Music, P.E and ART!

Creating murals and GART!

This week our third and fourth graders are working on some group murals inspired by Kandinsky. By the end of this week, each student at Harris Elementary will have taken part in these projects. We are also creating a large reproduction of America Gothic by Grant Wood, using oil pastels. 

In order for this to happen, we have combined P.E. Class and art. Two classes are working together in the gym, alternating 6 stations. Three are P.E related and 3 are group art projects. Here are just a few photos! 

We recently added another enlargement! Van Gogh's Starry Night! 

Art With Ms. Paulsen

Hello!

I just thought I'd update my Harris followers on what has been happening in the art room while I've been gone.  My substitute, Ms. Paulsen, has been doing an excellent job! She is an art teacher who graduated from Toledo University and has wonderful lessons and a great rapport with elementary students. 

The students finished up a cake painting inspired by artist, Wayne Thiebaud, that I had started with them. I taught our students about TINTS and SHADES. A tint is a color, plus white. A shade is a color, plus black (or its complementary color, but we used black.)  After learning a bit about pop artist, Wayne Thiebaud, we started these cakes with a step-by-step drawing of a 3D cake without a slice. The students then chose ONE color. They painted with it in its true form on the left side of the cake, with its tint on the top part of the cake and with its shade on the right side of the cake. The third cake picture shows a better idea of this.  Decorations, birthday candles and patterns were added to the cake and cake stand! 

Ms. Paulsen taught this 3D ornament project as well as the Paul Klee Typography lesson below. 

3D Winter Ornament 

By folding paper like origami, we created unique three dimensional ornaments for the holidays out of a two dimensional piece of paper.

Paul Klee Typography

Using our names and adjectives about ourselves, we created beautiful typography art inspired by our artist Paul Klee.

Paul Klee inspired name tents. 

Sol Lewitt Painting with Ms Long's class

We used masking tape to create straight lines and shapes in our abstract paintings just like Sol Lewitt did!

Time Lapse video we watched of Sol Lewitt's Wall Paintings:

http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=27

Happy holidays!

You may not see posts from me on here for a while, but if you were wondering....we had another BOY! 

Recycled Mixed Media Owls

You may remember this project from last year but I definitely had to do it again because it was so successful with my previous fourth graders. A few years ago I was given some outdated children's dictionaries and I saved them until I developed this project. I was inspired by artist, Susanne Buckner's owl paintings and so then process began.  

 

-The students started by using recycled dictionary pages from old children's dictionaries. 

 -Using watered down Elmer's glue and brushes, the students created a collage with the torn book pages. 

- Next the students painted some sort of perch (branch, rock, fence, etc) for the owl to set on, on top of the book pages. We learned about tints ( a color plus white) and shades (a color plus black)

-The sky was colored with the edge of a pealed crayon so that the pattern of the words would show some. 

-The owls were drawn and colored using oil pastels on a separate piece of paper. 

- For the final step, the students cut out the owls and then I hot glued a packing peanut in between the owl and the background so that the owls were three-dimensional. 

Third grade foil embossed leaves

Our third grade students are finishing up some beautiful foil work! The students started this project by collecting Fall leaves, studying the texture and shape and then drawing them to create an interesting composition. The students learned about possitive vs. negative space as well as texture. We discussed transforming our malleable foil from a 2d form to a 3d form by embossing them from the back of our foil. Finally the foil drawings were painted with black ink and once they dried, the students took a some of the ink off using a dish scrubbing pad to create this aged look. The leaves have been mounted on black and also one colored piece of construction paper and each student added a finished pattern around the edge. They really don't get enough justice in the photo! Each one is unique and successful, we just love them! 

Alternative to glazing ceramic tiles

Unfortunately, we have been experiencing many issues with our very OLD kiln. I had a few classes left that did not get a chance to use the ceramic glaze and I didn't want to use the kiln anymore than I already had to.  I decided to try painting them with a watercolor resist method. The students LOVE Crayola construction paper crayons because they are really bright like chalk (without the mess) so I had them color their tiles first and paint watercolor paint on top! They look fabulous!  Parents: I told the students it would be a nice touch  to spray them at home with a protective glossy varnish spray to bring out the color and give it a layer of protection!