Our artists on the district home page!

I was thrilled to learn that my district's photographer would be visiting my art room to capture the action of art making. Mrs. Mulcrone's 1st grade class was busy that day learning how to create a collage inspired by the book, "Stellaluna".  (They had studied bats and written a report prior to this lesson). These young artists had lots of practice creating collages before this day, so they were ready to shine for the photographer.

Here are the photographs from that wonderful day. Aren't they just the cutest? I am so proud of them. When I opened up my browser and saw the photos on the district site, I squee'd with happiness! My sweet little firsties!

Thanks for stopping by!

Pop-Up Kirigami Landscapes

The 3rd grade artists have been busy learning about landscapes in visual art.

This unit began be introducing students to key vocabulary words such as: horizon line, foreground, middle ground, and background.  We analyzed several examples of paintings and photographs in order to determine where in the imagery these terms were illustrated.

To develop their understanding of these terms, they were asked to generate a example of a landscape using blocks, clay, and other art supplies on their tables.

This was a palace landscape...pretty clever, I thought!

The next class, I shared a kirigami (art of paper cutting) technique to create a pop-up landscape. I challenged them to create a pop-up prototype landscape showing background, foreground, and a middle ground pop-up item.

This exercise was to prepare them for their final larger mixed-media pop-up landscapes. I could assess their understanding of the terms and techniques with these prototypes.

The following class the students were given their choice of colored card stock paper (a stiffer/stronger paper) for their background/foreground. I reviewed upon and encouraged them to use collage and mixed media techniques to add visual elements to communicate their landscape ideas.

Finally, they self-assessed their pop-up landscapes by determining if their work showed a landscape with a horizon line (the central fold), foreground, middle ground pop outs, and backgrounds. They also said that there should be good craftsmanship and details.

I wanted the artists to have some subject matter choices, so I was flexible with their content so long as they showed a landscape (view of outdoors). They had a lot of fun creating these, some students went home and created more!

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"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.

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Hope and Peace Monoprints created by 4th Grade

My 4th grade artists learned about the power of visual symbols by examining the big ideas of peace and hope. We discussed how artists use white doves, olive branches, the 2 fingers, and the linear symbol represent these concepts. We determine what peace and hope represent in our lives and why it is important to strive for those things.

After these discussions my students practiced sketching various symbols and chose one to use for their printing design. I then asked them to create a stencil to use for their Gelli-Plate monoprints.

I shared my demonstration video with them all before they created 2 prints using 2 colors.

The next class they added painted details to finalize their designs. We shared out our designs with each other then self assessed. They determined if they successfully communicated the ideas of peace and hope in their prints, successfully created 2 monoprints, and showed good craftsmanship.

We then assembled all of their prints together to create a collaborative single piece for the school's hallway.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Hope" Origami mural created by 5th grade inspired by Mademoiselle Maurice

 

Since my school is focusing on the theme of "hope" this year, I decided to create some thematic artwork with my students. My 5th grade artists studied the French contemporary street artist, Mademoiselle Maurice. I discovered her on Instagram when searching through street art hashtags. I knew my students would appreciate her art since it was bright, unique, and origami. My kids love origami.

I introduced Mademoiselle Maurice with some videos.

Then I shared with them several examples of her mural work around the world. I asked them to describe her work in each example. They came up with descriptions like colorful, fun, creative, positive, beautiful, unique, and brave. I then asked them if they could figure out how she created her words in her ephemeral street murals. They discovered that placing the edges of the origami forms along the letters edges would create a negative space.



 Then I showed them a video of her folding an origami bird, which is the form we were going to create for our own murals.

I had sketched the word HOPE on a large piece of craft paper and asked the students to create origami birds to then tape to the contours of the letters.  After the first day this is what we had.



After the 2nd day we had these. The kids seemed proud of their accomplishment and satisfied that they collaborated to create a cool piece of "street art" for their school.


 

I then displayed their work in the 5th grade wing hallways.

So I shared their work on Instagram and tagged Mademoiselle Maurice, she commented back with this!

 

I agree, they did a great job! Thanks for stopping by!