Bodies in Motion!

    1st Graders learned in art class about how their bodies move, with the joints that bend us and allow us to redirect ourselves in a myriad of ways.  We looked at art work by Edgar Degas (his ballerinas), Keith Harrings' wonderful street art of simplified figures moving and dancing, and African American Folk artist Jacob Lawrence, who did many paintings depicting the expression and emotion of the human body.  I asked the students what they noticed about the way the people in the paintings were positioned, and how it made them feel to look them.  What did they think the people in the paintings were feeling?  They said, "Excited!", "Happy!", and one student said,"Tired" when they looked at Degas ballerinas.  I imagine those ballerinas were tired.  I asked them if they thought the artists asked the people they painted to lay down on a canvas so they could trace them.  They all knew that an artist wouldn't do that.  Because an artist that paints people and animals needs to understand the way our bodies move, how our joints bend, and what positions we can get into and which ones we can't.  We talked about the fact that our elbows and knees can only bend one way, and we all got out of our seats to try to bend our limbs as many ways as we could!  We found that we could bend backwards and forwards, from side to side, our head, feet and hands could bend the same.  

    So, after we made some funny looking poses, I showed the students how they could make a foil figure that they could bend like a real person.  This was a trick I learned at a summer art conference at the museum.  First, take a piece of foil (about 4" x 6") and make two tears, about 2" long, evenly space apart at the top of the piece as it stands vertically long.  Then make one tear up the center, about 2", so that there is foil in the center that is not torn (this will be the torso).  Next, scrunch up (I know, this is highly technical terminology) the foil at the top into three sections, being careful to keep their length (in other words, don't fold it over or ball it up).  The center piece of foil will be the head (this can be balled up slightly to make it look like a head shape).  The two bottom pieces are scrunched up next to make the legs, then finally, the center is scrunched together to make the torso.  I told the students that they couldn't trace their foil figures-remember, a REAL artist would NEVER do that!  I demonstrated how they could bend it in as many ways as they wanted (being careful not to bend it unrealistically), and look at their figure, studying the lines that it made in order to make a contour drawing of it.  And by George, they got it!  I couldn't believe my own eyes!  1st graders making wonderful contour drawings of the body in motion!  They made them standing on their heads, doing back flips, the splits, jumping in the air- they told me what their figures were feeling- "Mrs. Gallow, my person is so happy because they got an A on their schoolwork!"  They absolutely LOVED their foil people and wanted to take them home.  This was a two part project, so we needed to keep them to help us with completing our art the second class.  I paper clipped them to their work as I put it up.  But, I told them, ask your mom or dad for a piece of foil from the kitchen and show them what you can do.  Make one at home and practice your drawings of people moving.  They will be amazed! The second art class they could take them home.

    Finally, after their contour drawings were done in pencil, I had the students trace them with a sharpie and color them in with colored markers.  I encouraged them to make more concentric lines going around their contour figures and to get creative with what types of lines and designs they could add to their artwork.  The drawings are electric with energy and so much fun!  I think that my art students, in first grade, are well on their way to understanding how to draw a person in motion... I can only imagine what their going to be able to do by 5th grade!

    

Torn Paper Animals

    While the original idea for this project (Torn Paper Zebras) was found on the wonderful Deep Space Sparkle Website, I decided that since I have (6) 2nd grade classes, that would be waaayyy too many zebras hanging around this art room!  So, I decided to make this a unit on wild animals, making a Power Point Presentation for each class on a different wild animal to introduce our animal and our art project.  So far, we've learned about zebras, lions, tigers (2 classes made tigers) and owls.  Still to come are giraffes.  2nd grade students love to learn and talk about wild animals... really, who doesn't?  They're endlessly fascinating.  We not only learned about the animals and their habitats, but also about different types of animal art, how the animals are the subjects of sculptures, paintings, drawings, graphic design, and more.  

    First, the outline of our animals was drawn using an oil pastel, then we tore and pasted stripes, manes and feathers on.  Next, the students cut their animals out and glued them to another sheet of paper that would become their animals habitat.  Students got creative, making rainbows, suns, clouds (even rain clouds with raindrops falling from them!), grass, water, rocks, trees, flowers, moons and stars.  They really enjoyed this project from start to finish and so did I... we learned a little about our animals and a lot about how to take what we learned and create a wonderful work of art from it!

String Prints on Painted Paper

    3rd Grade students created these sophisticated prints on painted paper.  Wanting to introduce printmaking to them, I thought an easy way would be by making relief prints from plate cards made with foam core and string glued on top in an abstract, linear design.  I love the look of prints made on painted paper, so I first had the students created their papers.  We began with primary colors, as I showed the students how to mix them to create secondary colors, then choose which colors they would like to paint on their papers.  I discouraged them from mixing their colors on their paper (so as to avoid muddy results), but instead, beginning with their lightest color and creating an interesting shape or stroke of the paint they liked, then laying a new shape or stroke with the next darkest color next to it, and building their painting in that way.
    Once their paintings were complete, I showed them how to create a simple, abstract line drawing on a 6" square piece of paper.  Their only instructions were to use their space in an interesting way (i.e.; not leaving one side of the square blank and not making too small of shapes), and to not draw too much detail, as this would be difficult for them to cover exactly with yarn.  After they made drawings that were satisfactory to them, they transferred them onto a 6" square piece of foam core.  Using glue to trace over the lines and yarn to lay down on top of their glue, they created their string printing plate cards.
    During the next art class, after their papers and plates had plenty of time to dry, the students were ready to create their prints.  The idea was to make multiple prints on  their 9" x 12" paper.  They chose either white or black ink to make their print with, rolled onto their plate with their brayers, then placed them first in the corner of their papers, rubbed them well, and made their first print.  The following prints just lined up on the paper one right after the other until the entire surface was covered.

    The students enjoyed the printmaking process very much and have asked me when they can make more prints.  Ahhh, there are always too many things to create and too little time!

On the importance of a creative education... Please Watch!

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

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!  

Movies

Painted Paper Weavings

    2nd and 3rd graders made weavings from papers that they had painted using watercolor and tempera paste.  This is a beautiful version of the traditional weaving projects we do with colored construction paper in elementary school.  

    With the watercolor project, I had the students create two paintings; one warm color (yellow, orange and red) and one cool color (green, blue and purple).  Starting with our warm color scheme, we looked at the color wheel and I told the students we would begin with our lightest color first, making a dot or a line (or 2 or 3 of them) on their watercolor paper with the yellow paint.  They would then need to paint concentric circles or lines around their original ones with the orange, and then the red.  Then they would repeat the pattern until they had filled their whole paper (9" x 12") with color.  The students then repeated the same process using the cool colors on a new sheet of watercolor paper.  In our second art class, we then wove the papers together for beautiful results!

    For the tempera paste painted papers, I used a mixture of 1/2 tempera paint to 1/2 art paste to make the tempera paste.  Using donated construction paper (the lesser quality kind than we normally use in the art room), students chose either the warm or cool color schemes to paint with the paste paint, then scraped and stamped designs and patterns into their paper using forks, thread spools, cardboard scrapers, popsicle sticks, and other objects (a la Eric Carle).  The second art class we wove the wonderful papers they created together and the students loved the way they looked!