Color/Mood Portraits

Kindergartners viewed and discussed several portraits that are heavily focused on color and mood. Among them were portraits from Picasso's Blue Period, Matisse, and Kirchner.  I demonstrated how the order in which you paint is very important to the success of the painting. They started by painting their faces first, letting the paint dry before painting details on top. This helped greatly with bleeding and helped them avoid having to paint around small facial parts. We also discussed facial proportions and then they got to work.

Gesture Sculptures

 Fourth graders loved the figure unit and making these expressive figure sculptures. We began the unit by studying the human form and proportions. The girls moved on to wooden artist models for gesture drawings, and then posed for each other for gestures and completed drawings. After they has a good grasp of proportion and scale, they were introduced to the 3-d process.

For these sculptures, the girls first made an armature of pipe cleaners. They then covered the pipe cleaners in foil to get a more realistic shape. Finally they used plaster gauze to cover the armature. Add tempera paint and details and voila!