lines! more lines! even more lines!

Wrapping up with my first 2 week rotation with our 1st & 4th graders and we have been experimenting with line while looking at the work of Nate Williams, Brita Lynn, Cadu Mendonca, and Seize Happywalker for inspiration.

Let’s dive in.

1sts looked at an illustration by Nate Williams and created profile portraits than included things of interest/ importance to them. They talked about things they liked, drew a few of them as practice, and then included them in the head of a portrait. They drew a picture of them thinking about what they like. 

They came back this week and we looked at a couple animals at the SD zoo and compared them to a couple paintings by Cadu Mendonca. They picked up on the difference between seeing a face in profile and seeing one from the front- one eye and half a mouth… except for peppa pig! We drew one of his animals together and then kids were to experiment with patterns within the animal. Color was added to specific parts to make certain parts stand out.

4ths looked to a drawing by Brita Lynn Thompson (zenspiredesigns) for a landscape and pattern exercise. They noticed how line was used to make the different landscape elements and how she also used it to fill every area with patterns. They looked at a collection of Sd landmarks and tried out combining different elements from different images. We talked about large v small scale and overlapping to create space, to boot.

Students scaled up in pencil, added colored, traced contour lines, and added patterns. Most kids needed extra time for this activity, so they had a full 80 minute session and then 15 minutes of the next to complete it. 

After that, they took a look at some work by Seize Happywallmaker (how awesome is that name?). They picked up on how he uses lines to create different shapes and how he overlaps to still make some depth in an abstract image. They noticed how symmetry was present in some of his pieces and not in others. I shared a short video of Home working and the kids loved it. It’s always cool to share this type of thing with our kids. I think it’s so important to see, videos or first hand, artists working through the various steps of the design process.

I modeled how they could create a design like Seize by starting with a couple simple shapes, giving them borders, adding another border that branches off, and then supporting shapes. We jumped right in to this. It was more much more spontaneous than the landscape drawing. Students drew, traced their lines, and added color. When coloring, I encouraged them to experiment with hard/soft, color patterns, and leaving some background shapes open, so there were places for us to rest.

To wrap up, the 4ths completed an exit slip that had them comparing and contrasting the focus works and telling me which experience they enjoyed more and why.

The 1sts and 4ths are off to a great start! Can’t wait to see them again when we play with shape!

blowing bubbles.

Spring is in the air:)

My daughter was playing with a gallon full of bubble solution at her brother's birthday party a couple weeks ago and poured most of it out on the lawn. Doh! It was around this time I came across the poster below, by Telegramme Studio in London.

Bobby Evans is the illustrator and designer behind all of Telegramme's creations. Bobby does a lot of designs for musicians and bands, but also does work for a wide variety of other clients. I like the weathered, vintage, letterpress feel of many of his images. They're clean designs with a bit of a rough edge to them.

This project would allow my kindergarten students (age 5) to practice drawing and cutting skills. I shared the image with my students and we identified what the person was doing, what kind of shape we saw a lot of, and what sizes of those shapes we saw.

After that, the students and I got to work. We drew out the hand shape together. This was the most challenging part of the exercise, but I feel that it also added a lot of character to each of the designs. No two were alike. I did put a dot on their paper, so we all started in the same place and the hands wouldn't be super small in the final drawings.

They then colored the hand. I asked them to press hard, so that the color looked nice and bold. The wand came next, followed by a few hand drawn bubbles. I asked them to use big, medium, and small circles here. When they colored the bubbles in they were supposed to press softly, so they could add a shadow too.

Once they were finished coloring the bubbles and they had added a "C" shadow on one side of them, they were ready for some cutting. Each student got two pieces of paper. One square had a large pre-drawn circle on it, the other was folded and had a one medium and one small circle on it. Students cut out these bubbles and placed them where they wanted them to go. I wanted them to lay them all out before gluing to get them to start thinking about planning in art. Then they got gluing:)

The final step was to add simple designs to a few of their cut out bubbles to give their designs a little visual variety.

I also did this lesson with our moderate/severe special day class. I am working on developing their fine motor control. They have done some collage work with me before. I pre-cut the shapes that they need for each project. I have been working with them on holding gluesticks and crayons correctly and firmly so they can add glue or leave bold marks on their paper.  Some of the students require assistance with this, while others are more independent. This class did a great job with this project. 

looking out.

The 4th grade classes were in a bit of a tricky spot this week. Most classes had some students that had to finish building their cut paper landscapes for the pinhole photography project. In some classes it was just a few students, in others it was a lot.

I decided to introduce a new project that built off a couple of the space concepts that they learned about the previous week. I thought the activity would be simple enough, yet still engaging, so that kids could get caught up and go with it when they finished their landscapes and I wouldn't have so much re-teaching to do. I think the new project was successful in that regard, but too many of the late starters rushed to get done, instead of taking their time and coming back later to finish. I always emphasize that rushing is never a good idea in art, it's when sloppy work happens:(

I got the idea for the new project from the boooom art blog. A while back it featured some art by LA based artist Jim Darling. Jim creatively tackles a wide variety of visual forms. It was a series of windows that caught my eye, though.

I loved the sculptural aspect of the pieces like the one above. The airplane window and the interior wall of the plane create a built in frame for the scene out the window. When I shared this series with the students we talked about the contrast between the positive shape of the window scene and the negative shape of the wall outside the window. (4th grade art standard)

We also revisited the spatial concepts that we had identified and used in the previous David Reeves pinhole project. In these window paintings Jim used vertical placement, overlapping, value change, and change in detail to make the view out the windows look 3d. (4th grade art standard)

The 4th graders had already used line patterns to create volume and colored paper to create implied space in art projects. This time they would have to control how hard they pressed with the color sticks to create different values.

I had all students take a break for their other project as I introduced Jim's work. After that, students that were done started with me, while the others finished up and then jumped in.

We drew out the window and put the shading in together. I then modeled a few different concepts of what could be out the window on the board and let the students try out for themselves. After 10 minutes I modeled how to create depth by using darker colors in the front and lightening them up as the space recedes.