kinders and camille

My TK and K classes are continuing to explore line this week. I'm using the bright, bold, graphic work of Camille Walala to introduce them to directional line and line thickness. I'm sharing a couple prints that Camille made for her "Dream Come True" series. We go through one and look at how some lines go side to side, up and down, and somewhere in between. After pointing out each one, the kids and I make those lines with our arms and "expressively" say the line name that goes with the particular line.

We then notice how those lines work together in her pieces to create shapes with straight lines- rectangles, squares, and triangles. We also compare how her name next to the image uses thin lines and the lines in the print are thick and bold.

Before starting the hands on portion of the activity, I let the kids know that this drawing will be different than their Knuffle Bunny toy drawings from the week before. With this activity, I am asking them to follow along with what I do. Doing so allows me to get a sense of where they are at in terms of understanding line concepts.

We draw out the composition together (and even though we do this, there is still a wide range of compositions due to motor control and spatial awareness) and then I model how to hold our color sticks to fill in shapes. I show them how to put "bumpers up" along the edges of shapes to keep their images neat and I also demo using the point and the side of the color sticks to fill small and large areas. Students may use any combination of colors in their drawings. I encourage them to try and repeat colors to make patterns, too.

The final step is to use a big black crayon to trace/go over our pencil lines, so that the lines are thick and dark like Camille's I encourage them to use their muscles to press hard, so the black is nice and dark.

When students finish, they may go to any of my choice building centers. After about 5-7 minutes, we clean up and regroup to build a couple sentences about the drawing process. We read the sentences, orally share different words to use, and then fill in the blanks in the pre-typed sentences.

cutting with kinders!

The kinders have started their second rotation with me this week and they are cutting and gluing with me for the first time... and it is going wonderfully!

So many of the kids are doing a fantastic job of holding, opening/closing, and following their drawn lines. This is not necessarily the case every year, so a big shout out to kindergarten teachers and families that have got these little ones on their way:)

I'm using the work of Marcos Roman as the inspiration for this project. I've used his work before with a couple different grade levels. He recently did a series of mask portraits for #inktober and has been posting them on instagram as he makes them. We focus on one image in particular and look at how he uses round shapes (ovals) , how he decorates them with patterns, and how one of the shapes looks like a face. We then go through and identify the various face parts in the collage Marco made.

To start the project, I actually pre-draw the oval/egg face shape. We go through and add the face parts and patterns with a pencil (or white color stick if on black paper). I encourage the kids to make choices with each step- what shape will they use for the nose? the ears? the mouth?, and so on.

The classes working on white paper then use a marker to make the lines bold and those working on black go over their lines with white once more.

Students then draw an oval as big as they can on primary color sheets of paper and add line patterns to each.

Then we are ready to cut! I model how to hold the scissors, opening & closing, and using the hand holding the paper to turn it as we cut. Once everything is cut out, we plan where the primary color shapes will go and then where the face will go. I model using a gluestick, how to raise the glue level, how to do the gluing on the paper and not the table surface, and hold to press the parts on.

When everything is done and kids have cleaned up, some classes have had enough time to collaboratively build a few sentences that explain what we did for their teachers. This has been a great way to get many kids involved in using the vocabulary of the day:)

nico, skye, and line.

A couple of weeks ago, our 3rds and kinders both set out to explore and experiment with line. The 3rds focused on bold contour lines to define shapes in a composition inspired by the work of Australian artist  Nico. The kinders used different kinds of lines to make a San Diego composition inspired by artist Skye Walker, who lives right here in San Diego.

The 3rds first. I introduced them to Nico's work with a few images. We noticed that he tends to use bold, thick contour lines in a lot of his work. We also noticed that he also uses lines, shapes, and colors to add pattern elements to most parts of his compositions. Finally, we picked up that while his images look somewhat flat, he does, in fact, create some 3d space by overlapping shapes a lot in his images. The openness of his figurative abstract images allows kids to read combinations of geometric and natural shapes differently from each other.

