so a chip and a can walk onto a piece of paper...

and the little ones laugh. badum bump.

Here's another one that was inspired by the work of Philip Tseng. He posted this image on instagram last week and I immediately thought... kinder project.

The kinders are currently learning about 3d shapes with their classroom teachers, so I thought this would make for a great extension to that learning. I shared this image with the kids and we talked about how one of the shapes looks very flat and the other looks very round. They identified the can shape as a cylinder and that the top of that shape was an oval.

I also talked about the connection between the two things in the drawing, the paint card and the finished, mixed can of paint. How people use the card to see if they want a certain color or colors when they go to the store before spending money on paint for a project.

The kinders have done a great job with the shapes and the expressions on their objects.

The drawing activity took half our time together, so after that I gave students another sheet of paper and told them they could draw another character on it. I also told them we would be turning that flat shape into a 3d cylinder after they were done drawing it. This activity took the illusion of the 3d solid in the paint drawing and made it real. The students have made some interesting cylinder sculptures too:)

coloring with philip.

This week I wanted to do a lesson with my 1st graders that had them mix all 3 of the secondary colors they have learned about in previous lessons.

I have been a fan of San Diego based illustrator Philip Tseng for a few years now. I was first introduced to his work on the threadless online t-shirt store. I did a project based on his playground take of Mondrian's work last year. I love how his sense of humor shines through in his designs.

I shared a few images of Philip's from his website with the kids at the beginning of the lesson. We looked at how Philip, even in his funny designs, often made things look a little 3d because he uses light and shadow. We also looked at how he used secondary colors in some of his designs. There were many laughs to go round:)

When I stopped on our focus piece, I pointed out both of those elements. The students all agreed that this was a fictional scene, because, um, crayon boxes can't color by themselves! They need US:)

We drew out the box, crayons, and limbs together. I asked the students to decide how their box was feeling and to draw a face that showed that. Students then colored the box hard on the front and soft on the side to make it look more 3d. Then they colored their crayons, some with just primaries, others with mixed secondaries. The final step was for students to add what their crayon drawing on the ground.

This guy flipped the whole drawing. Totally correct. I find this fascinating.

Vampire!

Sinister?!

I love how narrow the box is.

The kids had a lot of fun with this project. At first some thought it was going to be way to hard, but so many students had success drawing the box well. It was also a good review of how to make their secondary colors.

I love the variety in boxes and the expressions that are on them. 

Some of the classes finished glazing a clay project before they started this exercise. They still did this drawing, but it was half the size of the other class drawings.

playing with piet and philip.

For a number of years I used the work of Piet Mondrian to introduce my younger students to different types of lines and primary colors. I love his work and how he broke down the image to the purest of elements and was still able to create endless variations within the self imposed restrictions of his visual world. That said, his work doesn't necessarily translate to keeping young kids engaged in the content of a lesson.

Well, I was scrolling through t-shirt designs on the threadless website  and came across an image that immediately made me both smile and want to revisit Mondrian's visual vocabulary. It was a design by San Diego's own Philip Tseng.

Same vocabulary of line, shape, and color, with a few added visual hooks to get my young ones engaged. Score!

I briefly showed the classes some of Philip's illustration work from his website and we noticed that many of his images use contour lines. When we got to the monkey bars image we also talked about the use of simple shapes, vertical and horizontal lines, and primary colors in art.

I have a Mondrian reproduction in the front of my room, so we also talked about how Philip modified the concept of paintings that were made almost one hundred years ago.

This is how the hands on project went-

1. Drew a large rectangle and then added a few vertical horizontal & vertical lines. Some were short and some were long.

2. Added contour line joints where lines met.

3. Added 3 or 4 shapes inside the squares/rectangles present in the monkeybars.

4. Added different expressive faces and limbs to each of those new shapes.

5. traced the monkeybar lines with a black marker and filled in the joints.

6. Used primary colors to fill in our characters.

7. Added a ground line and colored the ground.

The kids loved it.