Vermont Farms and Barns

Artists are off to a good start drawing Vermont Landscapes.  I think they did a great job, perhaps because it's a subject near and dear to our hearts.  This lesson was inspired by Josette Brower at  Georgetown Elementary Art.  Our learning objective was to practice drawing 3-D shapes, cubes and cylinders, and to draw a barn and silo in perspective.  We practiced once and then kids started their paintings.  No under drawing was necessary.     The only rule I gave the kids about the project was that the barn could be placed anywhere on the page except the very bottom of the paper.  We talked about leaving room for the animals to get in and out of the barn, and I wanted my youngest artists to experience creating space in their landscapes. 

Josette's students placed their barns in a winter landscape, but I think we'll go for spring so we can put the green in the Green Mountain State. Here are some examples of first, second, and third grade work.  Can you tell which is which...hmmmm.

Kids love learning to draw basic forms using perspective.  It's so exciting and this project was a big hit....Thanks Josette Brower!  Can't wait to add color.

  

Art Blooms

It's been a while since Pinwheels for Peace and I figured it's time for another big school-wide art collaboration.  "Art Blooms at Currier" is our theme, and we think it looks spectacular.  Each student, K-6 completed at least one bloom for the wild (and I do mean WILD) flower garden, but some many more than that.  The photo doesn't do the display justice.  The colors are a delight for the eyes.  As of today, the flowers climb up the wall, cross the room above the bulletin board and are creeping toward the library.  And the best part is...we still have dozens and dozens left to put up.To complete this project we spent one class discussing axil and radial symmetry.  Then we brainstormed things we have encountered that have 2-D or 3-D radial designs.  Using paper and pencil I showed students how to make a hand-drawn radial design.  We worked on an 8"x 8" piece of square copy paper .  First students located the center of their paper and drew a small circle.  We added rings around the circle--6 to 8 are about right.  Not too many, not to few.  We made some rings close together and some further apart.  In each ring we added a simple pattern. (Maybe a zig zag, a  looping or wavy line, I showed various examples).  We noticed that we could go back into the simple pattern and add more elements and watched the design move from simple to complex as it grew out from the center.  Once they got the hang of it, students used the rest of this class to finish their designs and add color with markers or crayons.

Next we made radial designs using paints and brushes on the papers we decorated during our Eric Carle Festival.  Students began their designs with oil pastels by drawing a set of circles or rings as guide lines.  They used pastels to begin planning their design and switched over to paint when they were ready.  Students were instructed to leave some areas of their design unpainted so that the wild colors of the decorated papers would show through.  For some this was more difficult than others.  After the paint dried students went back to oil pastels to outline or add additional elements to the design.  Then they cut them out. 

We arranged our flowers and taped them to a sheet of paper.  To give the floweres a bit of dimension we added a wire spring made by twisting a piece of florest wire around a pencil.  The spring was taped to the back of some of the flowers and then to the background paper.  To our great surprise the spring gave the flowers an unexpected movement.  They oscilate back and forth when a breeze hits them (like the flywheel in  a watch).  And...as our secretary said when she saw it "how cute is THAT."

Gyotaku the Japanese Art of Fish Printing

Gyotaku is the second project in the third and forth grade printmaking unit.
In Japanese, "Gyo" means fish and "Taku" means rubbing. Put it together and you get fish print. Fish printing was invented by Japanese fisherman before the invention of cameras. Fisherman wanted a way to keep an especially large or interesting catch, and yet still be able to take the fish to market to sell. They found that by painting the fish with ink and pressing it against paper they could take a print of their fish, then rinse off the ink and sell the fish at market. Fish prints were brought back and displayed in homes of fisherman either on the walls or in journals.
Fish printing later developed into an art form when artists began adding artistic elements and created prints for their beauty. This fish print was created by a fourth grade art student.

Instead of using live fish (for obvious reasons) we used a set of rubber fish stamps. I set up 4-6 printmaking stations in the room and students circulated through choosing the fish the wanted to print. Their goal was to get four good, clear practice prints. We set our prints on the drying rack to dry.












In our second class students added elements of color to their practice prints with crayon, paying special attention to the eye. The highlights of color especially around the eye really brought our fish to life. We cut these out and strung them up so that they looked like the catch of the day.

The very last step of our project was to create a print on a water colored background. To do this students used the wet-into-wet watercolor technique. They sprinkled their paper with salt for a bubbly texture. We brushed away the salt when dry and printed our final fish. With a little experience under their belts this print was a piece of cake.

We matted our final version on blue paper and hung our papers alternately with our "catch of the day". Don't they make an eye catching display?