Always A Work In Progress

As DPS artists finish up their last projects (and before we move on to the projects pictured in the post below), I wanted to post pictures of how our last projects have been finishing up. I think it is always very useful to photograph and document the process of creating artwork.

First grade artists enjoyed learning about urban verse suburban areas, as well as the artist James Rizzi and his "silly skyscrapers". At the end of our James Rizzi project we discussed museums, and completed a "museum walk" to view all of our classmates' artwork. As students walked around the "museum" they had a museum ticket in their hand. The students were required to give someone another skyscraper that was not their own sky their museum ticket, and explain why they thought that particular skyscraper was given a ticket. The museum walk was not only a chance for students to practice an "art talk", but it was also a chance for students to show each other a small act of kindness. :)

I have to say the kindergarten owls turned out to be adorable and eye catching. Students learned about owls (notice our owls are hanging out in a night sky with stars because we learned about animals that are nocturnal), trees, texture, painting an even background, and collage work with this project (whew!). I even had a kindergarten teacher tell me that she was just discussing a particular book's illustration with her kiddos that happened to be all ripped paper illustrations. What a perfect connection!

Notice the owl on the very end on the left hand side-one of my favorites!!! This student wanted his owl to look as if it was taking off! Awesome! :)

Hard at work!

This project really took some patience on the kiddos' end, but they are so proud of their results!!

Our Next Projects

As kindergarten, first, and second graders finish up their last projects I am in the midst of planning our next exciting unit of painting.

Kindergarten will be reading the most beloved book, "Snowmen at Night" by Caralyn Buehner. We will then learn about shadows and dry brush technique to create our watchful, nighttime snowmen. Considering all of the snow we have been getting lately I think this project will really be a hit with my creative kindergartners. :)

First grade will learn how to break down everyday objects to simple shapes. After we learn how to identify shapes in everyday objects we will be able to paint beautiful red cardinals in snow.

Second grade will learn about the components of landscapes. We will then paint our beautiful birch tress against a warm or cool tissue paper collage background. Second grade will also study Gustav Klimt's "Birch Forest" in order to learn more about Birch trees, as well as landscapes.

 

Kindergarten Snowmen At Night

 

 

 

First Grade Red Cardinals

 

 

Second Grade Birch Trees 

Second Grade Learns About Keith Haring

Second grade has been learning about symbols and Keith Haring. Second grade studied symbols from around the school and neighborhood then compared them to Keith Haring's symbols. We discussed where Keith Haring used to draw his symbols, how he used line to create movement in his symbols, the meanings of the symbols, as well as the difference between color and "people" in  Haring's symbols verse our everyday symbols.

Second grade then enjoyed playing freeze dance in order to create different spontaneous poses for their classmates to create symbols. Students learned about negative space in a drawing and added movement lines in the negative spaces they saw. Students will finally add color to each of their symbols before they are displayed around DPS!

Finally, students were invited to my whiteboard to practice adding movement lines in the negative spaces of my symbol. Second grade also wrote one or two items they learned about Keith Haring on the whiteboards in art class. I loved their responses-enjoy the photos!

Students practiced drawing movement lines in negative spaces, they did an excellent job!

 

 

"Write one thing you learned about Keith Haring"

 

 

First Grade James Rizzi Silly Cityscape

First grade has been learning about what a cityscape is and the artist James Rizzi. First grade first discussed the characteristics of a skyscraper including size, texture, and what is inside skyscrapers.They then learned about the differences between a city and a town, or an urban verse suburban area and compared cities to their small town. Finally, students had fun imagining what it would be like to visit one of James Rizzi's silly cityscape.

Before first grade jumped in to creating their silly skyscrapers they practiced building, drawing, and writing about silly skyscrapers using James Rizzi's artwork as inspiration.

First grade is now in the midst of creating their skyscrapers including silly shapes, windows, and colors. After students color windows and the outline of their skyscraper with crayons they will add color to their buildings using tempera paint. Students are excited to then cut out their skyscrapers and add their own "character" to the first grade cityscape that will soon be on display at DPS.

Enjoy our in progress photos! :)

The beginnings of a silly city filled with different colorful and silly skyscrapers! I can not wait to see the end results!

First grade practiced builiding skyscrapers.

 Students came up with an assortment of different silly skyscrapers!

 

We are in the process of adding color-windows are completed with crayon, building itself is completed with tempera cakes.

 

Second Grade Charles Demuth Inspired Still Life

Second grade has been learning all about Charles Demuth, (Lancaster native!) and his still life work. Second grade then practiced looking at flowers by completing a blind contour drawing (that was fun!). We then started our final still life paintings using contour line, colored pencils and watercolors. We discussed how we are taking 3D objects (the flowers and vase) and drawing them on a 2D surface. To add our finishing touches we talked about horizon line or table line, as well as the background. Enjoy the beautiful pictures below!

Kindergarten Illustration

Kindergarten has been learning all about illustration. Kindergarten read "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds. After reading "The Dot" kindergarten learned what illustration means and is. We then pretended we were the illustrators for "The Dot" and created our own book covers. Our process to complete the book covers included learning about the important parts of a book cover and what a book cover can tell us about the rest of the book.

We are in the process of completing our book covers. As of right now we have our beautiful dots drawn as our background. We will be building Vashti (the main character in "The Dot") from cut construction paper.

Enjoy the pictures! :)

Displays, Displays, Displays...and Zentangles!

Hello Everyone,

I have been busy creating displays down the "specials hallway". First grade warm and cool color "Great Waves" are in our beautiful display cases. I have heard a lot of wonderful student reactions to seeing their artwork displayed.

Kindergarten has been hard at work creating their primary color fall leaves. The leaves are now complete and are awaiting their chance to be hung on our fall tree. I found some brown paper in my storage closet and went to work! I think it turned out great. I will post more pictures once the leaves have been added to the tree.

Finally DPS teachers tried their hand at zentangles Wednesday after school. I was not able to get pictures this past Wednesday, but I will be sure to take pictures and post next zentangle workshop. Below you will find my example zentangle.

For those of you who are wondering what zentanlges are a "directed doodle". The images created from zentangles are beautiful and can be used as mini gifts/thank you cards (easy holiday gifts-zentangles look sophisticated when framed), or for your own personal enjoyment. Zentangles are said to be relaxing (does not apply to all :) ), but they are also known to increase focus and creativity. I think we had a lot of fun, and we may start a teachers' art work bulletin board-what fun for our students to see how creative their teachers can be!!!!

Have a great week everyone!