drawing and dreaming with Horace and Melissa.

This week the 3rd graders continued their value unit. The goal of the project was for them to be able to make a character look 3d by using light and dark color values. Last week they used light and dark to create variety, so I wanted them to apply value to a drawing and make it more realistic.

The inspiration for the project comes from illustrations done by Melissa Sweet for the book A Splash of Red: the Life and Art of Horace Pippin. (the link for the book is a great resource for the classroom and has a video biography narrated by a child) 

 

I started the lesson by sharing a photo of Horace and talking about his life and all he overcame to become an artist. I then shared 2 illustrations by Melissa that are from the book. We looked at how she used a little bit of value contrast on Horace's skin and clothes in order to make him seem a little rounder and solid. I read the text to them and we then identified places, animals, and things that we saw in his thoughts above his head. I explained that they would be creating self-portraits- they would draw themselves and things that they enjoy.

 We followed the composition that Melissa did and I walked the kids through drawing their self-portraits. I had various hairstyle examples on the board, so they could have a better idea how to approach that aspect of the drawing. When they added color I emphasized pressing hard for their dark values and soft for their light values.

An hour isn't quite long enough for this lesson. I'll be bringing back classes for 15 minutes each next week, so that everyone can get finished. I wanted the focus to be on value, but the drawing portion of the lesson took a lot longer than I originally planned. That said, I love the individual takes on the self portraits- both physically and what they like to do:)

Always nice to see expressions like this on kids' faces when they get done:)

surfin and shading.

The 3rd graders started their value unit this week. We looked at a few paintings that Mario Quezada did on skateboards for inspiration.

Students pointed out the things they saw in the designs. I nudged them along to also describe the light and dark colors they saw in them too. I used this point to talk about tints and shades of colors in art. In this case, the different values are used to add variety to the designs, but I talked about how light and dark colors can make an image look more and 3d too.

We had an interesting PD yesterday and one of the things discussed was that students understanding of the content increases when they know why they are learning about it. What is the purpose of the learning? To that end I wrapped up my intro with the following-
Why practice creating tints and shades?

Well, I tell them, one of the main reasons the video games play look so real is that the programmers and artists who design them use the element of value effectively to create light and shadow in those games. So, my students who are interested in designing games, or becoming an illustrator, they are going to need to nail the use of light and dark in their work. Not, obviously, right away, but their time to practice and evolve starts right here, right now,  in elementary school.

The students were to use Mario's work as a resource. I explained that our goal was not to copy his work, but use it as inspiration for a fun way to practice making tints and shades.

The project can break down into a few steps-
1. Draw the surfer. Start with the waist and go from there. Talk about how a surfer uses their arms and legs to balance like the kids do on a skateboard. Then add the board.

2. Draw at least 6 waves and then add a couple curved lines to break up the bigger waves into smaller parts. Emphasize not to copy your example. Tell them to respond to their drawing as they go. IF they have a lot going on in one area, add shapes to another part. If they have a big open space, think about adding a wave to that area to make it more interesting.

3. 6 shapes gives them enough waves to color with a couple colors and tints and shades of each of those colors. Color the waves. With tints, shades, and the colors by themselves. If waves are left over, they can make them white or black or create more tints and shades. We used oil pastels, but color sticks, or construction paper crayons could work too.

4. Color the surfer. We used color sticks so the kids could capture more detail than with the oil pastels.

5. Complete an exit slip that gets the kids reflecting on what they did in the project. Ours had 3 questions.
          -How did you create tints in your project?
          -How is your project different than Mario's?
          -What question would you ask Mario about his skateboards or art in general?
    

adding a color on top of white softly to make a tint.

making shades.

Reflecting and writing.

I love this question for Mario:)

Check this out!

One of the awesome things about focusing on living artists in my curriculum is that I can reach out to them, share what the kids have done with their work, and get feedback from that artist to share with the kiddos. Just last week, Jason Messinger took the time to answer 5 questions the 2nd grade students had for him.

Well, Mario took it one step further and answered the questions up there^ in this post in a video! He wanted to make it even more real for the kids. Indeed, it will. Thanks Mario:)

abstract landscaping.

And we're back!

Right before winter break, the 2nd graders started their value unit. They used value to create 3d solids and 3d space in a drawing inspired the topiaries of Pearl Fryar. They tried to make their drawings look as realistic as they could. With this week's project, inspired by the modular clay tile works of Jason Messinger, I wanted to give them a chance to play with some simple landscape shapes, while still exploring how value contrast and shape size can create space and visual interest.

Jason likes to walk the line between representation and abstraction in his work and I wanted the 2nd graders to gain some experience in this too. I've had this image pinned for a while, so was/am excited to break out a lesson inspired by it:)

Versailles, France modular clay mural by Jason Messinger

I had the students do some preliminary work before starting their final drawings. First, they created color value scales. One with just green and another with yellow and green. We talked about pressing hard and soft to create the different values. They then drew a few simple landscape elements- pine tree, cypress tree, setting sun/bush, stream/path. The 3rd step was to put them together in an interesting way in 2 sketches. They needed to overlap at least once and change sizes from big to small somewhere.

They then got an 8x8" white square to draw on. When they had their chosen composition drawn, they could color it with any of the color values they made in their scales. The one rule was that shapes that shared a side could not be the same color.

On their exit slips, students had to identify how their new landscape was different than their Pearl Fryar ones. I also had them come up with a question to ask Jason. I will be collecting these and sharing some with him later this week.

My plan is to have different classes do different color schemes. I'm thinking blues for tomorrow. When we display them, I'd like to group them like Jason does and have the students help with the placement of the individual panels.

It's great to be back working with the kiddos!

castles with kinders.

This week I got to work with a few kinders again. 3rd week in a row with these kiddos due to our parent conference schedule. We continued working with shapes- both natural and geometric, but I put away the scissors and glue for this one:)

I shared a print by Japanese artist Keiko Minami with them. Keiko lived until she was well into her 90s and during her lifetime she made some wonderfully minimal scenes of nature. Very light. Very delicate. We talked about how this one is an example of a landscape in art and we took a few minutes to identify the geometric shapes and patterns she used to create the scene.

The project was done in 3 basic steps- we drew  the basic elements in pencil, used marker to define the shapes and to add patterns, and then we used crayons to add the bushes up front and to add color variety to the castle. With this last step, we focuses on learning how to press hard and soft to make the crayon colors look light and dark.

I had time with a couple classes to create sentences together at the end. We built most of the sentence together, sounding out the words and making finger spaces between them. We then came up with a list of things that we made our drawing with, I wrote these on the board, and students picked one of the words to complete their sentence.