landscaping with jamey.

This week I wanted the 2nd graders to gain a bit more practice creating 3d space in a drawing. They did a great job with last week's Lisa Congdon's icebergs, so I thought it would be interesting if they applied the same set of skills to a landscape instead of a seascape.

I decided to share the work of Washington D.C. based illustrator Jamey Christoph with my classes. Looking at his landscapes was perfect practice for students to identify overlapping, value changes, size changes, and vertical placement in art.

Jamey has a somewhat retro style. Some elements are simplified and others are exaggerated. His work reminds me of some of the settings used in the old Looney Tunes cartoons, I'm thinking of the roadrunner landscapes and bugs bunny/ elmer fudd showdown spaces in particular. I love his color palette too, often muted throughout an image with a burst of color here or there.

I decided to focus on the landscape below. I liked how the trees in the front went from top to bottom and overlapped everything else. This was a lot different than the space of Lisa's icebergs, which, while close, still seemed out of arms' reach.

I asked students to draw as lightly as they could, so the viewer wouldn't be able to see many outlines. Students worked from the front of the image to the back, deciding tree placement, direction of the path, what their bushes looked like, and where those bushes would go.

Next, they used colorsticks to add color value to the drawing. Students made the front dark by pressing hard, and with each layer I asked them to press more softly, so those parts would be lighter and look farther away. The sky color was up to them, the only thing I asked was that they attempt to make the sky darker at the top and lighter by the ground. Students used both the tip of the colorstick to add color, as well as the side to fill in larger areas.

The final step was to go back to the front and add shadows to the big trees and to add plant life along the bottom edge of the paper. This pushed the value contrast in the drawing a bit more, and provided some more interaction between that first layer and the field beyond it.

The 2nd graders are getting the hang of this whole 3d space thing. Next time I see them I'll see how they do with paint to create similar effects:)

we're back!

Wow! We just returned from our 4 week spring break today. I really didn't think I could not post for so long, but I "surprised" myself. Off and running with the 2nd and 5th grade classes for the next 4 weeks.

One of the 2nd grade standards focuses on creating 3d space through overlapping, vertical placement, and size change. I throw value change into the mix as well. I found the work of illustrator Dante Terzigni through Pikaland and thought his work could work well introducing students to these concepts while offering an image that made them think, "Why did he (Dante) do that?" They're always wondering why I do things:)

I gathered some info off his website to share with students before digging into the hands on project. One tidbit was that he graduated from college in 2003, the same year that many of our 2nd graders were born. I talked about how he drew on paper for planning his ideas, but used a drawing tablet plugged into a computer to create his final illustrations.

When looking at some examples of his work, students were able to tell me that his shapes looked flat and kind of different, even though the shapes were based on real things. We also found out that even though his individual shapes looked flat, Dante created depth by changing the size, placement, and value of those shapes.

For the project, I decided to focus on an image of his called Flower Factory. Students identified the elements used to create 3d space in the image and then I asked them why Dante might have made the image. Many answers centered on him using his imagination. A few went further and addressed the need to make things look nicer, or to protect ourselves from the bad smoke that would come out of a factory. 

The students approached the project as a collage. They built the 2 layer city first, and then added stems and leaves, followed by the flower tops. I demonstrated where to start the layers of the city, but also stressed the desire for their concepts to look different than mine.

Some of the cityscapes look more natural than I was expecting, but they still demonstrate the necessary elements of 3d space that were required.

Some students in each class did not finish, so I will give them a few more minutes next week. These students that already finished can add some subtle pattern elements with pencil and crayon, so that their images have a bit of the variety in texture that makes Dante's designs visually richer.

Mo.

Mr. Mo Willems is one of my favorite children's book authors/illustrators. My family has quite a collection of his books at home. I think I may be more excited to read his stuff at bedtime than my kids are sometimes...

I especially love his two Knuffle Bunny books. I have read the first one to my kinder classes as inspiration for projects for the past couple of years. We look at how the characters are drawn simply and in color and how the backgrounds look realistic and are in black, white, and grays. We talk about how the background images are from Trixie's (the main character) neighborhood. Finally, we talk about how the characters look like they are in front of the background settings because they cover up or overlap parts of those settings.

The project takes two classes.
1. address what authors and illustrators do
2. read the book
3. talk about character, setting, and space
4. draw our school setting as the neighborhood/background on watercolor paper
5. color the buildings with pencil and add crayola black marker lines to sky and grass
6. dip paintbrush in water and go over sky and grass- simple way to create soft texture that is different than pencil handling of buildings

next class we resume-
1. draw their character in the style of Mo Willems in pencil
2. trace lines with black marker
3. color character with crayons
4. cut character out
5. glue onto school neighborhood setting from previous session

Leonardo the Terrible Monster may be my favorite though... I think I'll do a project with that book next year!