painting portraits.

This week the 2nds and 5ths have been experimenting with paint as they create portraits. Thw 2nd graders are looking at a couple images by Cbabi Bayoc and the 5th graders are looking at some paintings by Maurice Evans. Both grade levels are still exploring 3d space and volume in art.

The 2nds have looked at the images below by Cbabi Bayoc. we've talked about how he changes the human form a bit. We have noticed that even though his portraits are different than the Coronado Bridge landscapes they did, he still uses overlapping to create 3d space. When painting, we have tried to make light and dark colors by adding more or less water to the tempera cakes in order to make the shapes seem more solid.

The 5th graders are making portraits of musicians that are based on the work of Maurice Evans. We are looking at how he uses size to create space in a short distance in his portraits. The hands of his subjects are exaggerated in size, but the largeness of them compared to the size of the heads, creates distance and drama. When painting, we are trying to use dark and light color values to create 3d forms in places.

Again, this week, both projects have been pretty direct with choice coming in to play in the painting portion. The next time I see both grade levels for printmaking, there will be more room for choice throughout the artistic process. As with the chalk pastel lesson, I am using more control in terms of subject and process, so that they gain experience with the materials while demonstrating a beginning grasp of creating different effects with them.

day of the dead portraits and what some lazy art teacher wore today.

The 5th graders have been working with shape the past couple of weeks. Last week they focused on creating a symmetrical border design for a portrait and this week they moved on to making shapes look 3d by using curved lines and shading.

The inspiration was an image by a Mexican illustrator that goes by the name Mostacho. It was part of a series of 100 portraits in 2 months that he was working on.

Most of the kids did a nice job with the project. As the week went on last week, I made a couple modifications in materials and size that made the project more manageable. I had the first class construct their character out of cut paper, but that was taking too much time. I also scaled back the size from 12x16" to 10x15". It seems like a small amount, but sometimes those few inches make a big difference in project completion. Their exit slip consisted of 2 questions about their project, plus a paragraph about their character. What was their name? What did they do for work and fun? How would they want to be remembered? Most kids approached this last piece as fiction writing, but there were also a few that wrote about family members that had passed away.

What some lazy art teacher wore on Halloween. This morning the south campus bowed down to Macho Masse in all his misguided glory!

The ensemble- 

mask and belt- amazon, shirt- walmart with felt shapes added by me, cape- our household halloween stash, with red pompoms that I added, tights- amazon, shorts- ladies active wear section at target, boots- I started with an old pair of converse all star low tops and used duck tape and socks to get the desired wrestling boot height.

so a chip and a can walk onto a piece of paper...

and the little ones laugh. badum bump.

Here's another one that was inspired by the work of Philip Tseng. He posted this image on instagram last week and I immediately thought... kinder project.

The kinders are currently learning about 3d shapes with their classroom teachers, so I thought this would make for a great extension to that learning. I shared this image with the kids and we talked about how one of the shapes looks very flat and the other looks very round. They identified the can shape as a cylinder and that the top of that shape was an oval.

I also talked about the connection between the two things in the drawing, the paint card and the finished, mixed can of paint. How people use the card to see if they want a certain color or colors when they go to the store before spending money on paint for a project.

The kinders have done a great job with the shapes and the expressions on their objects.

The drawing activity took half our time together, so after that I gave students another sheet of paper and told them they could draw another character on it. I also told them we would be turning that flat shape into a 3d cylinder after they were done drawing it. This activity took the illusion of the 3d solid in the paint drawing and made it real. The students have made some interesting cylinder sculptures too:)