warm and cool pendletons.

The 3rd graders got pretty messy with their chalk pastel cacti last week, so I thought I'd give them a cleaner project to try out this time. We're still focusing on warms and cools, but we are looking at an artwork that looks a lot different than our Jenny Willigrod inspired cacti, too. The painting below is by one of my favorite designers, Don Pendleton. I usually do at least one project inspired by his work each year. (Like this, and this, and this:) You can discuss many elements when looking at his work with kids- types of lines, types of shapes, color, focal points, and even art history by linking his work to the cubists and abstractionists that have come before...

I'm beginning to play with visual thinking strategies in my instruction, using it as a warm up, in hopes of having our classroom teachers explore it with their students next year. When I shared this image with the classes, I asked them to quietly look for a minute, then I asked- "What is going on here?" After each response, I paraphrased it, and then asked for more from other students- not what else is there, but "Is there more going on?" Students were able to break down and identify so much about the image, using a great deal of vocab. I'll be continuing this and going further with the approach with each grade level this year. As I've been learning about the approach, the benefits/skills should lend themselves well to other subjects, especially ELA.

Anywho...

Students started their own versions by drawing a large central shape- circle, diamond, or square. They then broke up the shape and the background with verticals and horizontals. They could fill the interior shapes with any characters, any things like wanted. Some went with Don's vocab of shapes, others did their own thing. They traced their lines with black crayons and sharpies to make them bold and strong.

Students used either warm colors or cools inside the main shape and the opposite on the outside. They used crayola washable markers to color.

They went over their marker parts with a wet brush to create a painted effect and to fill the shapes in more completely.

As usual, students completed an exit slip. I asked them to identify how this painting project was similar to their cacti drawings. They also needed to express which one they enjoyed more with a "because" statement.

getting in the pond with Melissa.

The kinders are continuing their value unit this week. The focus image was done by American illustrator Melissa Sweet.  I love the soft touch with color that she displays in many of her illustrations. The 3rd graders are going to be working from an illustration she did for a book about Horace Pippin later this week as well.

We started the lesson by reviewing the vocabulary we used in the Budi Kwan project from last week- value, light, dark, soft, hard, and oil pastels. This project used all those too, but the 2 projects/artworks look a a lot different from each other.

Students identified the things they saw in Melissa's painting. We talked about how the painting is of a frog and it's habitat. (science connection for the win;) I guided them to also recognize that some of the lily pads were dark and some were light and the flower has dark and light pink petals.

The lesson is pretty straightforward-

1.  Draw the flower. Start with an oval and add a couple sets of bump patterns around it for the petals.
2.  Draw the line that separates the ground from the pond. Overlapping!
3.  Draw a few lily pads. Have at least one go off the page. I referenced pac-man for the shape. I also pointed out that the lily pad shape is a big "C" with a "V" cut into it.
4.  Draw the frog. It starts out the same as the lily pads, but you also add an "m" for where the eyes go.
5.  Color the lily pads with greens. Press hard on a couple and light on a couple. Color the petals of the flower. Press soft on the inside and light on the outer ones.
6.  Color the frog. Press hard with yellow and then softly with a green to make it a bit different than the lily pads.
7.  Color the ground softly with brown. Press hard to add a shadow underneath it. Use the side of the oil pastel to color a large area easily.
8.  Color the water of the pond with blue and/or purple.
9.  Write a guided sentence or two about the project. Students can count how many lily pads they have or describe how they made or used light and dark.

making lights and darks with Budi.

This week the kinders are starting their value unit with me. I wanted to do something that had a good bit of repetition in it, so they could have an opportunity to practice making light and dark values over and over again. Next week, we will apply this practice to a different looking project.

I am using an illustration by Budi Satria Kwan as the focus of this lesson. I came across his work on pinterest recently and thought this illustration had the elements I was looking for- repetition of shape and values, simple, and a bit playful for the kinders.

I started the lesson by reviewing the tree collages we did last time that focused on geometric shapes. I explained what value is, and then I shared a short video interview with Budi. 

This personalized Budi and the kids could see that he is a pretty young artist. He does mostly digital illustrations that become posters and t-shirt designs. (I actually a couple of his t-shirts that he designed for Threadless. I didn't realize this until scrolling through his portfolio and watching the interview:)

When we looked at the above illustration, I had students identify what they saw and how one part of each leaf was light and the other part was dark.

Before starting the drawing, I introduced oil pastels to the kids. I described them as softer, messier crayons with really strong colors.

We did the drawing in 4 parts-

1. drew out the plant stems and leaves in pencil

2. pressed hard and soft with oil pastels to make light and dark values

3. added white to a few leaves to see how that can also make colors lighter

4. traced the pencil lines with black to make the colors pop out more against the white background

At the end of the lesson, we wrote out a sentence together about our drawing. Classes have done some different sentences, but all students needed to count their leaves and include that number quantity.

 some students drew A LOT of leaves:)

 some students got a lil' funky with their stem lines:)

FYI- prepare for some chuckles from the kids when you say his name. Anything that sounds even a little bit like "booty" is gonna get some laughs with 5 and 6 year olds:)

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.