As part of their movement unit, the 1st graders are getting a chance to experience stop motion and green screen film making this week.
I'm introducing them to contemporary Filipino artist Robert Alejandro with this project. We are looking at a short interview he did last year to start things off. He talks about the role of art in his childhood.
We then look at a few illustrations he has done of Filipino jeepneys. We notice the patterning of shape, line, and color on these and we contrast them with the buses we see around San Diego.
Our role for the day is that of a jeepney designer. We draw and decorate our own jeepney that will then be part of a traffic jam in Manila.
We watch a jeepney how-to in chunks, so that our jeepneys get drawn, patterned, traced, colored, and cut. After that I work with small groups of kids to move their vehicles across our table top green screen, being careful not to crash into each other in the process;)
As a few kids are working with me, others can go to centers and build with a variety of supplies. The filming takes about 10 minutes. Then we regroup, look at the movie with green background, add our city sounds, and then combine the movie with a photograph of a street in Manila as the background.
The kids have gotten a big kick out of seeing their drawings come alive!
The newest superhero on the block! His super power is creating amazing murals in Australia and around the world! His secret identity is Brad Eastman:)
Beastman showed the 3rd graders that you could create a sense of movement in art by using line patterns throughout an art work. The patterns can be thought of like the beats in music. He showed them how you can have a pattern or a shape start out small and get bigger (like the light of a flashlight) to create a sense of movement too. He also allowed them to see his use of contour lines in all his work, big and small, to outline and define shapes.
Now, Beastman would not want copycats, so students were inspired by his vocabulary of line and shape to create an abstract drawing that showed a sense of movement.
The kids all did 2 guided sketches to reinforce line- diagonal, circular, angular, line pattern, shape pattern, line pattern fill, and curved. They told a neighbor why they were going to choose one of their sketches over the other. They were not allowed to just say that one was cooler than the other. They needed to support their choice with evidence.
Students drew out their arrangement on a larger sheet. If the design changed some, that was okay. If they realized they had more space to add more detail, line, or pattern, they could. They traced their lines with a wide chisel tip sharpie to emphasize the contours. I showed them how they could hold the marker differently to create variety in line width. They could then use any color combinations they wanted. All they needed to do was follow 2 rules- include color patterns and to vary pressing hard and soft to create different color values.
They then reflected on the process and product by completing an exit slip. All this took one full session and about a third of a second.
The remaining time was spent on creating artist trading cards for the big trade being organized by Nic over at MiniMatisse. They created another drawing, still inspired by Beastman's work. They could base it on their large drawing or do something different as long as they still used the vocabulary of line, shape, and pattern. Students watched a short video that Nic put together that illustrated the importance of quality in an ATC. I reiterated her points and posted them on my board to remind my kids.
For students to participate in the upcoming trade, students must make sure they follow the 4 rules of quality- show proper use of materials, take their time, use the whole space, and be prideful.
the process- planning, refining, reflecting, and extending.
And now, I don't see them again for another 4 weeks. Until then, stay creative my young 3rd grade padawans;)
The week before break the 3rd graders also did a project inspired by the work of Filipino artist Abdulmari Imao. The project they did was based on the Sarimanok, which is a mythical bird in Filipino culture.
Students focused on mixing colors and creating movement by using curved and wavy lines and shapes in their drawing.
We had some parents come in one day for parent involvement day and they drew along with their kids:)
Last week the first graders blasted into space with a little help from line and an illustration by Clara Mercader.
To start the lesson we talked about how a line is the path of a moving dot and it can be made with anything- markers, crayons, paint, light...
I then showed them 3 things line can make, drawing examples as I explained them. Line can make shapes, patterns, and movement. Line can actually do much more, but these 3 were a good start:)
I then shared this illustration with them, which was created by Spanish artist Clara Mercader for her design company Maria Diamantes.
The kids really liked this illustration. It served as a fun intro to what line can do for you in a drawing.
The rest was pretty straightforward. I walked the students through the drawing steps in pencil. Students were free to add details to the outer space scene that would make it look more interesting.
They then traced their lines with marker to make them stand out a little more and they added white color to parts they wanted to stand out even more.
The last step was the movement part. Students were allowed to pick up to 3 colors to make a movement trail, so we would know which direction their rocket was traveling.
For a directed drawing, there was a good amount of variety in the student drawings. Way to start of the year, 1st graders!
