapes inspired by contemporary English printmaker Chris Keegan. We quickly painted tempera on plastic transparency with thick paint strokes and pressed/rubbed paper on the wet paint to pull our prints.

Chris Keegan "Brilliant Sky"

We then used styrofoam plates to draw an angry bird. We colored them with crayola markers and printed them on white drawing paper. We cut these out and collaged them on our dried landscape paintings to make an Angry Birds game course. We glued a small piece of cardboard to the back of the Angry Birds to make them appear to fly. The kids LOVED this.

*One of my 2nd grade classes only got to see me twice for a total of an hour so they printed fish inspired by Sandra Silberzweig.

Sandra Silberzweig "Wild Tribal Sun Fish"

Phew! Printmaking is a blast.
Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions, please leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.