After discussing Nico's work, we set of to make images that were inspired by his work, but did not copy it. We started by doing at least 2 sketches. The types of shapes, arrangement, etc., was open. The only 2 rules were to include at least 10 shapes and to overlap at least 3 times.

When we were done sketching, we picked one to use for our final drawing and created a sentence that explained our reasoning for that choice. "I chose sketch 2 because it is cool" was not an option. We need to give a more detailed reason why the image is cool.

We then drew out the sketch on a larger sheet of paper, keeping in mind that the image could change a bit going from small to big and that we could add more details or elements if we felt like we needed to.

We then traced our pencil lines with a thick sharpie marker, added pattern elements to each shape with colored markers, and finished the drawing by adding fill colors to the shapes with crayola color sticks.

I really like the wide variety of approaches that students took to this activity,

The kinders, meanwhile, looked at a couple of paintings by Skye Walker. We looked at how he used horizontal and vertical lines to split up his paintings into smaller squares and rectangles. We also noticed that he used elements in those shapes that were found right here in San Diego.

We started the hands on activity by adding 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines to split up our paper. We then drew San Diego elements in each of those sections- water pattern, palm trees, mountains, sun, and cactus. We switched over to markers to add bold color to each part and used color sticks at the end to add light background colors. For this last step, we used the side of a color stick so we could see the difference between using the point of a drawing tool and the side of one.

The kinders have done a great job with their first art rotation and I can't wait to learn more about them as the year goes on!

chalking it up.

What a week!

I introduced my kinders and 3rds to a couple quilt artists this week and we used their work as an introduction to chalk application and color concepts.

The 3rd graders looked at a quilt by Kathryn Upitis. I've been focusing on 3d space with them and her quilt, September Dawn, was an interesting example of depth in a more abstract sense. We reviewed fore,middle, and background and then looked at the quilt and  tried to see the depth in it. Kids struggled to do so, until I gave them the title of the piece and then things started to click- the ground stands out because it's really dark, but what about the sky? Kids noticed darker and bigger clouds at the top and smaller, lighter ones at the back.

We interpreted this in chalk instead of pieced fabric. I modeled how to hold the chalk to keep themselves and their paper clean. We built the sky and smoothed it out, added the ground and left it rough. We then built the clouds with oil pastels. We used white first and went on top with blue and/or purple. We used tints of colored paper to make our Carol Wyatt inspired landscapes, but this was the first time we mixed those tints in class this year.

We knocked out an exit slip at the end that addressed tints, 3d space, and how their work was different than Kathryn's.

I got through one day this week and then my son was admitted to the hospital. I knew I was going to be out one day, but ended up being out until today. I am very relieved to say that he comes home today and we have a diagnosis and treatment plan. I will be so over the top thrilled to see him sleeping in his own bed tonight:)

Anywho, because I knew I would be out one day, I put together a short video for the sub to use for chalk technique and project intro. My goal is to do more of these in the future. Back in class today, I used them and I was able to distribute supplies while kids watched my demo. Pretty cool being in two places at once!

Meanwhile the kinders looked at a quilt called Full Bloom by LA based quilter Latifah Saafir. (I just discovered the MQG ((Modern Quilt Guild)) website, so be prepared for even more quilt inspired projects!) We talked about what they saw in the quilt and how the title of a piece can guide your thinking when looking at art. We did a chalk pastel drawing of Latifah's quilt. We drew our shapes in white chalk, added chalk color and smoothed it out in the leaves, added color to the background and left it rough, and finished things off by using black oil pastels to make the outlines bold and strong.

Next week, I will have both grade levels experimenting with oil pastels.

While sitting with my son this week, one of the ways I coped was drawing on my ipad with a new app (for me), autodesk sketchbook. Getting a little better using my fat fingers to make thin lines on the touchscreen:)