Artistic Freedom

My examples of layered art objects (top right), emphasis example (lower right), and colored object example.  My students are close to finishing their EMPHASIS project with an object observation. Students made a layered black and white drawing of two different art objects. They started by tracing each object with pencil, followed by a "still-life" observation drawing to fill in the inner lines and details of each object. The lesson makes students aware of where things are on the page. The layered affect adds depth to the composition. When the students finished the drawing, we talked about an emphasis, and added color to ONE item on the page. Students used colored pencil to add color to their item. We are still working on them at the moment, but I was excited to show them off. Finished projects are soon to follow. 

We started out with a head tracer. Then drew the interior details of the giraffe, followed by the neck and spots. The next class, I gave the students all a different giraffe book from the library and we spent 15 minutes making a list of adjectives. The students learned a bunch of new thing about giraffes. Did you know they sleep standing up? Did you know they can turn half their brains off at a time, or that their tongues are as long as a human arm? Well, my students found out. After we made the list, my students grabbed a sharpie and wrote their adjectives on the surrounding background. They wrote the words large, small, bubble letter, all capitals, and any other form they could think of. Color- The students picked one color and found 2-3 different shades / tints of that color in a monochromatic like form. The students colored in all of the giraffe with that color (crayons). The next class, we talked about complementary colors. The...

Every year I ask the kids to draw their house or family in a drawing. It can be a scary subject this day, but the way they draw and talk about  both can tell you a lot about the child and family. With that aside,  every year the children struggle drawing houses. This is understandable at such a young age, but this year I had a fifth grader struggle with a house. I thought to my self... I have to draw houses more with the children and talk about floors and different styles of homes in a simplistic form.  We started talking about the horizon line and the fact that it separates the sky from the ground. We drew the line across the middle of the page. Above the line we drew two trees and three houses. Below we made curved lines as if they were rows in a farm field (We live in WISCONSIN). We filled the rows with patterns and textures (line designs like the bottom of our shoes). For the color the students picked from the warm and cool colors. The...

The finished product!  My fourth graders finished their toothbrushes. It was a great lesson on scale and color. Love the flat white and the analogous color schemes in the background.  This is what happens when someone donates 30 toothbrushes to the art program...