Tuesday, October 14, 2014

scratching away.

Last week the 4th graders started working with line. We looked at the work of artist Sandra Willard, who uses scratchboard to create many works of art. We focused on how she uses line to do a variety of things- she creates shapes with contour lines, creates patterns, and creates different values.


Using her website portfolio as a reference, students identified these elements in a few of her pieces. Then we got started with ours. We softly drew out our landscapes with a pencil and then I modeled how to create thick and thin lines with the scratch tools. We worked out way through the landscape, creating different values by changing the number of lines and the amount of space in between lines.

At the end of the activity, my classes at the beginning of the week did exit slips reflecting on the project. With my last few classes of the week, I tried something new- letters to the artist. I asked students to write a letter to Sandra that used at least 3 of our art vocab words of the day. This wasn't as dry as the straightforward exit slip and there was some interesting variety in the kids' writings.




















4 comments:

  1. These are very cool. Thanks for also sharing the letters.

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  2. I'll try it with my middle school students. Thanks! Elisa

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  3. These are quite sweet. I like the writing aspect!

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