Positive/Negative Hands

All I can say is, "WOW!!!" This project is- hands down- one of my very favorites!  The pictures do not do the actual work justice.  We filled the 4th grade hall with these hands and it is a feast for the eyes!  We learned about positive and negative space and cool and warm color schemes.
We started by making a background for our hands using Mr. Sketch watercolor markers on a 12" x 18" piece of white sulphite drawing paper.  I separated containers of them by color schemes, and the students had to choose if they were a "cool" or "warm" color scheme person.  Most students chose cool colors.  As you can see by the last example, the students drew "bursts" of radiating colors in concentric lines all over their paper.  Then they painted over their paper with clear water making sure to go off the edges of the paper.  The effects were amazing!  Most papers lost the initial drawing of the lines as the water worked it's magic, blending and gradating the color.  The students then traced their hands on a 9" x 12" piece of black paper.  I instructed them to make a small cut from the edge of the paper to the tip of their thumb to "get into" their hand and then cut around the contour line.  This was just meant to reduce frustration for them.  When the papers were glued down to the background, the cut becomes practically invisible.  They used their same color scheme to color in their hands and frame of hand with Prismacolor pencils.  I told them they could write (appropriate) words if they would like, patterns and designs and to, most importantly, express themselves!  I am giving them a huge virtual clap of my hands for a job well done!

4th Grade Winter Trees

    I know I am posting this past winter (at least it is way past it here in Texas!), but, in some parts of the world, this may still be relevant.  I wanted to do a poetry/art lesson with my fourth grade students this year, one that tied together nature poetry about winter and and a winter landscape painting.  So, I chose a poem by a favorite American naturalist poet, Robert Frost, entitled "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".  I found a website that has recordings and animated videos of poems, so we listened to the illustrated poem to begin our lesson.  We discussed the poem and the way it made us feel and what we visualized as we were listening.   Then we sketched winter trees, to get a feeling for what a tree looks like with bare branches.

    Next, we made a watercolor background with a blue wash and salt technique that gave it an effect of a snowy winter sky/ground.  The next art class we had, we painted our trees on top of our background with black ink.  I instructed the students to make horizontal strokes of the brush across the ground and not to paint it all in, the effect was a snowy ground with shadows.  Perspective was used in painting the trees, first larger at the foreground then gradually getting smaller as they became closer to the horizon line.  These paintings turned out beautiful.  Robert Frost would be proud!

Oil Pastel Dogs Inspired by George Rodrigue's "Blue Dog" Series

4th graders learned about the legend of Blue Dog and how artist George Rodrigue came to paint this subject over and over again.  We looked at some of his paintings and read a short bio on him.  Then students followed along as I demonstrated how to draw the contour line of their dogs.  Once their lines were drawn, students traced over them with a black permanent marker.  They could choose to color in their dogs with any color, but whatever color they chose (be it warm or cool), they were instructed to choose the opposite color family for their background.  Some students veered from those instructions, but the ones that followed them had eye-popping results.  All of their dogs turned out gorgeous and they had so much fun using the oil pastels and creating their unusually bright and colorful canines!

Let Them Make Cake!

    4th grade students LOVED our cake sculpture project!  Wayne Thiebaud's cake paintings and Claes Oldenberg's food sculptures were our  art inspirations for this project.  It all started when I was gifted with "Sculpt-a-mold"- an instant paper mache product that comes dry like a dried paper pulp and you mix water with it to get an oatmeal-like mixture that can be sculpted around an armature.  I had a lot of this to work with and thought it might be fun if we learned a little about math, sculpture, pop art, cake decorating and even photography.  

    We began with a simple wedge shape of cardboard and a long piece of cardboard, about 3" x 15".  I showed the students how to wrap the cardboard around the wedge, lining up the top edges of their cardboard pieces and taping it well so that there were no openings in the seam.  Then it was time to start sculpting.  I gave them big, heaping plates of sculpt-a-mold and showed them how to take a small amount in their fingers and pat it out into a thin layer all over their armature.  Once this part was complete, it took about 4-5 days for the cakes to dry and harden.  This was perfect, since I only see my students once every two weeks.  The next time they had art class, we painted our cakes.  Since the next step was to make decorations for our cakes out of Model Magic, the paint needed to be dry first.  So, in our third art class the students could finally make their decorations.  Since it was right before Christmas, I found they wanted to make a lot of snowmen and Christmas type decorations, they also wanted to "write" things on their cakes with letters made from the modeling clay.  I showed them how they could use watercolor markers to tint the clay before they molded it, or even to color it once it was already molded.

    This is still a project in progress... the next step is to photograph the cakes and open them up in an image editing program on the computer to manipulate our photographs into pop art pictures a la Wayne Thiebaud.  I will update this post with more photos of cakes and pop art photos as they are completed.  This was a fun, all beit, time consuming project, but one I think the students will never forget!  Since I teach art on a cart at this school, their classrooms looked like bakeries for quite some time and the cakes were quite the topic of conversation.  The students and staff were amazed at how real the sculptures looked and I think they enjoyed the whimsy of it all.  My students kept saying, over and over, Art is so much fun!  

Radial Designs

Fourth Graders learned about radial designs- any type of balanced design based on a circle.  We looked at rose windows and mandalas for inspiration, learning about this ancient art form.  To make their own radial designs, we used a printing technique which made it easier for the student s to create a balanced design.
First, we created a section of the circle by folding a 6" square on the diagonal and cutting off the top of the paper, through both layers, to create a "pizza wedge".  Then, on one side of the pizza wedge, students drew simple lines and shapes to create a design.  They traced their design with an oil pastel, folded the other side of the pizza wedge on top of their drawing, and printed it onto both sides of the paper.  They traced over the printed design again with the oil pastel.  Once they were ready to print the design onto a larger piece of paper, the students werte given a 12" square of white drawing paper and folded it in half twice.  This made a vertical and a horizontal line going throught the center of the paper which they would use as their guide for printing their design.  They placed their design wedge, pastel side down, onto their paper and transfered onto the paper using the side of a large craft stick.  Students then rotated their design around the center axis, printing in all four sections of the paper.  Once their design was completely printed onto their large paper, they traced it with a black sharpie, colored it in with crayons and went on top of their crayon work with watercolor markers.  The result were beautiful, stained glass looking radial designs.