Winter Cardinals

Fifth Grade looked at a variety of winter cardinals then chose a reference form which they created their drawings.  Love the variety and spontaneity of their work 

Miro Mobiles

I love Joan Miro.  I love his bold black lines and also the surreal and innocent quality of his work.  Miro very much admired the artwork of children and this is reflected in his use of shape and color.  He is said to have believed that all things, even inanimate objects, have a hidden life that is both strange and beautiful.  Perhaps wondering about these hidden worlds gives his work its surreal quality.    

  

Students visited Miro's world and analyzed his paintings to identify his preferred lines and shapes.  They noticed moons, stars, spirals, hash marks, as well as organic and geometric shapes whose arrangement sometimes suggest figures and animals.    

Students received a Sharpie and a piece of drawing paper to create the symbols and figures for their  mobile.  Here are some of their creations.

They created a lot of designs

When they were done they flipped their papers over to outline and color-fill the back of the page.

I adore this young artist's "Alien Babe" (above) and think Miro would like it too.

When finished students "bubble cut" around their shapes.  Using a hole punch and florist wire the shapes were hung to balance.  More mobiles to come.

Here I found a wonderful resource for all things Miro.  Click on "Play Miro"  for a great kids corner.

 http://www.fundaciomiro-bcn.org/coleccio.php?idioma=2

Thanks for looking.  

Fashion Drawing Fifth Grade Love

Fifth grade fashion design drawings.  This work is beginning to amaze me.  Just a few weeks in and I am seeing greater control, imagination and sophistication in the fashion drawings.  

You can tell the earliest works.  The figures look a little stiff and the artists tried hard to avoid drawing hands. But with time and practice the figures look more graceful, and the hands are apparent and begin to overlap the outfits. 

Once they mastered the model, students were encouraged to move away from the body-con look, which we all agreed was a great first step.  They are now striving to design and draw the drape of clothing and are working on adding texture, pattern and detail to their designs.  

One student brought in her collection of  BARBIE clothes for inspiration.  The served as a great jumping off point for inventing new fashion designs.

We are moving away from the standing pose and working on a stronger fashion pose.  Stay tuned for more.

Hawaiian Sunset

The long winter must be getting to me, because I find myself fascinated with all things tropical lately. So, aloha friends.
Today I'm sharing a little bit of the aloha spirit and also my Hawaiian Sunset lesson.  Aloha is more than a word, isn't it?  It means hello, goodbye, but also carries a deeper meaning.  The aloha spirit signifies giving without expecting anything in return.  I means accepting each as a valuable part of the whole, living peacefully in the present, and being one with the natural world.
Students made these beautiful tropical sunsets for our PTG fund raiser this year. They'll send them away to be printed on various items.  To make them we first made a watercolor wash to make an ocean sunset.  We used liquid watercolors, but you can use what you have.  Then we used our backgrounds to create a beach silhouette.  Students really loved this lesson.  We used this video to practice drawing our palm trees (not a native species in Vermont). How to draw palm trees And we used this video to practice our hula. Aloha Music.

Aren't they fun?  Don't they make you want to create a little aloha spirit of your own?

Scratch Art Owls

Grades 3, 4, and 5 have been working on Scratch Art this month. Here is some fifth grade work that turned out really well.  We made our own rainbow scratch boards for this project and reviewed the colors of the spectrum in proper sequence then used crayon to lay our base layer down in an interesting pattern.  Black oil pastel was used to cover the crayon and a rough draft design was created from reference photos.

When students were happy with their design the transferred it to the scratch board by laying the sketch on top of the scratch board and going over their lines with a pencil.  The faint transfer lines were etched into the scratch board with the end of a Popsicle stick and patterns were added.