Back into the Thick of it!

Hello All!!!! I know it's like the 4th week of school but man how time flies and I just remembered that I forgot to update thee ol' blog. I am going to try to update like once a week this year.

This year I started out the year in Kindergarten with shape monsters, after being inspired by the Book, "The Monster Who Lost His Mean", by Tiffany Strelitz Haber, Kirstie Edmunds. Pictures to come.

In First Grade: We started with Warm/Cool Color Leaf Echo line Drawings. Pictures to come. 

In 3rd Grade: We are working on studying the Elements of Art in depth and we are starting with LINE. We discussed lined and filled out a line design graphic organizer. We then studied different tree houses and created some beautiful tree houses. Pictures to come. 

In 4th grade: We are studying the Element of Art: Color, specifically COMPLEMENTARY colors. We are doing this by creating OPTICAL illusions and adding complementary color groups to help make them POP! I know that many of you have either saw this project before or maybe have done it before with your classes but I allowed the students to color it in anyway they would like, as long as, they developed a pattern using a COMPLEMENTARY color group. 
To create the "Web" we created a dot inthe middle of the paper with pencil.
We added 6 lines (from edge to edge) through the dot. 
Then we added "smile" lines to every other triangle. 
Then connected the "smile" lines with frown lines in all the blank triangle spaces. 
We outlined with a fine sharpie marker and erased any pencil lines peeking through. 

Then we discussed COMPLEMENTARY colors and did a couple of class activities. 

Here are some of the end results:

Well I hope to add the k, 1, 3 projects by Monday! 

Happy Art Making!!!!

4th Grade- One Day O.P. Hands

Hello Everyone!

-This is the first project the 4th graders did this school year. I wanted to start out with a successful project, reviewing controlled line, repetition, color pattern, and optical illusions. Students loved how the hands 'pop' off the page! I did see this idea on pinterest. I saw it at theforestroom.

-I did change things up a little bit by introducing Bridget Riley, the british OP artist and I wanted them to do a rough draft and a finish draft.
-I wanted to emphasize that the making the hand so obvious wasn't the only goal, so if it wasn't obvious there were many ways to help the hand pop out.
-First way is to trace all the lines of the hand again so it darkens the lines, color in any white that is showing, or add more lines to define the hand to help it "pop" off the page.

We did this on  10" x 8" paper.

Have a wonderful day, hopefully making art!

4th Grade Line Design/Value "Tubes" Lesson

You could title this projects make different names. When I showed my examples, I asked my students what they saw. Some answers were, tubes, tunnels, tornadoes, Dr. Suess, pipes, worms, catepillars, the list goes on and on!

For this project I got my idea from when I was in middle school. Also I saw on Mr. E's art lesson blog how to break down this project into easy steps.  My middle school teacher had us make "tunnel" designs to show that we could make lines look 3-D, in a simple and easy way.

We learned about how repeating lines, especially curvy lines, can make a good skeleton to add value or shading to create 3-Dimensional optical illusion compositions.

On a 9" x 9" white construction paper we drew, with pencil, a "hilly" line in the middle of the page. We added 7-9 dots to show where our little hills will begin and end. They did one side of the hilly line until it was completed by being at the top of the page. I suggested working in one direction and continue making row of hills (making sure to spread evenly, so it will be easy to fill with shaded color.) Then they repeated the same steps the opposite side of the page until completely filled. After all pencil lines are completed, students outlined the pencil lines with a standard size Sharpie marker to make lines POP!
To add shading, we watched a brief slideshow of how to apply shading, examples of optical illusions, and how what colors would look "nice" together or compliment each other.

They chose where to add color. They were aloud to choose up to 5 colors. and they could have left some white and black if they wanted. I wanted them to be able to choose where colors would go and maybe not go to have them really LOOK at the piece and what would be best for each composition.

They really enjoyed this project and felt so proud of themselves when they completed. This project took 3 solid 45 minute class periods for the majority of the class to complete. (4 solid classes would work better if the project was larger)

Here are some examples of the 4th graders work. (finished and unfinished)