Color and Trees

I pulled this lesson by D. Sweeney and J. Rounds from the December 2011 issue of Art and Activities. Every  piece turned out beautifully. Background in chalk pastel, snowy ground in torn paper, fence is painted, the trees are collage with shadows applied with a museum board and lastly white paint splattered for snow flakes. Easy with fantastic results!

Rodeo Belt Buckles

Rodeo is big business in Houston and the girls love it! Go Texan Day is celebrated each year on a Friday before the rodeo starts. A massive trail ride makes its way through city streets, and people from every walk of life dress western for the day. At our school, the girls invite parents to see them dance in their western wear. This year our pre-k made their own rodeo belts. We discussed rodeo events and symbols before they got to work. It was so cute to see them galloping around in their belts!

Imaginary Still Life

I love this project because it addresses so many design principles. After looking at many examples of still life paintings, the class discussed how artists make objects look three dimensional, like they are in front of other objects, farther away or closer up on the table, and grounded (rather than floating in space). I set out a large group of items for them to draw from life. After the students had drawn about 7 items, they outlined them with Sharpie, painted them with watercolor and cut them out. The items were arranged on a background made to look like a table. Each girl conferred with me to make sure the space was used well and the object's placements made sense before gluing the items down.

Positive and Negative Space

First graders learned about positive and negative space by doing these easy cut-outs. Simple fold a square in half and cut on the folded side...voila!

Warhol Portraits

Third graders made these colorful Warhol-inspired portraits after looking at several works by the artist. First they drew a self-portrait while looking into a mirror. The paper they used is a small (4x5) piece of printer paper. After they completed a portrait they liked, They were given four sheets of drawing paper. they colored the back of the original drawing with graphite, placed the drawing on top of the drawing paper (graphite side down) and traced over their drawings. The image was transferred to each piece of drawing paper. They outlined the four drawings with Sharpie and erased any stray pencil marks. Then they completed the images by painting them with water color. The end results are fantastic!

Paul Klee Golden Fish

Kindergarten classes  learned about Paul Klee and the story of the Golden Fish before they made their own golden fishes. They used oil pastels on black paper so that the image had a glowing effect. After they completed the drawing, they used pencils to scratch details into the fish.

Frank Stella Abstract Art



Second graders looked at many artworks by artist Frank Stella before creating these 3-dimentional patterned artworks. First they drew free-form lines on paper being careful to keep many open spaces and filling the paper. Each space created by the overlapping of lines was filled with a pattern. After all the spaces were filled, the students cut into the design, staying on the original lines (from the free-form lines). Being careful not to cut completely through the design, they made several cuts. When the cutting is complete, staple the design down to a black piece of paper, bunching up the design as you go.

Nighttime with Charles Birchfield

In Pre-Kindergarten, we talked about the atmosphere and how to make an artwork look like a certain time of day. How do we make our picture look like it is showing night time? We looked at a painting by Charles Birchfield called Rainy Night in Buffalo New York and discussed what Birchfield did to make his painting look like night time. The girls pointed out the street lights, the lights in the windows, the dark sky, the head lights on the cars and the dark colors. They then used the information to make their own night time picture. We used construction paper crayons on dark paper to make the pictures.