Artistic Freedom

My first student finished the Pop Art lesson. I am so excited to show off her hard work! The students looked at multiple condiment containers and made prints using washable markers and damp paper. The bright colors look great... I am so excited to show you more pictures as students finish. LOVE THIS LESSON! Check back for more student work soon.

My Kindergarten students learned about Contour Lines this week. I am looking forward to painting with these students soon, but for those who follow my blog I think you will agree that my Kindergarten students have improved their cutting skills (it is a night and day difference). With this project we traced, cut out shapes, and overlapped them on a large piece of paper. The next class I introduced them to contour lines. I talked about how I didn't want the contour lines to touch each other or cross. The students started next to a shape and mirrored the line drawn before. They did a great job!

I have to show off my students still life drawings to start off the Pop Art lesson.... Every students did an amazing job! We are making Andy Warhol inspired prints. To start out, the students drew still life drawings / contour line drawings of the condiment bottle at their table (each table had a different bottle). Once the students finished their drawings, I placed a piece of tracing paper over the drawing and the students traced what they had just drawn. The students will then take the tracing paper and flip it over making the image backwards and outline the drawing once again over a piece of foam. All this work will hopefully be worth it when the students see the final results with their printing plate of their backwards condiment container. Each student will print their image four times, with four different colors of ink.... Fingers crossed!

My second graders were introduced to Pablo Picasso and his famous "Blue Period". We looked at a couple examples of Picasso artwork during the Blue Period, especially the "Old Guitarist." I got this idea from the blog Dalismustache (Thank You!). The lesson gave me a great opportunity to work with the concept of collage. The students started out with a large 24in x 10in piece of paper. We used tempera paint to paint the entire paper blue ( I gave the students blue and white paint to allow students to mix their own color blue). The next class, the students were given multiple colors of blue paper, white paper, black paper, blue burlap, newspaper, and blue and white wallpaper. The only directions I gave the students, was to be creative, use as many materials as possible, and not do the same thing as the person next to you. Once the students got to the point they didn't want to add anymore, then they were given a black sharpie to add designs. Once finished, the stude...